Uneven, muddy negatives

[charky]

Based on http://www.silverlight.co.uk/tutorials/basicpf/filmprobs.html , I would guess that the fixer was maybe too dilute, however, the problem I'm seeing is seems to show up unevenly (part of the negative looks ok and part looks muddy). The second example (problem2.jpg) is a 100% crop of a field. The lower right part looks OK, the rest is looks sort of muddy and underdeveloped.

This is 120 developed on steel reels. The developer is Fomadon R09 (similar or equivalent to rodinal, I don't know), and it is about 18 months old in it's original bottle. Something like crystals formed on the bottom, the internet told me those can be ignored and shouldnt be remixed into solution. The fixer I used was months old, stored in a dilute state. I didn't do a clip test of the fixer...

Original rodinal is supposed to last many years, however I don't know about this R09 stuff.

 

[2F/2F]

If the fixer is months old and stored diluted (how diluted?), they could very well be underfixed. It cannot hurt film to rerun it through fresh fixer, so I'd try that first.

 

[Ronald Moravec]

Look at film base. If clear, fix is not the problem. You can always rewet, refix in a tray, wash, & dry.

Uneven development is always a result of insufficient or improper agitation or initial uneven presentation of film to developer. Pouring developer thru the top exposes some frames to lots of developer at high agitation in the initial critical 30 seconds.

Too much agitation does not cause "surge marks" That is the biggest myth on the internet. You need an agitation pattern that replaces all the used developer across all the film. "so called gentle" agitation makes the problem worse. Invert and twist stainless tanks, plastic just invert. Works fine. Best practice is to drop a loaded reel into a tank prefilled with developer, cap and agitate.

Fix requires more agitation than developer specially as it gets older and weaker. I never reuse it for film. Never ever. Use it up on test prints.

 

[jp498]

Show us the negatives, edges and all.

I re-use fixer, but keep an eye on how long it takes to work. Non-Tmax film should be pretty clear within 2 minutes, then I'll double it and call 5 minutes a good conservative fixing time. Tmax takes normally 4-5 minutes to clear (at the temperatures I use), so I'll keep it in for 10-11 minutes.

It's safe to open the tank after the film has been in the fixer for a minute or two. Some will say sooner, but I'll be conservative as risking the photos because you couldn't restrain yourself for one or two minutes is sorta foolish.

Thus, if films starts getting really slow to fix; it's time to mix new fixer.

Paper fixer can be similarly tested by dropping a scrap of film in it and watching it turn from milky raw film color to clean solid black. Don't use paper fixer for film, as you can get fiber from the paper in the solution and it could deposit it on your good film.

 

[charky]

The film is a bit pink, on the film borders, i.e. where it says "100 ACROS". The film base looks pretty clear.

Here is a whole negative, attached.

Apart of the fogginess, there are part of the negatives that look 'cartoonish'. Not just in the scan, but on the negative. There seems to be contours lines along 'lines of constant brightness'. Surely this must be a distinct fingerprint of a particular problem?

I am going to refix this soon and post the result.

Full disclosure: This roll of film didn't wind tightly onto the spool and some light leaked into the edges. I have since figured out how to avoid that rare problem, but anyhow a couple of these negatives have 'massive' localized light leaks owing to this. However, the other problems that I have been mentioning are not unique to this roll of BW 120 film that I've processed.

 

[charky]

More info:
I processed this 120 roll on a 220 reel, in a tank that is tall enough to hold two 220 reels. I think I had the second, empty reel in there at the time. I put in enough solution to cover the first reel that actually had film on it. I used a bit of a twist during the inversions. Anyway, if the huge empty cavity next to the film is relevant to the amount of agitation, I'm sure you guys can inform me.

 

[Ronald Moravec]

There is dirt all over the film. Clean up air, water, and room.

There are also marks from probably bad initial immersion. Read my first post.

No the big cavity cavity actually helps. It is an initial wetting problem. Got to be fast, even and no backtracking.
Do not pour thru the hole in the cap unless it is a Patterson plastic tank.

 

[charky]

I refixed it and (almost) everything looks great now. In hindsight, not only development, but under-fixing should also be able to produce problems correlated with the brightness variations in the image.

For the record, for the development I started with 1 minute continuous inversion agitation then did ~3 inversions every minute. During filling, tank was tilted ~30 degrees for maximum fill rate.

The only remaining issue is the dust. I guess that it's due almost entirely to the way I hanged the negs for drying, since I recently moved to a new apartment and unlike my last place, there's no easy way to hang the negs from the shower curtain rod. I'll just need to rig something up. These negs were hanging in the living room.

[edit] Also I was in error earlier when I said that the film base was clear, before I refixed them I saw that some of the negs had cloudiness weighted to the center band of the neg strip.

 

[Ronald Moravec]

That muddy band down the center is a dead giveaway to insufficient fix generally from insufficient agitation. I really invert, spin with vertical axis horizontal when half way thru fix. Inversion with half full tank will do the same thing.

Lastly I peal back a few wraps before wash to look for incomplete fix.

Naturally I do not go thru all these gyrations in developing . I just seems fix is more sensitive to poor agitation.