Need help identifying development issue - 'burned' negatives

adamsalmond · Feb 13, 2021

Hi all,

Have been having a real hard time developing my negatives recently. It seems that no matter what I do, all of my negatives come out with 'burned' areas where there is no detail. It happens only in black areas on the negative (bright areas) and often around the edges of the frame, but it can occur in the centre of the frame too.

I shoot exclusively Ilford HP5+. I have a tendency to shoot at 320-250 ISO for increased shadow detail, and have done so for a long time with no issues. But now, it seems that every bright area is burned resulting in a lot of unusable negatives. I initially thought that perhaps I was overexposing too far for the negative to handle, but on the other hand I know HP5 can withstand more than a few stops of overexposure without anything like this happening. The issue has also been occurring on negatives that I know I purposefully underexposed. So I concluded it must have been due to development.

I am using D76 1+1 at 20C, tap water as stop bath, and Ilford Rapid Fixer. I develop for the standard 12 minutes.

Yesterday, I decided to develop a roll and purposefully agitated very little. Once again, the negatives are extremely burned, more-so than I have ever seen.

I'm starting to lose the plot a bit to be honest. Can anyone offer some insight here into what might be going wrong here? I have attached a couple of photos to show what I am referring to (II have purposefully edited them to make the burn more apparent).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Adam

grat · Feb 13, 2021

You sure it's not a light leak?

pentaxuser · Feb 13, 2021

Is this 35mm film or 120 and can you show us the negatives? Is it all frames or only some and if only some where are these negatives in relation to the frame sequence i.e. beginning, middle or end?

Thanks

pentaxuser

MattKing · Feb 13, 2021

Please show us a backlit photo of the negatives, which shows the rebates and the space between the frames.
Scans introduce so many uncontrollable factors, when it comes to questions like this.
And by the way, welcome to Photrio.

adamsalmond · Feb 13, 2021

grat said:
You sure it's not a light leak?

Definitely not a light leak - the same issue has been happening across 3 different SLRs.

adamsalmond · Feb 13, 2021

pentaxuser said:
Is this 35mm film or 120 and can you show us the negatives? Is it all frames or only some and if only some where are these negatives in relation to the frame sequence i.e. beginning, middle or end?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Hi

There is no apparent pattern. It affects all frames which are overly bright, especially around the edges.

adamsalmond · Feb 13, 2021

MattKing said:
Please show us a backlit photo of the negatives, which shows the rebates and the space between the frames.
Scans introduce so many uncontrollable factors, when it comes to questions like this.
And by the way, welcome to Photrio.

Is this what you were after? I just used my phone.

The negatives are pretty dense but there is not bleeding over the rebates or between frames.

MattKing · Feb 13, 2021

Thanks for posting the negatives.
When I enlarge them on my screen, I see no signs of the problem - there is no apparent increase of density near the edge.
I think your problem is related to scanning.

Donald Qualls · Feb 13, 2021

Based on where this is happening, I'm going to suggest you're getting flare due to scattering inside the camera. That is, the bright part of a sky, for instance, is scattering from an insufficiently black surface near the frame gate and adding density at the edges of the frame where the scene is bright. Clearly you don't have any kind of light leak affecting the rebates or interframe spaces, which rules out darkroom or developing tank leaks. Chemical fogging during development would affect the rebates as well; yours look very clean indeed.

Ariston · Feb 13, 2021

MattKing said:
Thanks for posting the negatives.
When I enlarge them on my screen, I see no signs of the problem - there is no apparent increase of density near the edge.
I think your problem is related to scanning.

I think Matt has it dead on.

adamsalmond · Feb 14, 2021

MattKing said:
Thanks for posting the negatives.
When I enlarge them on my screen, I see no signs of the problem - there is no apparent increase of density near the edge.
I think your problem is related to scanning.

Thanks for your reply.

I think I will send some negatives to be scanned by a lab to eliminate any scanning issues on my part.

I will report back here with my findings.

adamsalmond · Feb 14, 2021

MattKing said:
Thanks for posting the negatives.
When I enlarge them on my screen, I see no signs of the problem - there is no apparent increase of density near the edge.
I think your problem is related to scanning.

Here is a negative in which the effect is much more apparent. The density follows the shape of the window, to the edge of the frame on the left but in the middle of the frame on the right.

This was shot at 400 ISO and agitated very minimally during development.

adamsalmond · Feb 14, 2021

I think I should also mention that I have had colour rolls developed by a lab during the time in which this issue has been going on, and they came back clean. That eliminates any issues with my SLR.

