Ilford HP5+ - uneven development results

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Why not keep the tank in a tempering bath on the tray heater?

Not a bad idea. But it's easier to control the water bath temp by adding a smidgeon of hot water every two minutes. I've tried it.
Thanks!

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Perhaps. But it may be the TMY is a red herring. Different films and all. The most common cause of uneven development is agitation. I think that's where you should look. It could be that the presoak+ your initial agitation is causing trouble. Good luck! These problems can be vexing.

I hear you. But I just can't believe that this particular brick of film can be so radically different from every other film I've tried. It just doesn't add up.

Over a thousand rolls and virtually no issues, and then one brick where all rolls have a problem?
Fp4+, Pan-F+, Delta 100, Delta 400, Delta 3200, Plus-X, Tri-X, TMY-2, TMX, TMZ, Acros, Neopan 400, Foma 100, 200, and 400, even HP5+ in 35mm, and some Ektapan sheets.
In all sorts of developers.

And now this, with an entire brick, in Edwal 12, Xtol, and D76. In different film backs.

This isn't freaking rocket science. I make sure the temp is right by presoaking the film (worked with EVERY OTHER FILM I tried), agitate the way I have always done to avoid uneven densities, use a good repeatable process.

So, I brought the camera with me to work, and I will stop on the way home to run a roll of HP5+ through it, and also a roll of TMY-2.
Then I'll develop without presoaking and see what happens. I will change only one variable.

 

[JW PHOTO]

I hear you. But I just can't believe that this particular brick of film can be so radically different from every other film I've tried. It just doesn't add up.

Over a thousand rolls and virtually no issues, and then one brick where all rolls have a problem?
Fp4+, Pan-F+, Delta 100, Delta 400, Delta 3200, Plus-X, Tri-X, TMY-2, TMX, TMZ, Acros, Neopan 400, Foma 100, 200, and 400, even HP5+ in 35mm, and some Ektapan sheets.
In all sorts of developers.

And now this, with an entire brick, in Edwal 12, Xtol, and D76. In different film backs.

This isn't freaking rocket science. I make sure the temp is right by presoaking the film (worked with EVERY OTHER FILM I tried), agitate the way I have always done to avoid uneven densities, use a good repeatable process.

So, I brought the camera with me to work, and I will stop on the way home to run a roll of HP5+ through it, and also a roll of TMY-2.
Then I'll develop without presoaking and see what happens. I will change only one variable.

Were waiting on the edge of our seats! This should at least bust the presoak question. As for your frugal darkroom? I saw a video of Edward Weston's and I'd say yours is probably better, but at least he didn't have the cold to deal with. A mans gotta do what a mans gotta do! JW

 

[Dave in Kansas]

Thomas, considering your experience, you are one of the last people I would expect to encounter a problem like this.

I have to say that I have had similar problems before and never knew for sure what caused it. My gut feeling is that it is development related and the film is fine. So it may be the presoak, or film / developer combination, or agitation, or a combination of all of those. I'm guilty of switching film and developers too often which makes it even more difficult to track down problems. For a while I was using HP-5 and replenished Xtol and that produced some beautiful images. I don't know why I switched.

I think I've read posts from PE recommending a presoak, and I always have, but now I think I'm going to stop. This is one reason I subscribe to APUG. Without this source I would continue doing things the same way again and again and wonder why I sometimes get less than desired results.

Dave

 

[Jaf-Photo]

Same roll?

Cool thread and quite a mystery!

One question that sprung to mind is whether the two patchy negs posted came from the same roll, or two different rolls?

If they came from different rolls, I would guess that this particular set of rolls were faulty (storage/manufacture).

The pattern of patchyness is more or less the same in the two frames.

I assume that it would be less likely that two separate runs, although not ideal, would produce identical patterns of uneveness?

Even if I always presoak (including Ilford films) and sometimes mess up in development, I haven't had patchy negatives like that.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Cool thread and quite a mystery!

One question that sprung to mind is whether the two patchy negs posted came from the same roll, or two different rolls?

If they came from different rolls, I would guess that this particular set of rolls were faulty.

The pattern of patchyness is more or less the same in the two frames.

I assume that it would be less likely that two separate runs, albeit glitchy, would produce identical patterns of uneveness?

They are from two different rolls of film.

 

[Jaf-Photo]

They are from two different rolls of film.

Then I would blame the film, because of the consistent pattern. Probably pre-purchase storage then, unless the rolls were taken from the same swatch of film in the factory? But that should have been picked up in quality control?

