Uneven development on photos. Possibly due to the reel?

Hello, so I developed two rolls of film yesterday. One came out completely fine but the other has uneven development. There is a pattern to the uneven development so I'm wondering if it's possible when I put it on the reel that I accidentally did it wrong. This is how the development looks. To me it doesn't look like my developer is going bad, due to the uneven parts being a pattern. Am I right or does it have something to do with the developer or something else I'm overlooking.

Is it the lightness in the middle of the strips?
That would suggest to me that maybe the film was touching the next piece of film on the reel and so didn't get the full development.

I agree with foc, due to the shape and location of the less dense areas.
If the less dense areas were along one edge, I would have said instead that there was either too little developer in the tank or that the reel was riding too high in the tank.

foc said:

Is it the lightness in the middle of the strips?
That would suggest to me that maybe the film was touching the next piece of film on the reel and so didn't get the full development.

Click to expand...

Yes it is the light areas in the middle of the strips. So I'm guessing somehow I did put the negatives on the reel wrong. That's strange as I've never done that before due to it being a self-winding reel. I'll have to be very careful next time I develop my pictures.

MattKing said:

I agree with foc, due to the shape and location of the less dense areas.
If the less dense areas were along one edge, I would have said instead that there was either too little developer in the tank or that the reel was riding too high in the tank.

Click to expand...

Yeah I think you are both right. Thanks for the help. I'm gonna switch to a different reel and make sure to wind the negatives slowly and hopefully that'll fix things up.

Nope. That's not touching film. The film would have had to touch for only part of the development time, and none of the bleach/fix time, to look like that. Usually when layers of film touch, you get areas of completely undeveloped, unfixed halide, because none of the chemicals can reach the emulsion where it touches the next layer's base.

What it looks like to me is resting the filled tank on its side for a minimum of about thirty seconds out of the 3:15 development time, one end a little higher than the other, leaving film already wet with developer "high and dry" above the liquid surface. if you're agitating by manually rolling the tank (a legitimate technique) and something interrupts (phone rang?) this could happen.

Woops, "self-winding reel" -- Lab Box or Rondinax? A pause between fill and first rotation could do this (I'm sure the instructions say to rotate several turns immediately after filling, before starting the intermittent rotation for the remainder of the development time). The tilt is just due to the box not being level at the time it stood (perhaps wiping up a spill from overfilling -- liquid will leak out where the shaft goes through the box wall).