Negatives Coming Out Streaky

Ted,
Hang in there this is a mechanical problem. Always put in the extra reel and fill the whole tank up. Volume in the tank is also important regarding developer activity. When agitating go easy, invert and twist while your arm travels up and down, say twice in 5 seconds or something. Think of the film in the tank being happily bathed as opposed to drowning in a rough sea.
Chris

Chris

Good grief...what a flurry of assistance. Thanks a lot

My agitation technique was basically turning the tank upside down (180 degrees) 4 times in quick succession every minute. Between agitations I would also 'swill' the tank round in a clockwise manner to flush the developer round the outside edge - not too hard but just enough to mix it around. I suppose though that that may have caused a wave like effect? I didn't shake the tank and it was on it's own with no other reels above it.

I did not use the little central rod to twist the reel inside round. I didn't realise I needed to. Is this where I have gone wrong perhaps?

I doubt the problem is fogging because I recently sent over a dozen films to The Darkroom in Cheltenham for development. They all came back perfect and the same camera body (yes, my F80) was used for those.

I realise I may have come across as a bit of a bafoon but I simply followed the intructions I read in an old weekly photographic circular dating back about 14 years called 'Camera Wise'. It just said "Tip the tank upside down several times..." with regard to agitation so I had no idea it was such a fine tuned procedure.

ted_smith said:

My agitation technique was basically turning the tank upside down (180 degrees) 4 times in quick succession every minute. Between agitations I would also 'swill' the tank round in a clockwise manner to flush the developer round the outside edge - not too hard but just enough to mix it around. I suppose though that that may have caused a wave like effect? I didn't shake the tank and it was on it's own with no other reels above it.

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When you say that "between agitations I would also 'swill' the tank round in a clockwise manner," do you mean you did this continuously? If so, don't. That could conceivably be the cause of the problem. If you just gave the tank a single little "swill" after inversion, though, that should be OK (I do something similar myself; I give the tank a sharp twist after each set of inversions).

I did not use the little central rod to twist the reel inside round. I didn't realise I needed to. Is this where I have gone wrong perhaps?

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Unlikely. Rotating the reels via the rod is an option for agitation, not a necessity. There are many different agitation styles and methods. The trick is to pick one and learn to use it. I suppose you could try twirl-stick agitation rather than inversion agitation; it's conceivable it'd work better for you. See (there was a url link here which no longer exists) for a recent discussion of this method, if you care to give it a try. If you were doing a continuous "swill" between inversions, though, I'd suggest you stop doing that before trying twirl-stick agitation.

I simply followed the intructions I read in an old weekly photographic circular dating back about 14 years called 'Camera Wise'. It just said "Tip the tank upside down several times..." with regard to agitation so I had no idea it was such a fine tuned procedure.

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It is and it isn't. As I say, there are many different agitation techniques. Many work. Some don't. If what you've got is an agitation problem, you've stumbled upon an agitation method that doesn't work, and you just need to adjust it in some way to get into one of the many zones that does work. Unfortunately, it can be hard to describe how to do agitation.

Does anybody know of a YouTube (or similar) video demonstrating film agitation? I think this is a case of "a picture's worth a thousand words," and of course a video is made up of many pictures!

srs5694 said:

Does anybody know of a YouTube (or similar) video demonstrating film agitation? I think this is a case of "a picture's worth a thousand words," and of course a video is made up of many pictures!

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But of course! Our own Mr. Brunner... (Parts 1-4)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P9bNcBE_Hc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGzZfAbMqf8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuctAOtTPEI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEQuJMsbFjI&feature=related

You don't need the thin "twiddle stick" but you do need the centre column, the one about an inch thick with a flat bottom that you put the reel on then into the tank and put the lid on.

Paterson operating instructions are to use the twiddle-stick only for the first agitation and to put the lid on and invert for the rest. Of course, some people have used the stick only with success but I think it fair to say that the large majority of people invert agitate a Paterson tank.