On a slight sidenote, I just discovered that Ilford Delta 400 doesn't agree with my standard process at all (agitated presoak, XTOL 1:1 mild agitation, water stop wash, TMAX fixer, wash and soak, Photo Flo). It works for virtually every other film I have tried but the Deltas all look bad. The flaws are not consistent however. Different rolls look different kinds of bad (patchy, foggy, grainy...). I have also tried slight variants (more agiation, acid stop, Ilford Fix) but to little avail.

Rather than changing chemicals and re-working my process, I'm ditching Delta and sticking with the films that work for me.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Thomas

Looks like road ruts to me.

In 2006 after about 30 thousand rolls of film we started to get minus density in the middle of the film.. We actually stopped production for a period , the problem was so severe and so hard to nail down.

Turned out the problem was due to not enough agitation at the start of the process... for two years we did a very vigourous hand agitation on all film before we put it on the Jobo.

Problem gone.

Now about 6 years later we have not seen the problem so we have stopped the process.

As well I would look to mineral content of the water, maybe the chemicals are not getting evenly on the film fast enough, once again fast agitation in the first 15 seconds. Or changing the water . not sure if you are mixing dev with distilled water or not..

Quick and decisive agitation and distilled water was my answer to Road ruts.. looked amazingly like what you posted.
Grey backgrounds and neutral areas are the worst.

I would never blame the film, this would be a world wide problem.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Thanks, Bob.

I am convinced I will solve this problem by examining one variable at a time, so I'm taking a methodical approach. I already have ten rolls of HP5 laying around, so I might as well use them up.
Plus a sadistic part of me like a good problem to solve, so this should be entertaining at least.

Step 1: Expose another roll, cut it in half. Develop one half exactly as the ones that got screwed up, with a 2 minute presoak. The reason I'm doing this is that I had to open a new brick of film, and it might be different from the old one.
Step 2: Develop the other half without presoak, and my agitation is always for the entire first minute, using full inversion agitation. The presoak is the only thing that will change.
Step 3: If either of the above doesn't solve my problem, I am going to try a 5 minute presoak, and agitate a lot. Again, the only thing I change is the presoak.
Step 4: If that doesn't work, I'll try heavier agitation for the first minute of development.

I'm pretty sure the first couple of steps will solve the mystery, but you never know.

Thanks for sharing your experience! I'm not keen to blame the film either, and as I've said before, I love Ilford, and I trust them too. Never had an issue like this before.

 

[brian steinberger]

Then I would blame the film, because of the consistent pattern. Probably pre-purchase storage then, unless the rolls were taken from the same swatch of film in the factory? But that should have been picked up in quality control?

On a slight sidenote, I just discovered that Ilford Delta 400 doesn't agree with my standard process at all (agitated presoak, XTOL 1:1 mild agitation, water stop wash, TMAX fixer, wash and soak, Photo Flo). It works for virtually every other film I have tried but the Deltas all look bad. The flaws are not consistent however. Different rolls look different kinds of bad (patchy, foggy, grainy...). I have also tried slight variants (more agiation, acid stop, Ilford Fix) but to little avail.

Rather than changing chemicals and re-working my process, I'm ditching Delta and sticking with the films that work for me.

Have you tried omitting the pre-soak??

 

[Jaf-Photo]

Have you tried omitting the pre-soak??

Thanks, I'll do that with the rolls I have left. I know it's me and not the film, because other people are getting excellent results with Delta in XTOL. But I'd rather save my time on this one, I think.

I also look forward to the results of Thomas' experimental plan above. It'll be useful to know, for sure.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Here is the roll that is about to be loaded into a tank.

 

[StoneNYC]

Good luck!

I was thinking of one other thing, maybe HP5+ is more sensitive to temperature differences? Maybe pouring in the hotter temp water hits parts of the emulsion first before it's fully blended, and that causes the film that's been hit with the warmer water to react to developer differently than the cooler areas of the film.

Especially since it appears the center of the film (where more concentrated dev would be) is darker while the edges (where more dilute and hotter water would initially hot the film before mixing) causing the difference?

I know that probably came our jumbled, it makes sense in my head.

Just a thought.

 

[Kevin Harding]

Does overdeveloping make the neg thicker or thinner? If so, then wouldn't the overdeveloped part be thicker (and thus darker) than the underdeveloped parts? Thinking about temperature changes too.