Patrick Robert James · Feb 14, 2021

I think this is related to your tank and agitation. What kind of tank do you have? What is your agitation?

MattKing · Feb 14, 2021

adamsalmond said:
Here is a negative in which the effect is much more apparent. The density follows the shape of the window, to the edge of the frame on the left but in the middle of the frame on the right.

This was shot at 400 ISO and agitated very minimally during development.

That looks like the result of inadequate or insufficiently randomnized agitation.

Andrew O'Neill · Feb 14, 2021

adamsalmond said:
Here is a negative in which the effect is much more apparent. The density follows the shape of the window, to the edge of the frame on the left but in the middle of the frame on the right.

This was shot at 400 ISO and agitated very minimally during development.

When you say agitated very minimally, what does that mean exactly? How do you agitate? For example, do you invert the tank? Do figure eights?

removed account4 · Feb 14, 2021

do you get these same results when you
pre wet and do regular old 1 full minute and 10 sec every min was/stp/fix/rinse?
minimal agitation and insufficient chemistry can serve up some weird problems..
my suggestion is to fill your tank with more than the minimal amounts of chemistry
process as I asked about above, and see if you get the same results.
if so, you know sort of what's going on...

adamsalmond · Mar 6, 2021

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses. I apologise for my absence on here, as I have been busy with work etc. I am still attempting to figure out this problem.

I am taking on board your comments about agitation, as I figured myself that this was likely the issue after reading this post: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/film-development-woes-edge-overdevelopment.49046/

I had another go at developing with recommendations from this thread, and I am still at a loss. I developed with strictly inversion (no twists or turns) every 15 seconds. This might seem overkill, but from what I read in the linked thread is that some tanks and reels have trouble getting the same amount of fresh developer to the centre of the negatives than to the edges (resulting in overdeveloped edges). Once again, my edges were bright white with no detail in cases where bright areas reached the edges of my negatives. The roll was also underdeveloped overall, due to increased agitation and less 'stand-stilll' development time.

I recently started using a Paterson Multi-3 Reel Tank, with their plastic spirals.

I would appreciate any feedback from anyone with knowledge of what may be going on, as I'm getting pretty worn out wasting my rolls like this.

Many thanks

adamsalmond · Mar 6, 2021

jnantz said:
do you get these same results when you
pre wet and do regular old 1 full minute and 10 sec every min was/stp/fix/rinse?
minimal agitation and insufficient chemistry can serve up some weird problems..
my suggestion is to fill your tank with more than the minimal amounts of chemistry
process as I asked about above, and see if you get the same results.
if so, you know sort of what's going on...

Hi,

This sounds similar to my standard developing method, so there wouldn't be much to change.

Check my latest reply to the thread for more info.

Cheers

adamsalmond · Mar 6, 2021

Andrew O'Neill said:
When you say agitated very minimally, what does that mean exactly? How do you agitate? For example, do you invert the tank? Do figure eights?

Hi,

When I said 'minimally', I was using the plastic tool which lets you turn the reels of a Paterson tank without lifting or inverting it.

Check my latest reply for more info.

Cheers

adamsalmond · Mar 6, 2021

Patrick Robert James said:
I think this is related to your tank and agitation. What kind of tank do you have? What is your agitation?

Hi,

I have a Paterson tank which I am using now, although this issue has persisted between two different tanks. They were pretty similar tanks though, both plastic, just different sizes.

My agitation has always been for the first full minute, and for 5 seconds every 30 seconds after that. Usually a twist and invert.

Check my latest reply for more info.

Cheers

MattKing · Mar 6, 2021

adamsalmond said:
he roll was also underdeveloped overall, due to increased agitation and less 'stand-stilll' development time.

Under-development wouldn't be the result of increased agitation - exactly the opposite occurs.
How much stock D-76 are you using in the tank?

adamsalmond · Mar 6, 2021

MattKing said:
Under-development wouldn't be the result of increased agitation - exactly the opposite occurs.
How much stock D-76 are you using in the tank?

Ah yeah you're right. I was thinking since the tank is inverted longer, the negatives spend less time fully submerged in developer.

I use D76 1+1. This was a single roll of 35mm so I made 400ml (200/200) to make sure it covered the film.

MattKing · Mar 6, 2021

400 ml is slightly less than the 473 ml (16 oz) recommended, but any under-development should be only marginal based on that discrepancy.

MattKing · Mar 6, 2021

Take one of the problem negatives, rotate it 180 degrees without turning it over, and re-scan it.
Do the problem areas look the same as before, or do they move.
If the latter, the problem is with scanning.

Need help identifying development issue - 'burned' negatives

adamsalmond

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