Polypan F issues

I have this strange issue you can see in the attached file. Fresh or old dev&fix doesn't matter, there is always a dot or two on a roll, or a hundred, as it was recently, spoiling nearly half of frames. Size varies, but it's usually quite big - 0.1mm up to 0.4mm maybe.
It's either a dot or a circle with normal image inside (or just hollow? dunno), quite regular - white on a positive and opaque (almost looking like "unfixed") on a negative. Certainly not a dust or water impurity, it looks completely embedded into the emulsion.

I doubt I can get rid of it. Any clues?

Film: Polypan F, 50 asa, developed in Hydrofen W17 by Foma and Microphen. It's said to be Ilford Pan F emulsion on a clear base, without AH layer. 35mm, a kind of copy film, made in Equador.

It's not Ilford Pan F.

I am finishing my 90 meters of Polypan F (so around 60 rolls), and not even once I had this problem. What are you using as stop bath, and what is the temperature of liquids?

Adofix fixer, temperature ranging anywhere from 17 to 23 C, worst case was at high temp dev, low temp fixer, but the spots are really happening randomly all over my 90m roll.

what do you between development and fix?
do you control the temperature of each solution?

Yes, stop bath could be the problem. I use tap water all the time since problems with (now gone) efke emulsions.

btw - I got my 90 meter roll in Poland on allegro .

yes, I do control temperatures separately for dev and fixer. I rinse the film for a minute before and after dev with ~12C tap water. If it's a stop bath, why such a strange pattern would occur? It looks like a ton of silver, basically opaque.

Edit: yups, same guy, same site, same material. Isn't it cool?

Try keeping the water, dev and fix all at the same temperature. Do you still get the spots?

I'll try and report within 12h

"Made in Equador" . . . is that some sort of joke? It's usually thought to be a print film or dupe film originally for cine use, made/packaged by a contract-supplier in Germany (Filmotec?). It has absolutely no connection with Harman Technology, other than the sound-alike marketing name.

As to the odd results you have found, unfortunately I have not seen those before. It would be worth examining the emulsion side of the film very closely, using some side lighting, to see if there is any visible damage in the surface of the emulsion. Is there any change if you re-fix a sample frame with strong, fresh fixer? If the rings were of raw silver-halide emulsion then they would be cleared by this of course. Also try this after de-greasing the emulsion surface with naptha or similar, in case of a grease or oil contamination/protection of the emulsion surface at some point in it's history.

Got anymore samples? Are you always using the same camera and lens combination?

q_x said:

I'll try and report within 12h

Click to expand...

no presoak
dev
water rinse
fix
water rinse 3 changes as Ilford recommendated
add photo flow to final rinse
hold all temperatures within 1C
the film is not prehardneed

Polypan F is a motion picture copy film made in Germany.

Most people rate it at ASA-50

I've had the best results as such.
Pre-Soak (1-2 minutes), Xtol (Stock) 7:00 @ 20C, Water Stop 1:00, Kodak Rapid Fixer 5:00.

Agitation Pattern for Dev and Fix: first minute constant agitation, then for 10 seconds every minute after.

Surface from emulsion side looks normal: semi-gloss, even, the spots look like silver, just really black from this side.
Base side has obviously no change, being glossy, but the spots look opaue-gray, brighter, than the silver. From what I can tell by just looking, it may be either a huge deposit of silver (like when seriously overexposing and overdeveloping) or an unfixed but properly developed emulsion. Darkening can happen naturally, but I doubt if exposing any emulsion to light would darken it that much. There's no visible relief, no change in surface appearance. I've tried scratching it, there's no chance it's a flake or dust stuck to the film, or any other foreign matter. Whatever it is, it sits within the emulsion itself.

"Made in EC", it says. "POLYSTAR".

Samples - sure, got plenty. One more attached.

I've been using different cameras, the amount of problematic frames varies from a couple frames to a majority of frames.

Xmas, I want to presoak due to two reasons: first is avoiding bubbles of air I won't be able to shake off, cause I rotate the film, rather than shaking it, second is keeping my dev cleaner - I guess Polypan won't release much stuff though.


