Was this antihalation dye?

[Rich Ullsmith]

Gave a good long presoak to a roll of 400TX, dumped out the dye, processed in PMK. When I dumped the PMK, instead of coming out in that amber oxidized color, it was sooty black, almost like amidol. Deionized water was used all around, and the negs were fine. This I have not seen before, so just out of curiosity, do you think this was a reaction of some sort or simply antihalation dye that didn't wash out initially?

 

[Photo Engineer]

There are 3 possible sources, AH dye, Trimmer or acutance dye, and sensitizing dye.

If the pictures were good, who cares?



PE

 

[Kirk Keyes]

Because inquiring minds need to know! :^)

 

[Ian Grant]

Can you do it again ?

Ian

 

[Rich Ullsmith]

Next roll of the 400TX, yes. I guess the reason I asked is, although I don't have a gripe about the negs I did happen to pick up about 20 rolls of this for free, and I don't want to spend the first ten before I find I might be doing something idiotic! 12 minutes at 20c looked pretty good though.

 

[JPD]

You must keep a close eye on fast films. One morning a 120-roll of Tri-X ate my breakfast when I had to answer the phone. Maybe your Tri-X ate some medical charcoal.

Or it could be that a dye reacted to the pH. Some film dyes become clear in an alkaline solution, some don't.

 

[gainer]

No one person in existence has enough legs to give one to each leg puller in these parts.

 

[nworth]

I've seen this from time to time with Rodinal and Pyrocat-HD and various films. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't seem to do any harm. Thinking about it, it seems to happen mostly with older (past expiration) film.

 

[Rich Ullsmith]

I think these expired mid-90's, but they were refrigerated when I picked them up, and frozen before that (happed to know the guy). I thought it was a reaction, because of the length of presoak and the appearance of spent developer, almost sooty like amidol. Again, the negs were fine, so onward ho. Thanks for the ideas, everybody.