What are these weird dots on J. Lane Speed Plate?

So I finally set up a semi-permanent darkroom, which gave me a chance to finally develop the two plates lingering in my 4x5 plate holder. I did three minutes in stock Dektol and then 4 in rapid fixer, as recommended by Jason Lane. On both, there were these very ugly artifacts, rendering the images unusable.

There were dark perfectly round specks about the size of a grass seed, and when these were in the highlight, they were perfectly centered in a lightened circle about the diameter of a ballpoint pen.

What's going on here?

Also, btw, does anyone know if the plates can be pushed two stops with good results?

Why don't you ask J. Lane?
Nodda Duma here on Photrio.
His website: https://www.pictoriographica.com/

MattKing said:

Why don't you ask J. Lane?
Nodda Duma here on Photrio.
His website: https://www.pictoriographica.com/

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I came to the point of emailing him, but what if he gets this one a lot? It must get repetitive.

RLangham said:

I came to the point of emailing him, but what if he gets this one a lot? It must get repetitive.

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As far as I can tell, Jason is like just about every manufacturer of quality product I have ever encountered - he wants to know when someone is having difficulty with his product, so that he can help his customer.
If it is a problem with the product, he needs to know about it to correct it.
If it is a problem with how you are using his product, he will want to help you correct the use, and will want to help others avoid the problem.
And as for the question about under-exposing and over-developing - aka "pushing" - I'm sure he would welcome the opportunity to address it.

MattKing said:

As far as I can tell, Jason is like just about every manufacturer of quality product I have ever encountered - he wants to know when someone is having difficulty with his product, so that he can help his customer.
If it is a problem with the product, he needs to know about it to correct it.
If it is a problem with how you are using his product, he will want to help you correct the use, and will want to help others avoid the problem.
And as for the question about under-exposing and over-developing - aka "pushing" - I'm sure he would welcome the opportunity to address it.

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Well, I've sent him a cordial email with a photo of the plates in question and plenty of information about how I exposed and developed the plates. I messaged back-and-forth with him once before, on Etsy when I was considering buying the plates. He actually answered my question about pushing the plates then, but I have no recollection of his answer.

Just to let anyone who was curious know, he said it was probably particles undissolved in my Dektol landing on and "superdeveloping" the emulsion and that I should put the Dektol through a coffee filter.

Makes sense to me -- Dektol is notorious for taking a very long time for all the crystals to dissolve (you add the sulfite and metol all together; that's a recipe for metol to be slow dissolving). If you were making D-76 or D-72 (Dektol) from scratch, you'd put about 1/10 of the sulfite in, then the metol, then after the metol was fully dissolved, the rest of the sulfite -- but when you buy Dektol you don't have that option.

Water not warm enough when you mix can do that, too.

Donald Qualls said:

Makes sense to me -- Dektol is notorious for taking a very long time for all the crystals to dissolve (you add the sulfite and metol all together; that's a recipe for metol to be slow dissolving). If you were making D-76 or D-72 (Dektol) from scratch, you'd put about 1/10 of the sulfite in, then the metol, then after the metol was fully dissolved, the rest of the sulfite -- but when you buy Dektol you don't have that option.

Water not warm enough when you mix can do that, too.

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See, I wish I'd known that.

I did manage to develop five 4x5" film negatives at once today, in the same batch of Dektol (which I dearly hope I didn't cross-contaminate with fixer in the dark). The old card-shuffling technique, three minutes at room temperature... I've used it once before with three negatives but mostly I've used a daylight tank. I didn't see any similar artifacts on these, although I don't know that they were ever still enough in the bath for any pieces of solid metol to land and do their dark magic.

It was very satisfying to do five at once and see them all turn out, since I've been stuck doing two at a time for ages, although while I was fumbling around for the lightswitch in my newly-set up darkroom I did cause my Beseler 23C II to fall on me from the back of the upright piano being stored in there. Thankfully, it sustained no more damage than losing a few more teeth from the gears, which were already broken and are getting replaced this week anyways. I sustained no damage either, somehow.

I wonder, though, why you would add some of the sulfite first. Do you know the reason for that, or is it just the procedure you learned?

When making d-23 I have always added a pinch of sulfite before adding the metol, don't remember the the reasoning I just do it, it might keep the metol from oxidizing .

mike c said:

When making d-23 I have always added a pinch of sulfite before adding the metol, don't remember the the reasoning I just do it, it might keep the metol from oxidizing .

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See, I should have it would be something completely incomprehensible to me. Despite having a world-renowned chemist in the family, chemistry is way beyond me.

Just cane across this thread. The spots could also be an artifact of the coating process which was accentuated by the use of old Dektol.

Interestingly enough, you’ll see similar artifacts sometimes on dry plates from the 1880s / 1890s. My goal is to replicate dry plates of the era. That is, not capitalize on advances in emulsion design in the 20th Century. Preferably, though, this would be — and I believe is — an uncommon artifact.

-Jason

Nodda Duma said:

Just cane across this thread. The spots could also be an artifact of the coating process which was accentuated by the use of old Dektol.

Interestingly enough, you’ll see similar artifacts sometimes on dry plates from the 1880s / 1890s. My goal is to replicate dry plates of the era. That is, not capitalize on advances in emulsion design in the 20th Century. Preferably, though, this would be — and I believe is — an uncommon artifact.

-Jason

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Oh, well, good to see you here! I really do believe it was undissolved metol, since there are visible specks floating around that I hadn't noticed when I mixed the developer.

I shot two plates yesterday with a 110mm enlarger lens mounted on a makeshift board. In a while I'm going to filter my Dektol and see if I can develop one of those more successfully. I still haven't adjusted my focal plane shutter (it's fast right now), so I did time exposure where I tried to approximate 1/5th and 1/2 second at f/16 in sort of middling cloudy morning light.

Hopefully I'll have my first success with dry plates to report later.

mike c said:

When making d-23 I have always added a pinch of sulfite before adding the metol, don't remember the the reasoning I just do it, it might keep the metol from oxidizing .

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This is done, yes, to keep the metol from oxidizing as soon as it dissolves, but also the reason you don't start with all the sulfite is because it makes the metol less soluble.

RLangham said:

In a while I'm going to filter my Dektol and see if I can develop one of those more successfully.

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If you haven't already, I'd suggest you try heating the Dektol -- put it in a water bath as hot as you can get from your tap and let it stand a while, then stir. Heating almost always makes solids dissolve better, and once you get it to dissolve, the metol will stay in solution. If that doesn't work, you can still filter it, but getting the metol to dissolve will preserve the strength and capacity of the developer, compared to filtering, which removes some of the metol that was supposed to dissolve. Generally, when mixing powder developers, it's helpful to start with your water above 100F, preferably around 120F. Don't want to get above 140F, as that's hot enough to potentially denature developing agents (I'm not sure how much heat they can stand, but I know they can take 120F because I've used water that hot), but few home water heaters are set above 135F.

Donald Qualls said:

If you haven't already, I'd suggest you try heating the Dektol -- put it in a water bath as hot as you can get from your tap and let it stand a while, then stir.

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Thank you for the advice! I'll do that tomorrow afternoon after work!