Thank you all for your feedback, I hope to sort this out soon.

This film has absolutely no connection with Ilford Pan-F. It appears to be some special purpose film (perhaps a surveillance film) repurposed for general camera use. As such it does not have to meet the same rigorous quality control standards as regular film. It was never intended as a general purpose film. The re-brander PoltStar cannily naming it Polypan F to confuse the unwary. The lack of an anti-halation backing can cause serious problems with scenes that have a large dynamic range and also in daylight. It certainly is not the bargain that some people think. I am surprised that Ilford has not taken legal action against this company PolyStar. Caveat emptor!

q_x said:

Xmas, I want to presoak due to two reasons: first is avoiding bubbles of air I won't be able to shake off, cause I rotate the film, rather than shaking it, second is keeping my dev cleaner - I guess Polypan won't release much stuff though.


Thank you all for your feedback, I hope to sort this out soon.

Click to expand...

Receiving advice is sometimes difficult.
Presoak or temperature shock or pH change is causing problems or the combination you are bubbling the emulsion probably before or during development
I never presoak it makes the emulsion softer and there is a pH jolt when the dev goes in note you are more likely to get an air bubble in the presoak cause of pH and that would cause your problem for sure
I never agitate shake or bang tank ~ I do invert for washing
I never use acid stop with film
I don't use an acid fixer just plain hypo
I hold all temperatures to within 1C even the wash
The emulsion is not pre hardened you need to be much more careful than with normal film the soft emulsion on pet base is very difficult the datasheets normally warn.
Your other option is to use a hardened fix but that wont help if the damage occurs earlier as seems likely
Filter your developer through a coffee filter paper if you are worried note I use stock x20 times and don't filter I take the risk of a film chip & sometimes I get one but very rare one every 500 cassettes or so
Your last option is posting the film to me and using cine film instead # Orwo or Kodak still make mono ring all the production people they will have recans and short ends when they have finished filming rare now days.

The problem with these spots is, although I use film from the same roll, amount of spots varied. So I guess it's either some random factor somewhere from the factory to my shelf, like an electrostatic discharge, or simply it's all my fault, I just have no clues where it happens, and I don't understand why and how.

Knowing it's unhardened gelatine, I'd care more about keeping even temperatures through the development. It doesn't look like any physical defect either on film or after scanning, so I ruled it out initially.

This time I did my best to keep the temperatures as close to 20C, as possible - whatever I've poured into the tank was within 20-20.7C range.
Although the "scientifical testing" only allows for changing one variable at the time, I've done it all as close, as possible to what you, Xmas, wrote. No presoak, gently pouring in all the fluids. What you wrote seems really reasonable, and it worked fine, though I've messed up the dev time and underdeveloped whole thing like a complete noob. But no spots this time, and the negative looks copyable, though a bit weak. Chapeau bas, keeping even temperature through whole process made a difference. Thanks a bunch!

As for taking a film without AH layer - I use all the flaws as a creative mean, just as I'd use heavy grain or motion blur - some call it imperfections, other call it their home.

And with ORWO stuff - on New Year's Day I was holding yet unopened 50m can of ORWO NP15. What a lucky guy the owner is!

Hi

Well I found the instructions for a similar film.

They don't mention pre-soak being verboten...
They say "We recommend the use of hardener in the stop or fix..."
and
"NEVER (sic capitals are theirs) use a stop bath with a concentration greater then 2%. We recommend the use of plain water to stop."

This was for ADOX CHS 100 PET, but it is not on their site, merely inside the cardboard box, of the film I used last year, this years may be hardened (more), note I did not have any problems, I use PET normally and handle very conservatively.

The PET base of your (any) film will light pipe even with anti halation dye, loading in shade is necessary Id not try it in sun light like you, though I like your shots a lot - donno how you do it, I save my PET for dull days.

Hope your problem stays away.

