Lomography Tiger problem

I've successfully used Lomography Tiger 110 format film twice before, in a 70s ITT camera that looks like something out of Star Wars. I used the same camera again over New Year with a fresh, in-date Tiger film and got very odd results.

9 out of 24 exposures were salvageable by the lab, and they are all washed out with what appear to be scratches all over them. The negative strips all look almost uniformally brown with the frame numbers, frames and edge markings not visible. Previous 110 films I used in the 80s and the two Tiger films I shot in 2019 all looked as I expected. Tiger film is not one of Lomography's "special effects" films it is supposed to be a regular C41 colour print film with vibrant colours.

I have attached two scanned pictures from the film and a photo of a negative strip with a photo of a "good" Tiger strip for comparison. The lab I use is busy and always uses fresh chemicals, maintains the machine etc. The lady processing this has been commercially processing colour film for 45 years and suspects a film manufacturing or packaging fault. I had 35mm film developed at the same time which was perfect.

Any ideas what could cause this? I have also written to Lomography to ask them. Has anyone seen anything like this, either with Tiger film or other? Could it be faulty film? Or a camera problem?

Normally the area between the frames should be a lot darker, almost black in colour, and not the brown in your sample photo.
As you have mentioned about the lab in this post and in previous posts, they know what they are doing so I would assume it is not a processing problem. Just out of curiosity, the 110 film was processed in the same machine that 35mm films were processed?

When I look at the image in the negative photo, it appears underexposed. Of course, if it was underdeveloped then it would look similar but as you say the lady has a vast experience of C41 processing so I would go with what she says.

Sorry, I can't be of any better help.

You appear to have satisfactorily excluded a processing issue....I don't doubt what your lady says and her long experience. I suppose there could have been some rare one-off accident or issue, or even a faulty cassette, which even she may not have realised, but this seems unlikely.

If your 110 camera was OK with earlier "Tiger" films, all that you could try would be another test film now, either Tiger or another brand if you have any available. If that's OK, it would point to a film fault, and that is down to what Lomography say.

The lab lady, for all her experience and the quality of her mini-lab, could feasibly make a mistake - as we all do from time to time. But she's confident she didn't. Lomography have got back to me and said that it looks like very expired film - which it was not. I'm sure it was from an order I placed with Analogue Wonderland in October and had an April 2020 expiry date. In any case, I have used 35+ year expired 110 film with better results...

For all their scepticism as to the responsibility, Lomography have offered to post me a replacement film so they're doing the right thing. It is rather odd though, I've never seen C41 film come out quite like that.

I only have Lomography Tiger film in 110 format at the moment but have ordered some Metropolis film which I'm intending to use next month.

I've had C-41 film look like that, but it has generally been very old film (20 years + ). Obviously not the case here.

Wallendo said:

I've had C-41 film look like that, but it has generally been very old film (20 years + ). Obviously not the case here.

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Lomography did say it looked like very expired film. While I've had better results with 35+ year expired C41 film I can see it as a possibility for badly aged film. The few pictures that were salvageable were definitely shots I took on NYE so it's not a mistake swapping my film for someone else's.

All rather odd, and I suspect somewhere there is one bad batch of Tiger film that's had some catastrophic error during the "confectioning" process. Does anyone know who Lomography contract out the manufacture and confectioning of Tiger 110 film to? It's not quite the same as their 135 and 120 colour negative films. But still has a Kodak look rather than a Fuji look.

Just been looking at some recently exposed and processed negs from a Kodak Gold 400 film, expired 1996. I didn't think that anything would come out, but the prints (6x4) are quite acceptable.
However, the grain is more than I would expect on new 400 ASA film, and, particularly, the negs are unusually dense with a deep red/brown mask.

railwayman3 said:

the negs are unusually dense with a deep red/brown mask.

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I shoot a lot of superia 200 that went out of date some 15 years ago. I get exactly the same. Still color balances pretty much perfectly though on ra4 paper. C41 film can be quite magical.

Yeah I've used 20 year expired 35mm C41 film where it comes out very dark but the exposures are scannable or even printable with care and the colour balance isn't too off. One can still make out the rebate text/numbers if backlit. With this Tiger film neither myself nor the lab can find the frame numbers or any rebate info. Hopefully this is a one-off or very rare occurrence. I like this film and it's got me thinking again about repairing my Minolta 110 SLR.