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Fujifilm Crystal Archive Roll out of packaging and exposed to light

leahandhercamera

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Mar 25, 2024
Messages
12
Location
UK
Format
35mm
Hi guys,

I just bought a roll of 5" Fujifilm Crystal Archive from Amazon to print with in the darkroom. To my dismay, I opened the box today to discover it without any light-proof packaging at all meaning its been entirely exposed to light (see images attached). I spoke to a friend of mine that works in a photo lab and he said the paper in the inner part of the roll might still be usable. Does anyone know/think the paper might be protected from the light and still usable?

Any help with this would be great!

 
Return it for refund - not properly packaged.
 
leahandhercamera said:
the paper in the inner part of the roll might still be usable
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's possible. Generally you get a black edge on both margins and red to yellow "flames" inward. Where the roll is tight, this can be narrow, but the affected band will be wider towards the start of the roll that's wound more loosely.

MattKing said:
Return it for refund - not properly packaged.
Click to expand...

That's what I'd recommend, yes. This is really no acceptable way to sell this paper.
 
You might want to actually call Amazon and discuss this. Sometimes they are clueless about what they are handling. I have called them about missed packaged items before and explained the issue. They actually pull the item off the site and sorted it out. Here you would explain you can't remove photo paper from its packaging and toss it in a box.
 
There was a big estate sale near here a few years ago when one of the largest portrait studios shut down. Many boxes of color sheet film were left behind, including 12X16 inch, 11x14, and 8X10 Vericolor, and a fair amount of expensive special cut chrome film too. Wishing to convey the authenticity of the product, the well-intentioned but naive auctioneer opened up even the sleeves inside the boxes and photographed the inner contents of each, that is, the stacks of actual film itself, and posted the evidence on the web. Six months later he hadn't sold any of it;
I wonder if he ever figured out why.
 
This reminds me of purchasing a roll of DP II, which I cut into sheets, only to discover that the paper was either old, improperly stored, or both. You know, with "nice" pastel tones of orange in whites. I couldn´t return it, because i had already cut the whole roll of 186 m into sheets- Since then, I have always tested a new roll for defects, but everything has been fine after this incident.
 
Thanks for the help everyone.

So I decided to risk it and test the paper in the darkroom after unravelling the outer layers (my work is experimental anyways so I thought I could still get something from it). The results are very, very magenta/orange casts to the prints no matter how much I change the filtration. I'm assuming the paper was also improperly stored as well as taken out of its packaging (wtf amazon?). Unless I'm doing something else wrong I'm thinking the problem has to be the paper.
 
It's likely extremely expired. Sorry for your loss.

PS: there's one use case that could explain a magenta/orange cast that cannot be corrected: use of a developer replenisher without starter.
Are the white margins also fogged or is there just a cast to the image? What kind of Chemistry do you use?
 

This is very likely. When Fuji paper goes bad. there will be a visible, orange-magenta cast over the whole paper, including unexposed areas. When white areas are no more white on the paper. there is nothing to do with any amount of filtration.
 
Samu said:
This is very likely. When Fuji paper goes bad. there will be a visible, orange-magenta cast over the whole paper, including unexposed areas. When white areas are no more white on the paper. there is nothing to do with any amount of filtration.
Click to expand...

Hmm.. my unexposed areas are coming out fairly white. I've been trying to print without a neg through the enlarger and can't get past red tones at all it just insists on printing red (see photo below). I did try printing through a neg and it's significantly better..starting to shift green but what I'm aiming to do is just expose paper to different colours through the enlarger. I'm assuming when you print without a neg you reverse the filtration settings so increasing magenta is actually dialling up not down, am I right in saying that? What do you think from these photos?
 

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The whites look pretty white.... I've been using Bellini chemistry, freshly mixed not replenished at roughly 35C for 30 secs in a small film processing tank.
 

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Just out of curiosity, was there any reason why you did not initiate a return to Amazon for the reason respondents to your thread have already suggested? There is just no way Amazon has a leg to stand on in terms of the way this was packaged or more accurately was not packaged

You must be "out of pocket" to the tune of a lot of money

Thanks
pentaxuser
 
leahandhercamera said:
print without a neg through the enlarger and can't get past red tones
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's normal. Put a piece of blank C41 film in the carrier and things start to clear up.

leahandhercamera said:
I did try printing through a neg and it's significantly better
Click to expand...

Yeah, that looks pretty normal give or take some twists on the filter dials.

leahandhercamera said:
I'm assuming when you print without a neg you reverse the filtration settings so increasing magenta is actually dialling up not down
Click to expand...

No, filters work the same way, but the orange mask gives a pretty massive offset that is hard/impossible to dial in with just the filters; you'll likely end up at the very end of both the magenta and yellow filter range.

leahandhercamera said:
What do you think from these photos?
Click to expand...

That you'll get there just fine with the negative; just keep making ringarounds. don't be afraid to work with much bigger filter adjustments.
When dialing in coarsely I usually print 4 versions:
1 both yellow + magenta at the lower end (based on an educated guess) of the magenta and yellow filter range I expect
2 magenta same as (1) but yellow dialed up pretty far; let's say 30-40CC on a regular color head
3 magenta also dialed up 30-40CC
4 yellow dialed back at level of (1) and magenta right up at +30-40CC.
With a little bit of luck this will give you four prints that are all way wrong, but in opposite directions. Then based on your observations on which is too blue/yellow and which is too green/magenta (note that too red means too yellow+magenta and too cyan means too blue+green) you dial closer to where you think you should end up. At this stage I usually work only one channel at a time until I get close, then work on the other channel, and then do fine adjustments.
We all have our ways of course; the above is what I generally do when I'm pretty much out in the dark filter-wise.
 

Great that's all really helpful thank-you so much! I didn't think to use a piece of clear film but that makes sense, I'll try that. Thanks again.



Well you see the roll was fairly cheap to start with, only €34 so I decided I'd risk it...my work is experimental anyways. It was much cheaper than everywhere else I'd looked online. I kind of knew I'd be taking a risk on it for that price and the fact there was only one in stock left but I certainly didn't expect it to come like that!
 
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