PROCESSING SUCCESS

By Bill Reid

If you have been following my ventures into W&M and processing, you will know that I have been bugged by a fault which has been termed as a 'tobacco' effect!. This is an irritating effect which completely ruins the rebate and shadow areas of the processed transparency.

I have suspected numerous things such as - my weighing and mixing and working procedure, and tried many changes of fresh chemicals to find the source, but to no avail. Recently I have also suspected the effect to be from some source of 'light leakage' either while re-loading from bulk rolls and/or the changing bag or camera, to my camera itself.

The reason for suspecting light leakage is that the effect is similar to what you expect from re-exposing for a 'solarization' effect. Likewise the effect isn't all over a complete film or series of frames which would seem to say that it isn't due to any chemical fault. You can even have a completely processed frame followed with one area of shadow showing the effect, while other shadow areas on the same frame are OK! and again, the next frame following being OK. I would have thought that if it was a chemical fault then the whole film would be totally affected.

For my recent photographic jaunt I made up my cassettes of Konica film in a shaded room to avoid any affect from my changing bag. While out with the camera I replaced the lens cap after every shot and put the camera into my carrying bag at every opertunity, so at the end of the day I should have cut out numerous possibilities of stray light getting to the film(s).

As I had only three cassettes of film to process, I made up a 300ml set of chemicals, though I was re-using the bleach and fixer that had already done 9 films. The new pH meter was used to check the pH values which I had no trouble doing and felt completely satisfied that the figures were as close as to make no difference. I processed each film in turn in a new Paterson 'single' tank and had a most successful processing run.

Of course this doesn't prove that I have solved the 'Tobacco' trouble, as I don't recall having this trouble when processing one film at a time, and will still have to prove that I can get full quality when next processing up to six cassettes in the double Paterson tank using 600ml of chemicals. However if the problem is coming from this tank, then the remedy should simply be to wrap the tank in some black sticky insulation tape.

However... the mystery deepens as recently I had a phone call from a member telling me that he has had exactly the same 'fault', but this time while using the new C.R.C. Kit!!! this is very surprising and does leave one wondering if there is still a 'chemical' problem with the 'Formulae' somewhere!!. And again Rita & Major Pearle have also claimed that this problem has raised its head.

In their processing using the C.R.C. formula!!! So there is still much confusion as to where the `tobacco` effect is coming from.

As I have explained, above, my latest success seems to show that the fault is outside the formula or kit used and could well be due to some light leakage from some stage in one`s working procedures. You may recall that this time last year while I was visting Rita & Major, we got a very `red` effect during three of our processing trials, which later was put down to light leakage while cutting off short pieces for exposure trials. It is difficult to say if the red effect is the same as that causing the `tobacco` one, but I now feel strongly that this has come about from light leakage rarther than a chemical problem with the formula, but I am still completely open to anyone proving otherwise. If you can put any light on this I would be pleased to hear from you, as indeed would Ron Croad and Kevin Craske... Whatever ... I am pleased that I have completed this processing which is enough to keep me completely interested following up my W&M next year.