Having
read the article by Bob Lewis in the October Newsletter (page 4) I was
interested as 1 had exactly the same trouble on one film out of eleven
which .1 had processed following my return from a holiday in Italy. I
have, oddly enough come to a quite different conclusion from Bob as the
circumstances are totally different.
I
was using the same film from a bulk 30m reel, home loaded in a Weston
Loader, and there was no sign of this trouble except on the ONE films.
It showed throughout the film and on about every frame except One or
two; sometimes just a blotch of yellow, sometimes jagged streaks. It was
the new Barfen film, which with some processing time adjustments, I now
find pretty good. I have had a (pre-loaded) old Barfen film Once, which
produced some whitish blotches in the exposed frames, and thought
straight away back to this but what I had this time was not the same;
anyhow, with a bulk length, it would be a bit odd to have all the faults
neatly positioned in one 36exp. length. So What was out?
Loading
in the Watson Loader? Well, I did not discount this, but I’ve used the
thing for some years now without any troubles of THIS kind, although
I’ve had other difficulties from time to time - I could not recall
that any of this lot were difficult to load, or that I’d done anything
silly.
Loading
the film into the tank? Well, I thought, can we here be getting to it? I
have a darkroom of a kind, but it is really a kind dark gray room, just
dark enough to do B&W printing in, but certainly not for handling
colour film, except possibly very late at night, so I don’t use it, to
put films into tanks.~ Instead I use a Phago changing bag which I’ve
had for years and has never given any trouble. Could it be wearing out?
But the other films before and after this one were OK.
Then
I came to the only thing which I can get to - as I use a Ling bulk kit,
and don’t (a) even buy, much-less use, the chemical reversal, (b)
don’t do the D2 stage with the top off the tank, as I normally agitate
by inversion - was that light was getting. into the bag somehow, and
this, I thought could only be through the zip.
This
is quite substantial zip, with a flap over it which you can fix over
with a couple of press studs. “ I’m sometimes careless about fixing
this down, and have never had any trouble as a result, but I did recall
that it was bright in the kitchen that morning, with the sun shining in,
and not far from where I was working too, so I came to the conclusion
that under such conditions, it WAS possible for light to get through the
closed zip.
I
do’ not discount what Bob has said in his piece, and he may well be
right in his case, but I think you will see that under the circumstances
it couldn’t have happened to me the same way.
Bob Lewis gives these comments on
John’s article.
As
John has said in his article, his processing fault was not caused by the
same processing fault I experienced, but the nature of the two faults
are similar.
My
processing fault was due to opening the tank lid too early before the
chemical reversal bath had time to, ‘kill’ the 1st developer, but
John says he did not use a chemical reversal bath. I assume he was using
white light reversal.
Could
not the blotches of yellow and jagged streaks john experienced, on one
of his films be caused by switching on the white light when the 1st
developer was still slightly active?
Perhaps
the stop bath had lost its action, or perhaps, if a stop bath was not
used, the washing procedure prior to opening the lid had not been
enough.
Thus
in both cases, mine and john’s the markings on the film could be
caused by extraneous light falling on the’ film when the 1st developer
was still somewhat active, and we both had a similar fault, but from
different procedures.