Ted: when light-leak was suggested as a possibility, they meant the tank might be leaking, not your camera; that would not show up on films you sent out for processing.

I'm not terribly gentle with agitation. I always whip the tank over as fast as possible (without blasting the lid off from the pressure - call it 0.5 second) then pause for 1 - 1.5 seconds to let the developer finish flowing and then right it and wait 1.5 secs again, twist through 1/3rd of a turn and repeat.

If the film looks to have some slightly milky/foggy areas that correspond to the streaks, try re-fixing. As I wrote, it's always worth a try...

Good luck, Bob.

After viewing the scanned neg, I'll throw in my bid for a light leak some place.

If I had to guess, I'd say you used one of those really cheap film tab retrievers which are see through plastic and that you stuffed that into the film spool to get the leader out. I'd also guess that the streaking is largely on the last few shots of the reel getting less bad towards the first few shots and that you retrieved the film tab in bright lights.
Those cheap see through film tab retrievers act like fibre optics and fog the film.

I could of course be completely wrong.

Or you have not loaded the film onto the spools in complete blackout such as doing it under what you think will be complete black out.

Or you loosened the film canister end in daylight.

Could be many things but doubt it is an agitation problem.

Hey guys...good news!!! 3rd time lucky! I watched the YouTube videos to Mr Brunner and that really helped (thanks for the links). A point of note was that this film was Ilford FP4 - the previous two were KODAK T-MAX 10. Not that I think that makes a difference in this case. Anyway, I kept everything else the same - same amount of developer, same temps, same times and I could only actually get one reel in the tank at a time anyway - my other reels don't fit the black central spindle.

Firslty, I did a pre-soak for 5 minutes using 20 deg water.

Secondly, I changed my agitation technique having watched the videos and I also swivelled the film around like a carousel a bit using the little twiddler. Something that stuck in my mind from Mr Brunner was when he said "do it any way you like as long as it's random". I kept that in mind and basically ensured I did a full 180 degree turn of the tank followed by a little twist to the left or right then another 180 degree turn of the tank while agitating. I also slapped the tank underneath after each agitation to make sure no bubbles where there. Any hey presto - the negs are really sharp and the edges are nice and clear - no fogging or anything. It's a really nice, symmetrical line of development. No streaks that I can notice. Here are a couple of the results.

Please don't laugh at the overexposure - having grasped exposure technique on my digital body, I am really struggling with my B&W film exposures - I always seem to have it a little too high - image D, for example, I recall using centre-weighted on the right sad of Dads face where it was shadowed and the neg has come out really bright. The linked image below is actually a Photoshopped version with curves and levels adjusted! The imageB was spot metered off one of the dark parts of tree trunk and that too is way too bright (and is not photoshopped - what you see is as it is) But that's another issue I guess!

imageA
imageB
imageC
imageD

Anyway, hopefully I have cracked the film development bit now - just need to work on my exposures, he says, optimistically ;-)

Ted

Glad to hear you got it resolved!

If you learned on digital, switched to film and exposed it the same way, you would be underexposing your neg film, not overexposing it. So there must be another problem that is causing the overexposure.

You have to be very careful with a spot meter, or any metering pattern, for that matter. If you meter off of a shadow, it will, of course, overexpose the whole shot, probably by *several* stops. Vice versa for metering off a bright area. Remember that all a reflected light meter does is tell you how to expose to render a middle grey tone. Mull that over for a bit, and you will see that the best application of a spot meter is for precise tonal placement when you have time to sit a minute and figure it out, not for general metering with a hand-held camera.

Hi All

Just thought you might want to see my first ever results! I sorted out my streaky neg issues and last night had a go at my first ever prints using my Ilfospeed 400HS Enlarger and Rodenstock lens.

I'm chuffed to pieces. I see what people mean when they say it's addictive! I was up till 01:30 last night doing it! Great fun

Congrats Ted.