 

[StoneNYC]

Does overdeveloping make the neg thicker or thinner? If so, then wouldn't the overdeveloped part be thicker (and thus darker) than the underdeveloped parts? Thinking about temperature changes too.

Yes, but remember the water in is WATER, not developer, so it would dilute the outer areas while the center would stay at strength for a bit until it fully mixed because there's more flow around the edges than in between the tight spaces of spiraled films. That would also explain why the 35mm was ok, less surface area enclosing and restricting the flow.

This is all theoretical speculation.

 

[Kevin Harding]

Yes, but remember the water in is WATER, not developer, so it would dilute the outer areas while the center would stay at strength for a bit until it fully mixed because there's more flow around the edges than in between the tight spaces of spiraled films. That would also explain why the 35mm was ok, less surface area enclosing and restricting the flow.

This is all theoretical speculation.

Absolutely. I wasn't thinking about the water aspect properly. I have had some odd edge overdevelopment problems that I was pondering (I used a semi-stand with HC-110) and thought that it was either a developer pooling at the bottom problem or something that might have some sort of a parallel here.

Theoretical speculation indeed. Thanks for the thoughts.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Visual inspection after film wash is good.

It's from a different batch of film, and I used exactly the same procedure as last time to start out, with 2 min presoak, just to see if just getting film from a different batch made a difference, and it appears that it did.
First thing tomorrow morning I will do a test scan to confirm.

My early conclusion is that I had a batch of ten rolls where somehow ALL of the rolls showed the same problem. And at the same time those ten rolls represent the sum total of all the rolls I've had issues with in the last few years and roughly a thousand rolls of film.

Very strange indeed, and one hell of a coincidence if it was anything other than the film.

 

[StoneNYC]

Visual inspection after film wash is good.

It's from a different batch of film, and I used exactly the same procedure as last time to start out, with 2 min presoak, just to see if just getting film from a different batch made a difference, and it appears that it did.
First thing tomorrow morning I will do a test scan to confirm.

My early conclusion is that I had a batch of ten rolls where somehow ALL of the rolls showed the same problem. And at the same time those ten rolls represent the sum total of all the rolls I've had issues with in the last few years and roughly a thousand rolls of film.

Very strange indeed, and one hell of a coincidence if it was anything other than the film.

Well if you send off the film tie ilford and they confirm it's the film, then they will replace the film at least.

Anyway interesting to have a control that seemingly didn't have the issue.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I was thinking of one other thing, maybe HP5+ is more sensitive to temperature differences? Maybe pouring in the hotter temp water hits parts of the emulsion first before it's fully blended, and that causes the film that's been hit with the warmer water to react to developer differently than the cooler areas of the film.

Especially since it appears the center of the film (where more concentrated dev would be) is darker while the edges (where more dilute and hotter water would initially hot the film before mixing) causing the difference?

I know that probably came our jumbled, it makes sense in my head.

Just a thought.

I really don't think so. HP5 is not so finicky. Also, in the example provided, the centre is darker than the edges in the positive. The negative would be the opposite. A thinner middle, and denser edge.

Anyways, I received a box of 8x10 film once that had bands of uneven density once developed. I found out later that the film had been severely x-rayed coming into the country, as I had bought it from an individual.

 

[Jaf-Photo]

That's a great result.

I thought it made the most sense as the patchy pattern was identical in two different rolls. I think that would be very hard to duplicate, even if you tried. There will always be some variable in it.

It's unlikely that Ilford released a faulty batch, so it's probably been mishandled somewhere on the way to you?

 

[Simon R Galley]

Dear Thomas,

I am very sorry you have experienced a problem with an ILFORD Photo product.

I have read through the thread and it seems very odd to say the least.

You frequently need to 'look' into the emulsion layer ( with an electron microscope ) to identify a 'true' film performance issue, typically and very usually they are 'process' related as opposed to a manufacturing issue but if you return the film to us we will do this check, and others, and if a fault exists with the film it will of course be identified, explained to you and replaced.

We have no current QC issues outstanding on any HP5+ film product as of todays monthly log.

