Help Processing 35mm Negatives

dustym · Oct 30, 2005

I processed adox 400 iso film this evening with Paterson aculux 2
I got a curios streaking across the frame almost if the the negative has been over exposed the streak in columns ran from the perforation top to bottom on all frames , has not happened before, was there a fault in the chemistry, did I over develop the negative in the processing tank.

rgds
shaun

Dave Parker · Oct 30, 2005

Hi Shaun,

Do you have the ability to scan the negs, just a frame or two and post it, this would help alot in figuring out what the problems may be.

Dave

dustym · Oct 30, 2005

I dont have a neg scanner, I did however print the neg , i can scan and send this tommorrow

rgds
dusty

dancqu · Oct 30, 2005

dustym said:
... has not happened before,

That's where the mystery begins. Had the exact same
thing happen on a roll of 120 developed a few months ago.
BUT, a roll a few days ago and one last night turned out OK.
I think agitation played the biggest role. The last two rolls
were very gently inverted twice each two minutes. The
initial four inversion were also slowly done.

Of course if you've been doing everything the same all
along, then you've got a real mystery to solve. Dan

stephen · Oct 30, 2005

My guess is the agitation, but I await the evidence...

Don't let this put you off though. My first film was far worse..

srs5694 · Oct 30, 2005

As dancqu says, the mystery is in the inconsistency of it. Based on the description, this sounds like an agitation problem. My understanding (and I'm not an expert on this) is that certain types of agitation can cause waves of a sort to travel down the length of a roll of film, causing uneven bands of development, as you describe. I'd expect this problem to show up consistently, though -- at least, assuming you haven't changed your agitation technique for this roll.

FWIW, I've seen this sort of thing myself, but only on very short rolls (partial rolls developed as a test to get a ballpark developing time for an untested film/developer combination).

gnashings · Oct 30, 2005

I know I am going against the grain (pun... well - its there, I know) - but, it sounds like some thing I had a happen. Does your negative look a lot like the shell of a tiger-striped shrimp (pardon the very non-technical lingo)?
In my case it was a light leak - and I went nuts trying to find the solution in the dark room. It was not very uniform, and more apparent in some films than others - but new foam took care of it all together.

Remember, lightleaks often only come out under very select sets of circuimstances.

If its not that, I would suspect agitation as the culprit.

Best of luck fixing this - hope you dont ruin as many nice shots as yours truly did due to this,

Peter.

Jarred McCaffrey · Oct 31, 2005

Light leaks are an interesting possibility.

Whenever I've seen this it was over-agitation. When you mentioned streaks from perforation to perforation, it fits the pattern. For 35mm the perforations can cause extra turbulence and exchange of developer. That's why over-agitation might give you those columns - the perforations affect the flow pattern.

nworth · Oct 31, 2005

It sounds a bit like "bromide streaks". The cause is often incorrect agitation. It can be made worse by the wrong developer for the film. Old, concentrated soups (like DK-60a) with modern, thin emulsion films seem more prone to it. Sometimes the mechanical construction of the developing tank influences it, too. In any case, agitation technique is very critical with today's films. Read the instructions, and practice helps. That said, it happens to all of us (whether or not we admit it) sometimes. If you had digital darkroom equipment (scanner, computer), Photoshop can often do miracals for this sort of thing, but not usually without some hard, careful work.

gainer · Oct 31, 2005

Whatever it was, IMHO gentler agitation is not going to cure it. I got the same streaking pattern in tests of stand development, even when I developed a strip of 35 mm film in a tray, emulsion side down without agitation. A combination of vigorous inversion and swirling motions might help. After all, why do some mixed drinks require vigorous mixing? Is it not to distribute all the components equally? Just moving the bromide and other byproducts of development a little bit is not the way to go. Gravity does its own moving, but not always mixing. Diffusion mixes, but slowly, and often more slowly than the progress of development.

Gordon Hutchings uses nitrogen burst agitation with PMK.

dustym · Oct 31, 2005

dustym said:
I processed adox 400 iso film this evening with Paterson aculux 2
I got a curios streaking across the frame almost if the the negative has been over exposed the streak in columns ran from the perforation top to bottom on all frames , has not happened before, was there a fault in the chemistry, did I over develop the negative in the processing tank.

rgds
shaun

I spoke with the tech guy at Paterson in Birmingham spoke of the film used and development time and chemistry , he has seen this streaking before in testing and it is down to over agitation.

His suggestion was constant agitation for the first 30 seconds and then 4 gentle inversions at every 1 min interval thanks again for help when i get a moment I will scan my result so as to use for example

Rgds
Dusty

Help Processing 35mm Negatives

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