Grey Mark On Prints

Hi!

I’ve been troubleshooting all day with no solution. I’ve had these grey marks appearing on every light print in the same spot. I did get them to move over slightly at some point but not gone. It doesn’t appear when there’s no negative in the carrier - my thoughts are the light is spread enough it doesn’t show up?

Things i’ve tried:
-changing out rollers and chemistry
- changing out the diffusion chamber
- different negatives/ lenses/ negative carrier / lens board
- changing out all the color filters with spares
-changing the lightbulb
-moving the enlarger to a different spot in room
-putting black gaff over anywhere that i could possible think would be leaking light

I’m stumped so would love any suggestions of what could be happening!

My setup is Beseler 45s and durst rcp20

Thanks!!

alexkj said:

It doesn’t appear when there’s no negative in the carrier - my thoughts are the light is spread enough it doesn’t show up?

Click to expand...

Hm. That's an interesting clue. Just to be sure - you don't get this on a test sheet processed without the sheet having even been near the enlarger? Because the first thought is that it might be something like fogging early on in the paper path of the RCP20 due to room lights being turned on as the paper is making its way into the developer bath. The RCP20's lid isn't perfectly light-tight in my experience.

In any case, I just wanted to verify that the problem is without a doubt attributable to the enlarger and that all other causes elsewhere in the process have been excluded.

If the problem only occurs if the negative is in the enlarger, I'd expect that there's some kind of light leak in the enlarger itself that is relatively well-focused on the negative stage. Perhaps some light from the bulb leaking past the light-mixing chamber or past a diffusor? I'm not familiar with your enlarger, so I couldn't give more specific clues; sorry.

Those four overlapping tan prints; are those made with a blank piece of C41 in the negative carrier? If you change the filtration, does the color of the mark change along with the filtration, or does it remain the same?

PS: I wouldn't call this a 'grey' mark. It looks brown to me, and reddish-brown is consistent with white light fogging on RA4 paper.

I’ve done it without turning the light on while in the processor and apart from tinkering with the enlarger, the mark doesn’t move no matter which way it’s put into the processor. It doesn’t seem like it changes colors based on the filtration. It does appear more brown on the tan prints but I’m assuming that’s due to the total light hitting it affecting the color.

Can we take it that this problem wasn't there before and suddenly one day recently or even maybe today it has appeared?

What I am getting at is that whenever the same successful process be that negative developing or printing or both combined suddenly goes wrong then something has definitely changed. If you go through each stage is there anything that has or may have changed that you can think of and mention to us in the form of a list

Every problem needs method to be applied to check out the various stages that may be at fault . I should have mentioned this in your "bromide drag"thread as well. Is this bromide drag brand new as well and never occurred before?

pentaxuser

You don't elaborate on your enlarger head(s). I've had problems in the past when light diffusing glass on dichroic heads was damaged or dirty. You might want to check those.

Doremus