Negatives Came Out Bad - What Went Wrong?

The code notches at the bottom can't be seen - the "Pan F" at the top is hardly readable/seeable. I developed these two rolls as I have before with good results in D-76. Is the developer not mixed well? Wrong temperature? Maybe the fixer phase had a problem? Half of the two rolls (developed together) came out practically clear, and at the same parts too, with only a dozen or so of the 36 satifactory.

Is the code text on the film of consistent density along the entire length of the roll? If yes, you have a problem with exposure. If no, it's probably related to your process.

Can you show us the frames here somehow?

Can you post images of your negs? One of your satisfactory ones and one of the bad ones would be helpful.

Were both rolls shot in the same camera? If it's happening at the same parts of the roll then that would be my immediate diagnosis; perhaps a sticky shutter problem or something.

Regards

In my experience the pan f+ top and bottom markings are always very faint, I don't know why ilford does that, and I don't like it, but I've never seen defined markings like you would with Kodak films. It's the one thing about ilford I don't like, I'm sure there's a reason they do it, maybe it's an exposure thing where it's supposed to give you a certain color grey when scanned/printed but it just looks wimpy and difficult to see/read.

Anyway the others said it best, if the markings are all the same density, but the film is not, it's your exposure. If the markings change with the areas where the film is also different, then it's the development.


~Stone

The Noteworthy Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

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StoneNYC said:

In my experience the pan f+ top and bottom markings are always very faint, I don't know why ilford does that, and I don't like it, but I've never seen defined markings like you would with Kodak films. It's the one thing about ilford I don't like, I'm sure there's a reason they do it, maybe it's an exposure thing where it's supposed to give you a certain color grey when scanned/printed but it just looks wimpy and difficult to see/read.

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This was mentioned on another thread where someone stated that the latent image stability of Pan F+ is not very good and it tends to fade with time. This would explain why the edge markings which are a latent image afterall are faint.

Gerald C Koch said:

This was mentioned on another thread where someone stated that the latent image stability of Pan F+ is not very good and it tends to fade with time. This would explain why the edge markings which are a latent image afterall are faint.

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But I have BRAND NEW pan f+ I've shot and developed the same day, it's. always faint. Are you saying I have a bad batch? The images themselves are exposed properly.


~Stone

The Noteworthy Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The markings are exposed in the factory, not your camera. Prompt development will save your images, not the edge markings.

To the OP: is it possible the film stuck together during development? That can cause blank regions.

Yes polyglot - I suppose the films did get stuck together on the spools. Actually on both spools at about the same frames. How likely is such a thing possible? I've developed countless rolls of Pan F the same way - D-76 11 minutes.
But, I really believe I had a faulty batch of developer. Someone else prepaired it, not me.

DF said:

Yes polyglot - I suppose the films did get stuck together on the spools. Actually on both spools at about the same frames. How likely is such a thing possible? I've developed countless rolls of Pan F the same way - D-76 11 minutes.
But, I really believe I had a faulty batch of developer. Someone else prepaired it, not me.

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I'd bet it wasn't mixed or diluted properly.

Distrusting developer is a good approach in general but assuming you actually agitated during development, I'm not sure how you would get some regions developed and not others. Bad dev tends to be all-bad.

Often when you get film sticking together, it's really obvious because the fixer is also excluded and you end up with big ugly milky patches on the film. Did you see anything like that? I'm not sure how you could possibly get stuck bits with 35mm in a Patterson tank but I could imagine it occurring with the film skipping tracks on a stainless steel tank.

Seriously, any image you can post of the offending negs would tell us a lot, even if it's a crappy cameraphone shot.

polyglot said:

I'm not sure how you could possibly get stuck bits with 35mm in a Patterson tank but I could imagine it occurring with the film skipping tracks on a stainless steel tank.

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I've managed to get the film to skip tracks on a plastic Paterson reel before quite a few times. It can happen if the reel is even just slightly damp, or if the two halves aren't clicked together properly.