An interesting sub note is that you have a brick of ten films 'affected' this would immediately tell us certain things, a full 120 slitting 610m long is made into 120 film, after slitting they are placed in large light proof cassettes and transferred to the 120 finishing machine, we would typically finish many of these actual slitting cassettes at one manufacture, each slitting made into 120 film from each cassette has the first and and last films removed and processed ( this is after the parent roll itself has had its own QC procedures and passed before being released for finishing ) so if you had a fault in any single slitting it could be identified ( and we can post manufacture identify any single 120 slitting ) as the slittings are finished they go into a production tub, so they are effectively 'mixed' they then go into the foiling section when again they are 'mixed' and then a final time they are 'mixed' before being shrink wrapped into the 10 pack, so, it is highly unusual to have 10 films from the same slitting in the same brick, whilst they would most likely ( but not exclusively ) come from the same parent roll. It tells us what ? to have a manufacturing fault in one slitting would be incredibly rare, to have a fault across two would statistically very small, to have a a fault affecting each 120 roll in each slitting would be infintesimily small.

Thank you for buying, using and valuing ILFORD Photo products.

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

 

[Keith Tapscott.]

My method of developing HP5+ is:
2 minute pre-soak
13 minutes in D76 1+1, agitation first minute, then three inversions every minute.
30s indicator stop bath
6 minute Ilford Hypam fix
Wash 25 minutes in film washer
Sprint End Run wash aid
Hang to dry

The film has not been through airport X-rays, has been stored in a 50*F basement, and is well within date (expiration 2015).

Has anybody else experienced this with 120 HP5+ roll film lately?
I have another fresh brick of HP5+ 120 that I will try out when there's an open blue sky around to see if it persists or if it was a fluke.

I Was told the story of how Fay Godwin had the same problem when she used FP4 film. She always pre-soaked her films, but kept getting uneven processing marks on her films. It got to a stage where she had a back log of undeveloped films that she was reluctant to process because of this problem.

A technical adviser suggested that she omitted the pre-soak. She did that and the problem was solved. This is why Ilford don't recommend pre-soaking films.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Dear Thomas,

I am very sorry you have experienced a problem with an ILFORD Photo product.

I have read through the thread and it seems very odd to say the least.

You frequently need to 'look' into the emulsion layer ( with an electron microscope ) to identify a 'true' film performance issue, typically and very usually they are 'process' related as opposed to a manufacturing issue but if you return the film to us we will do this check, and others, and if a fault exists with the film it will of course be identified, explained to you and replaced.

We have no current QC issues outstanding on any HP5+ film product as of todays monthly log.

An interesting sub note is that you have a brick of ten films 'affected' this would immediately tell us certain things, a full 120 slitting 610m long is made into 120 film, after slitting they are placed in large light proof cassettes and transferred to the 120 finishing machine, we would typically finish many of these actual slitting cassettes at one manufacture, each slitting made into 120 film from each cassette has the first and and last films removed and processed ( this is after the parent roll itself has had its own QC procedures and passed before being released for finishing ) so if you had a fault in any single slitting it could be identified ( and we can post manufacture identify any single 120 slitting ) as the slittings are finished they go into a production tub, so they are effectively 'mixed' they then go into the foiling section when again they are 'mixed' and then a final time they are 'mixed' before being shrink wrapped into the 10 pack, so, it is highly unusual to have 10 films from the same slitting in the same brick, whilst they would most likely ( but not exclusively ) come from the same parent roll. It tells us what ? to have a manufacturing fault in one slitting would be incredibly rare, to have a fault across two would statistically very small, to have a a fault affecting each 120 roll in each slitting would be infintesimily small.

Thank you for buying, using and valuing ILFORD Photo products.

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

Many thanks for chiming in, Simon. I don't want it to be the film either, and as I've said before, I trust Ilford and will continue with HP5+, in spite of what I experienced with this problematic brick.
I'm thinking that it might have been stored improperly, or something along those lines. I work in an industry where almost all of the damage that occurs to our products is inflicted in shipping and handling. Who knows what happened to those ten rolls?

I'll continue to claim that Ilford is a very high quality product, which I fully believe. And my simple precaution moving forward will be to test every batch of film before I use it, regardless of brand and type.

This really isn't a big deal for me. I just found it extremely odd.

 

[Simon R Galley]

Thanks for reply, as I said, ship it to us and we will happily check it out.

Regarding shipping, very special arrangements are made in our photo industry supply chain, in the shipments ex.factory to the country distributors, but as always storage and shipment issues can arise.

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

 

[Xmas]

Hi

120 or 220 is a pig to load into plastic or CRES spirals and avoid clinch witness or touching film I don't try it in a changing (dark) bag.

If the HP5 is more flexible than you are used to or the plastic spirals are wet, you will have troubles. Never had problems with Ilford, Agfa, Kodak, or Forma film...

Noel