After shooting with the Ultrafine Xtreme line of films I began using my Ilford stock. I had bought six rolls of Pan F Plus and six rolls of FP4 Plus, both in the 120 format. I started with shooting two rolls of Pan F Plus, some days ago. I haven’t used the FP4 Plus yet. I used to shoot with Pan F 50 back in the early 90s in 35mm format and loved its tonal qualities and fineness/smoothness. I was so excited to try this film in 120 format.
After developing my rolls: On the Pan F Plus rolls I notice that they both have, what I would describe as, multiline, thin wavy lines going through the whole length of the film. They do resemble scratch marks that almost resemble what a sine wave would look like but a lot more shallower. I have worked with sound files for a long time and that caught my eye. These marks are visible at both viewing the negatives at an angle and looking dead-on at the negative up against a light source.
At first I thought that maybe it could have been a drying issue. I removed one of the negative strips from my sleeve and dampened a blank spot, between frames, with a tiny drop or two of distilled water from a clean pipette, and ever-so-gently wiped that part down with a very fine and clean cloth. That didn’t remove the marks. Next I went to inspect my camera’s film back. Nothing I could find that would cause multiple lines. My thinking is if the camera was responsible then the lines would be linear and not wavy. If a particle of something bounced around in the magazine then the scratch wouldn’t be a wave nor a perfect line for that matter. It would be more like a periodically spaced kind of scratch/mark.
I went to revisit my Ultrafine Xtreme 100 and 400 negatives and there were no lines. I’m really at a loss here.
I think for now I will put my shooting on hold until I can figure this all out and what others suggestions might be. Thanks.
After developing my rolls: On the Pan F Plus rolls I notice that they both have, what I would describe as, multiline, thin wavy lines going through the whole length of the film. They do resemble scratch marks that almost resemble what a sine wave would look like but a lot more shallower. I have worked with sound files for a long time and that caught my eye. These marks are visible at both viewing the negatives at an angle and looking dead-on at the negative up against a light source.
At first I thought that maybe it could have been a drying issue. I removed one of the negative strips from my sleeve and dampened a blank spot, between frames, with a tiny drop or two of distilled water from a clean pipette, and ever-so-gently wiped that part down with a very fine and clean cloth. That didn’t remove the marks. Next I went to inspect my camera’s film back. Nothing I could find that would cause multiple lines. My thinking is if the camera was responsible then the lines would be linear and not wavy. If a particle of something bounced around in the magazine then the scratch wouldn’t be a wave nor a perfect line for that matter. It would be more like a periodically spaced kind of scratch/mark.
I went to revisit my Ultrafine Xtreme 100 and 400 negatives and there were no lines. I’m really at a loss here.
I think for now I will put my shooting on hold until I can figure this all out and what others suggestions might be. Thanks.