Think your film is cine print film, if you check the perforations you should be able to tell the intended use. If you have a lot left I'd suggest POTA or a near clone to contain the highlights, though you will then need to use VC and split print. But burning them is frequently nice in artistic shots, which I don't do...

Hi

The only thing about the Orwo cine is the base may be thicker than normal 135 still camera film and 33 frames in a cassette may be a conservative limit, it depends on the cassette, you (can) get scratches with the wrong cassette at 36 or more with 5222 (double-x).

Any other comments you have may have with it are useful to the rest of us and there are other stills (APUG) people using it.

Dead Link Removed

Maybe damage from gas bubbles caused by a too-acidic stop bath.

Or a manufacturing defect.

Or undissolved chemistry in the developer.

Pre-soak should have no influence on this.

Clip a length of film from the bulk roll and process it, using a water stop and well-mixed filtered developer (after sitting overnight!), without it going through the camera and see if there are spots. If so, it is likely a manufacturing defect.

Best,

Doremus

on Polypan

Regarding the shape of sprocket holes, it's more or less like BH pattern. Base thickness causes no issues, I can freely wind 45 exposures worth of film into a casette and nothing gets scratched.

The film seems to be sensitive to developing method, it may or may not develop visible grain depending on time it sits in the dev or under/over development - which is quite ordinary behavior. I've found 50 asa, fresh W-17 (hydroquinone-phenidone dev), Ilford Pan F development time of ~4 minutes at 20C to produce rather smooth, pleasant results. I haven't tried anything but W-17 and Microphen, and I'd rather use the first one.

Light is always leaking into all the canisters, so I'm keeping it all in a black bag after cutting it and rolling it into canisters. First three frames are usually a waste. The only exception (less light leaking in) was with a reusable spool with tight, wide padding of black velvet

The lack of AH layer we've been discussing gives some special feel to the photos - it's not quite "retro" or "vintage", and not quite like using soft, smeary optics. It's all looking normal, all but very contrasty moments. The image looks OK for most of the image and in high contrast areas the feel of realism breaks rapidly. Take a look at the atttached image. The sky is blown out, small twigs are barely there.

I've found a guy today, his experience was not as smooth, as mine:
http://damgan.blogspot.com/2014/01/wirek.html - second photo there was made on Polypan
I've had this issue as well, not to this extent though.

I have a small project going on currently. As a part of it, I'm posting every photo on every film I make, no exceptions - it'll be nearly 200 photos when it's done, and it's all Polypan F. Over a hundred you can watch now:
http://wędrówki.blogspot.com/2014/01/pierwszy-film-zimowego-projektu.html
Some dull weather here (this is where I've shopped out the spots, and that's the only form of shoppin' all these scans have seen): http://wędrówki.blogspot.com/2014/01/zima-czesc-druga.html
And the underdeveloped "test" negative: http://wędrówki.blogspot.com/2014/01/trzecia-odsona-zimowego-projektu.html

A scanner I use is below mediocre, and I see publishing these results more like showing my contact sheets. These aren't full frames, this ruins the composition from time to time.

I only have a couple of films left, let's say it's been a productive time for me and this project is the last one with Polypan.

I can see some spots between the frames, between sprocket holes or on film margins, but that's a very minor minority, Doremus.

q_x said:

Light is always leaking into all the canisters, so I'm keeping it all in a black bag after cutting it and rolling it into canisters. First three frames are usually a waste. The only exception (less light leaking in) was with a reusable spool with tight, wide padding of black velvet

Click to expand...

The polyester base is known for light piping. Usually a gray or blue dye is incorporated in the plastic to prevent this happening for camera films. Once again proving that this film was not intended for in-camera use. The only possible exception would be as a reversal film.

I've used most of a 90m can of this stuff without any problems of spots, scratches or light-piping or indeed any of that type of quality issue at all.

I shan't buy another can, but that's simply because I don't like the grain or contrast as much as I like that of name brand films. Nevertheless I've made some very nice photographs with it.

It's perfectly respectable stuff, in its own sweet way, and whether it is considered a "bargain" or not is really a matter of personal preference.