Help please! What am I doing wrong?

Rashed said:

Pre-soak the film? I've not come across this before, just water at 20deg? How long? Agitation or no agitation?

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pentaxuser said:

There is no way any of us can guarantee we have hit upon the answer to your problem but I strongly suspect that if the film remained in the camera for two years then the potential for damage of the kind mentioned will depend on there being unusual conditions in which the camera was stored and then used. Most of the U.K has similar relative humidity and is not of the kind, in my experience which will affect film if the camera was used in "normal" U.K conditions. I was given a camera by a friend which had been his late brother's. The film from the ensuing negatives that I processed had lain in the camera in a house at normal ambient temperature and the negatives which were fine had clearly been taken in reasonable weather conditions. The film had lain in the camera for nearly 40 years!

OK that length of time is stretching things a bit and I am not recommending leaving film in a camera for 40 years but it's an example of how long film can remain OK in a camera if the conditions are right. If the film was fresh when loaded and had been stored at ambient temperature prior to loading and the cameras then was kept in normal U.K. relative humidity and at ambient temperature then I scratch my head to explain the reason for your problem.

Essex water is hard but so is mine in the South Midlands. I get scale forming on the spouts of my taps and have to descale my kettle frequently but I have never experienced processing problems using tap water.

If your new HP5+ film meets the conditions mentioned in my second paragraph then I think you can safely process it in the way you describe and feel relatively confident that the negatives will turn out fine.

pentaxuser

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Cholentpot said:

It might not always work that's why. Do the research, if you're not short of water or time just go for the standard wash.

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pdeeh said:

That's frankly not much of an answer.

I have indeed 'done the research', (I've read the Endless Film Washing Thread here at APUG - and many other washing threads, including most of PE's comments on the Ilford method - , I've read The Mysteries of The Vortex (Parts One and Two), and I've even read LFA Mason's book on Photographic Chemistry, including everything he says therein about washing film.)

'It might not always work' is peculiarly unhelpful, though, especially to a new user. If you're going to say that, it pretty much behoves you to explain the circumstances under which it won't work so that the new user can avoid or mitigate them.

The variables that might affect the efficiency of a wash are really the rate at which water is replaced, temperature, and the pH of the water . All of these bear on both the Ilford and a running-water wash. There's nothing inherently odd about the Ilford method that makes it more prone to inefficient washing other running-water washes.

If you don't fill and dump sufficient times, you won't get an effective wash, but then if you only ran your water for 5 minutes you wouldn't either. And yes, there are Mason's later remarks to consider, and of course those of our resident photochemistry guru, Mr. Engineer )). The latter young man has also mentioned more than once that the way to do things is to test after whatever washing regime is used and modify the regime until you get the test results that show your regime is sufficient.

However, bearing in mind that amateurs have been using the Ilford method for decades already, in their hundreds of thousands, and that we haven't thus far heard that everybody's negatives are dying a death ... well, it's empirical evidence innit?

Water is expensive stuff in Essex, as it is everywhere else in the UK; It's also an inexhaustible resource in increasingly less plentiful supply. Reducing one's water usage is economically and environmentally A Good Thing. Saying 'it doesn't always work' is Not A Good Thing.

We now return you to your regular programming​

So, about Kodachrome ...

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eddie said:

The rebate areas of the negatives show the mottling as well as considerable fogging.

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Rashed said:

Hello everyone,

Here are a few frames of a fresh roll of HP5, taken on a Fuji 645, a couple of frames cropped to square, and it was an especially grey overcast day in London.....

But they appear to have come out ok!!!

Strangely the negatives themselves appear fine but they scanned quite dark.

So what did I change? Well I made up my developer with de-ionised water, increased my Stop time to 1min and Fixer time to 5mins and modified my wash as follows - 5 fill and dump, then Ilford 5, 10 and 20 inversions, then final Ilfotol rinse with 5 inversions then left to sit for 5-10mins before hanging up.

Thank you to everyone who has commented and given advice, I really appreciate it.

Now to shoot some more and see what happens.

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pentaxuser said:

You may have changed the most important thing which you mention but not under changes, namely a fresh roll of HP5+

pentaxuser

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