Hard time "reading" negatives. Underdeveloped?

[cerber0s]

It's so dark outside so I try to shoot some indoors to dial in my development process. I ran a roll of the 12 year old bulk film while cooking (it went on the spiral without hickups just as the last bulk film did), I guess B&W isn't the most exciting when it comes to food photography.

I developed it for 5 minutes@20 degrees C (assuming it's Fomapan 100) in Kodak Tmax 1+4. This was the 4th roll I ran through that same solution, following the data sheet that claims 4 (compensated for my tank) rolls before increasing the development time by 1 minute for the next 4 and then by another minute for the last 4. So according to Kodak I'm supposed to get 48 rolls from one gallon. It is however not clear whether they mean a gallon of concentrate or a gallon of working solution but I assume it's the latter? They were then run through 60 seconds of stop bath and 2 minutes of fixing.

These negatives were put on a light-table and "scanned" using a digital camera and macro lens, then bulk processed in Capture One to convert them to positives and this is the best I could do.

I realize it's hard to say anything since the film is old and the processing in Capture One can change things a great deal but they look kind of flat and lifeless to me. Would you say that they are underdeveloped just from looking at the positives?

I selected a number of the negatives to hopefully make it easier.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Would prefer to see the negatives. Can you photograph them and put them up?

 

[cerber0s]

Would prefer to see the negatives. Can you photograph them and put them up?

Tanks! Yes, here they are just as they came from the light table with no processing whatsoever.

 

[MattKing]

Would you say that they are underdeveloped

Probably underdeveloped, and definitely under-exposed.
Although not perfect, this may help: https://www.ephotozine.com/article/assessing-negatives-4682

 

[cerber0s]

Probably underdeveloped, and definitely under-exposed.
Although not perfect, this may help: https://www.ephotozine.com/article/assessing-negatives-4682

Thank you!

Yes, they do look a bit under exposed but according to the light meter I over exposed all of them slightly. I wonder if it's going off on me..?

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Tanks! Yes, here they are just as they came from the light table with no processing whatsoever.
View attachment 259893 View attachment 259894 View attachment 259895 View attachment 259896 View attachment 259897 View attachment 259898

Thanks for posting. They appear underexposed to me. Shadows are quite thin. Did you expose the film at ISO 100? If so, you might want to find a better EI for that film/developer combination. Next time, take photos, and then expose the same composition, but with slightly more exposure... or you could just shoot a roll at EI 50. I'll bet it'll look great then!

 

[Craig75]

Yes def underdeveloped if thats the best you can pull out of them. They look flat

Exposure doesnt look too far off to me. Could do with a little more but theres probably enough there to work with.

 

[bdial]

To my eyes, you have a lot of base fog, which may be from the age of the film. The exposure seems a bit thin, but not overly so. Have you tried setting the white point in the editing SW to a spot in the rebate (as a negative), before other adjustments? That may help give them a little more snap.

 

[Bill Burk]

Gray base is common . You could fix a bit of the film to find out how much gray is “zero”.

Looks like exactly correct exposure. Most of the time I expose more because I want to have extra detail.

Underdevelopment is relative. If you had been out in bright daylight with a variety of shade, you would have more contrast.

Indoors I think you setup your studio with low contrast lighting. So you should develop longer if your lighting is going to be like this.

 

[cerber0s]

To my eyes, you have a lot of base fog, which may be from the age of the film. The exposure seems a bit thin, but not overly so. Have you tried setting the white point in the editing SW to a spot in the rebate (as a negative), before other adjustments? That may help give them a little more snap.

Thank you! That's a good point and it certainly seemed to improve things, if you compare it to the one above:

 

[cerber0s]

Gray base is common . You could fix a bit of the film to find out how much gray is “zero”.

Looks like exactly correct exposure. Most of the time I expose more because I want to have extra detail.

Underdevelopment is relative. If you had been out in bright daylight with a variety of shade, you would have more contrast.

Indoors I think you setup your studio with low contrast lighting. So you should develop longer if your lighting is going to be like this.

That is also a good point, I never thought of having to develop longer to compensate for the low contrast ligthing. Thanks!

And thanks to everyone else too.

 

[cerber0s]

I also noticed that several of the shots are brighter along the bottom edge. I wonder if it might be time for new light seals...

 

[cerber0s]

I redid the math for how many times I could reuse the TMax solution and I was off by 100% the first time so I mixed a new solution and started over. I used the same 12 year old (it's become my test film) film and also increased the developing time by 30 seconds and the results look much, much better.

Thanks for your help!

 

[foc]

I don't know if this might help but it can be used to troubleshoot B&W negs problems.

https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/photomicrography/bwprocessingerrors.html

 

[pentaxuser]

Not sure why we are even talking about neg problems. If cerber0s had used the magic of the white point adjustment ( means nothing to me as a darkroom printer, unfortunately) as he did in his second attempt and had shown us this initially would anyone of us have mentioned under-development/under-exposure or might we have said "Good job?"

I suspect I would have done. If it's a matter of expert scanning with inkjet printing, does it matter much how the negs turn out "within reason " Said phrase of "within reason " occupying a large range of what is an acceptable negative

pentaxuser

 

[cerber0s]

Not sure why we are even talking about neg problems. If cerber0s had used the magic of the white point adjustment ( means nothing to me as a darkroom printer, unfortunately) as he did in his second attempt and had shown us this initially would anyone of us have mentioned under-development/under-exposure or might we have said "Good job?"

I suspect I would have done. If it's a matter of expert scanning with inkjet printing, does it matter much how the negs turn out "within reason " Said phrase of "within reason " occupying a large range of what is an acceptable negative

pentaxuser

The white point badically just tells the software what it should consider to be absolutely white. In my case that would be the light table.

What I learned from this, besides the white point is what you point out, that there seems to be a pretty wide range between useless and perfect.

It's been years since I used my enlarger and even then I didn't do it frequently. With a little luck I'll get it out of storage tomorrow. I guess I can set it up temporarily in a bathroom whenever I need it, cumbersome as that is.