Help diagnosing these ruined negs?

crumpet8 · Jan 31, 2017

Hi everyone

Lost some photos today... old chem c41. What I'm wondering about is the large dark patch that's collected at the bottom of my roll. Haven't seen this before I don't think. What could be the cause?

The roll should be exposed correctly, I assume they came out thin due to bad chem/dev. Or is the large mass of dark patch related?

Thanks.

bvy · Jan 31, 2017

It's hard to tell, but it looks like errant exposure to me.

Sirius Glass · Jan 31, 2017

It looks like the exposure is off. Check the light meter. Check the light meter settings. Check the camera.

MattKing · Jan 31, 2017

I'd agree with bvy - some sort of fogging exposure.

crumpet8 · Jan 31, 2017

MattKing said:
I'd agree with bvy - some sort of fogging exposure.

So the dev was ok (as seen by the black patch) but the other pictures that are thin were underexposed?

bvy · Jan 31, 2017

crumpet8 said:
So the dev was ok (as seen by the black patch) but the other pictures that are thin were underexposed?

That would be my guess. That the fogged area developed to black indicates that your developer was at least active. The thin frames point to an exposure problem. Faulty shutter? Metered incorrectly?

Rudeofus · Jan 31, 2017

Did you process this roll in a rotary tank? If yes, what was the volume of color developer you used?

crumpet8 · Feb 1, 2017

bvy said:
That would be my guess. That the fogged area developed to black indicates that your developer was at least active. The thin frames point to an exposure problem. Faulty shutter? Metered incorrectly?

The camera should be fine, the last roll I shot at Christmas came out perfect. This roll is a mix of about four different situations from New Years to now so I don't think I'd have metered so many shots so poorly either. I use my hand held Gossen instead of the prism and it's never let me down.

crumpet8 · Feb 1, 2017

Rudeofus said:
Did you process this roll in a rotary tank? If yes, what was the volume of color developer you used?

Paterson two roll tank with a little under 500ml. One 120 spiral roll in The tank as it doesn't take both when developing 120

AgX · Feb 1, 2017

Spill from a light leak.

mnemosyne · Feb 1, 2017

Apparently edge markings came out fine, which indicates the roll was not (extremely) underdeveloped. That leaves underexposure (wrong metering or faulty camera) as the only reason for the lack of density in the frames. The black area at the end of the roll has been fogged by light, either in camera through a light leak, during loading/unloading (possible cause: film not wound tightly enought on the spool) or during processing in darkroom.

crumpet8 · Feb 1, 2017

Thanks for the tips everyone! Was thinking along the same lines as memosyne, maybe I have to check my light meter batteries or I just messed up what film speed I was metering... was shooting about three different rolls on two cameras at the time :/

Help diagnosing these ruined negs?

crumpet8

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