Help, has my paper gone bad?

I think I may have done something to destroy my stash of ilford paper. The paper is about 1.5 years old, I printed with it a couple months ago and it worked flawlessly--no fogging, no splotches. However, now it appears the paper is ruined, just look at the horrible, fogged, splotchy print.



All my photos are printing like this (or worse), I tested the paper for fogging by developing an unexposed piece, and it came out bright white (no fog). The problem seems to be aggravated by using high contrast filters and longer exposure times, because of this i suspected some stray light bouncing around my darkroom, but I've ruled that out as well.

Very high-contrast negatives that print with no filtering and 10-15 second exposure times come out alright (but not perfect, black areas are still a bit splotchy).

By comparison, here's the scanned negative:



The only thing I can think of that may of ruined the paper would be strong ammonia and sulfur fumes from another project in my garage, where I store the paper.

Any insight would be appreciated; I'm pretty novice when it comes to trouble shooting. Here's a 2nd, even worse printing of the same negative:

Hmm, is your chemistry new?

Did you need to increase the contrast on the second print compared to the first? - If so, might be exhausted developer.

I had a few problems with exhausted fixer giving me a similar appearance - mixing a fresh batch from a brand new bottle of fixer solved the problem for me.

Looks like bad or weak developer (or too little time in the developer) to me at first glance. When paper goes bad, it generally fogs overall, degrading the whites, not the blacks.

Mix new developer, check your times and temps and try again.

Good luck,

Doremus Scudder

It's not the fix.. the print shows the problem before touching the fix. The developer was mixed fresh from concentrate, but the concentrate is a little old--about two years. But if the developer was bad, I would expect weak, low contrast prints, not crazy splochiness.

Can old print developer really cause such a thing?

did some research. It seems that sulfur oxides can spoil developer; I'm not sure they could get into a sealed container, but the trays could have been contaminated.

Sulphur Dioxide fumes can fog paper. It is considered good advice to keep papers stored separately when using suplhide toners because of the damage the fumes can do.

Oxidation of the developer concentrate (i.e the air in the bottle degrading the concentrate) could be a possible cause. But Adrian is probably on to something if you've used toners.

It looks like a developer gone bad to me.

You guys were right, it was the developer. I think it was contaminated by the tray, which was sitting out in the areas with the sulfur fumes.

I thoroughly washed the tray and mixed up a new batch of developer from the same concentrate and the problem is gone.

Thanks for your help. Thankfully I won't have to throw out my paper.

Check out the developer first, it may be contamination, also the temperature. Another possibility is condensation in the enlarger or lens if the enlargers very cold when you start.

While paper can get chemical fogging it's likely to affect the edges first.

Ian