I have developed two rolls of HP5+ in the same tank. One of them is slightly more dense than the other. The film came from the same shipment and exposed using the same camera, but 6-8 weeks apart (one of the rolls was exposed on the day of development). Is this enough for HP5+ to lose a tiny bit of the latent image, or I am imagining it?
A couple of months ago I developed two rolls of HP5+ (actually Arista Pro 400; Freestyle used to rebadge FP4+ and HP5+ as Arista) that I exposed in 1997. They came out fine.
Just to clarify: both rolls came out absolutely fine, the difference can only be seen holding them next to each other, and it's rather tiny, I thought I'd bring this up. Perhaps the question to ask is: "does a B/W film lose a tiny bit of the latent image rapidly within a day of exposure"? I think I read somewhere that the image decay is not linear... Anyway, could be that I have received two rolls from different production runs or something.
Temperature differences on days of shooting (cooler weather affecting battery strength and/or camera operation)? Or just a weaker battery after a couple months? Operator bias?
From a previous discussion here (2013) on the issue; "...helpful information posted by Ilford's Simon R Galley a couple of years ago in this forum. IIRC, firstly, the slower the speed, the worse are the latent image keeping abilities and secondly, modern tabular grain films like Delta or Tmax have better latent image keeping abilities than classic emulsions." Links are broken in the thread; https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...-to-retain-its-latent-image-over-time.104827/
But eating freshly caught fish has a different affect on human brains than eating not freshly caught fish, so how tasty is freshly exposed film to the brain?
Did you expose the two films to exactly the same subjects?
Or are you comparing the rebate information?
Although you purchased them together they may be from two different production batches. It would be in the rebate information that you would notice changes in latent image stability. That being said, Ilford films are really consistent batch to batch.
There is a lot that can happen in 6 - 8 weeks that might affect how your camera exposes film. And if the subjects are different, you may just be observing the trend in those differences.
HP5 has been my main film for about 25 years, in formats from 35mm to 8x10. I've developed films that I had exposed years previously, with zero issue. The only film I've heard that has latent image keeping issues was Ilford's Pan F.
Alright, I'll relax. Probably just a coincidence. Letters on the rebate looked identical. Both films had mostly sunshine outdoor shots on them, but perhaps with the shutter granularity (AE metering) of a full stop, one of the rolls could get consistently over/underexposed by 1/3rd of a stop or something... As I said, the difference is small.
I have developed two rolls of HP5+ in the same tank. One of them is slightly more dense than the other. The film came from the same shipment and exposed using the same camera, but 6-8 weeks apart (one of the rolls was exposed on the day of development). Is this enough for HP5+ to lose a tiny bit of the latent image, or I am imagining it?
Can I venture a guess here (and I might annoy some who don't like me to say this)? Somehow, I do not trust developing two rolls in a two roll tank. I have heard this elsewhere, before, that there will be slight differences in agitation and thus, development. In the past, have you done the same two roll development without ANY issues? - David Lyga
It might just be simpler than your explanation, David. It is just possible, is it not, that unless the light conditions were identical or indeed unless there was a genuine ceteris paribus the two films exposure was slightly different.
Bormental has the ability to see nuances that I suspect I would not see but unless we run a genuine control test and these are not easy to set up we may never be sure that what Bormental sees is the result of latency or a host of other valid reasons which explain the difference