What is this vignetting?

[jacnorectangle]

See the concave border all around the image? Is it fogging? This is 4x5 Tmax 400 expired by 8 years. Found it in my closet and decided to get back into photography. I shot it on a view camera with 210mm lens, had to raise the back standard up pretty high to get everything in frame, thought that might be it too. I developed it in a Unicolor drum on its roller base with Xtol for 5 minutes. This is my first time using this drum so I thought it might be a light leak, but it seems too perfect. Also the edge lettering is pretty faint. Fogging or underdevelopment? And then my scanner went caput so I took this image against my computer screen with a digital camera, inverted in photoshop (the white blob in the upper left corner is my hand). I haven't developed film in 10 years! It's good to be back. Funny thing is that the vignetting kind of matches the Old Hollywood lighting style that I was going for. Trying to copy George Hurrell, I bought some clamp lights and 300 watt bulbs from Home Depot.

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[koraks]

Welcome back to the darkroom!
Was this sheet of film from an open packet? It doesn't fare too well under those conditions. If you opened a new bag, that shouldn't be the problem; you would just see higher b+f levels and effectively lower speed, but otherwise even development.

 

[jacnorectangle]

Welcome back to the darkroom!
Was this sheet of film from an open packet? It doesn't fare too well under those conditions. If you opened a new bag, that shouldn't be the problem; you would just see higher b+f levels and effectively lower speed, but otherwise even development.

Yes it was an open packet. In fact there was no packet, just a couple of cards encasing the film. What's b+f?

 

[BrianShaw]

There could be a multitude of issues. One thing is that the film doesn’t look like it was loaded in the holder correctly.

 

[koraks]

Yes it was an open packet. In fact there was no packet, just a couple of cards encasing the film. What's b+f?

OK, that's likely the problem. Re-try with fresh film.
b+f = base + fog. It's the density level you get on the processed film in areas where no exposure was given. It tends to raise as film ages due to the fog component increasing. The density of the base as such of course remains constant.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

You deserve fresh film.