Streaking on Ortho Lith Film

[thefizz]

I was making some enlarged negs from 120 B&W positives on Ortho Lith film yesterday and kept getting streaking along the dark areas of the film. My procedure was to pre-wash the film for 1 minute and tray develop in Tanol staining developer for about 3 minutes with continuous agitation.

As my agitation was mainly in one direction, I tried again by agitating in the other direction. The results were a lot better but on closer inspection I could still see slight streaking as per the new direction of agitation.

So is it simply a matter of evenly agitating in both directions or is there any other reason for this problem?

Peter

 

[cliveh]

Is there a reason why you are pre-washing the film and using a staining developer?

 

[thefizz]

Is there a reason why you are pre-washing the film and using a staining developer?

The pre-wash is to help even development and from researching the process pyro developers seem to be recommended to control contrast.

 

[Jim Noel]

You say you reversed the direction of agitation and the streak is now in that direction. This says the problem is associated with your method of agitation. Agitation needs to be random, and not in a single direction.

 

[thefizz]

Yes that's what it looks like but I just wanted to be sure there was no other reason as it didn't happen when I used paper developer.

Next time I'll gently agitate in all directions.

 

[cliveh]

The pre-wash is to help even development

Well perhaps it doesn't.

 

[thefizz]

Well perhaps it doesn't.

It works, I was getting uneven development also until I introduced the pre-wash.