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  Photography Forum: Darkroom Techniques Forum: 
  Q. Bad Developer? Negs BLANK!

Asked by Josh Quint    (K=0) on 12/7/2005 
I just ran 2 rolls of Ilford PanF+ and a roll of Tmax 100 through my usual Ilfosol (liquid concentrated.. one shot use)developer. It's a bit on the edge of its lifespan. and the 3 rolls came out BLANK!!

Am I correct in thinking the developer was dead? Or could it be the fixer.. which is a bit old(Ilford RapidFixer).

Also, is there any way of possibly re-devolping the negs? I'm guessing no.. but hey...


    


CorrieLynn Jacobsen
 CorrieLynn Jacobsen   (K=9882) - Comment Date 12/7/2005
Unfortunately no way of re-developing your negs...(not that i know of anyway..if anyone knows different i'd love to know too)

I would say it's the developer by the sounds of it. I Doubt it would be the fixer unless you left it in there for quite a while. I usually test my fixer with the film tail. -but really it would take a while.

How long has it been since youve used this developer last? and are you absolutely positive that you didnt reuse old developer?
I did this once-by accident, I used my developer which i had already mixed, but THOUGHT that i hadnt used yet. Turns out i had already used it, and one shot developer really cant be used twice.(unless you leave it in there for just about forever).
Sorry about your negs...how old is the developer? If it isnt expired yet there's usually a waranty.





 ann clancy   (K=2014) - Comment Date 12/7/2005
the only way fixer would create this problem would be that you used it first rather than the developer.

another option would be that the film didnot move across the shutter plane.

But without more information i would agree the developer has been oxizied.

And no, there is no way to revert the results.






 Josh Quint   (K=0) - Comment Date 12/7/2005
I know its not the film/camera/reuse of dev. 3 differnt batches of film in 3 different drums with 2 different camerals(one SLR, one TLR). I mixed the dev. seperate for each drum directly from the concentrate bottle. I did notice it being a bit darker than I remembered and it only has a open shelf life of 4-6mos. So i'm pretty sure its that.

I just wanted to make sure, because my fixer concentrate's somewhat old, and my hypo concentrate's getting there.

I did notice when washing the hypo off that it was VERY pink and was almost thinking the fixer didnt fix the image and the hypo washed it off. And for some reason I was under the imression that bad dev. would lead to a black neg.





 ann clancy   (K=2014) - Comment Date 12/7/2005
no bad developer does not convert the silver so you have clear negatives.

Black negatives come from light exposure.

Various film will change the color of the developer or the HCA, has to do withthe backing,especially with 120 film, altho, 35mm film can do the same. I<.E. Tri x in rodinal. developer pour off is a lovely shade of purple,





Helen Bach
 Helen Bach   (K=2331) - Comment Date 12/7/2005
As always, I agree with everyone. It?s the dev. If the fix was dead (very unusual to get completely dead fix) then the film would look cloudy-milky (like unexposed film) and it would have an image.

What you probably have now is a virtually invisible image: the remains of the latent image, possibly with slight development. There is an unreliable, very problematic technique known as ?post-fixation physical development? in which you plate silver onto the latent image centres. I?ve no personal knowledge of that technique and I don?t know anyone who has. However, the situation you describe is not totally dissimilar to monobath development.

From reading reference books I have gathered the following information on post-fixation physical development, for interest:

The developer can consist of a normal developing agent or agents (eg amidol or M-Q), a silver halide solvent (eg hypo), sodium sulphite, a source of silver ions (silver nitrate) and possibly something to adjust the alkalinity. If the developing agent is PPD (the preferred agent), the silver halide solvent can be omitted, because it is itself a silver halide solvent, and is assisted in this by the sulphite.

Very fine grain results are possible.

There is a huge loss of film speed (to about 1/10 of the original, according to Lumiere, who did a lot of this kind of thing). (You also may have destroyed some of the smaller, unstable, latent image centres if no development took place). If the film hasn?t been heavily overexposed, you won?t get much of an image.

It may not work at all because of the damage to the latent image centres in the fixing bath.

Silver will tend to precipitate on dust particles and the equipment, as well as on the latent image centres. It may also precipitate spontaneously.

Developing times are very long. Several hours. But you can do it by inspection (ie in the light). You need to use fresh developer every hour. You will need to remove any non-image silver precipitate each time you refresh the developer.

If you are interested in carrying out an experiment with little chance of success, I?ll find the formula for a suitabe PPD ? sulphite ? nitrate developer. This is probably the simplest developer for post-fixation physical development.

Best,
Helen





Jonathan Boarini
 Jonathan Boarini   (K=1895) - Comment Date 3/25/2006
The EXACT same thing has happened to me with Ilfosol S!!! It's at least good to see I'm not alone. My negatives started out great in the first rolls, but then I didn't use the developer for a period of a month and a half. Then, I developed a roll of film with some great shots I was so excited about, and the negatives came out almost totally flat. In my case, it's because of the terrible keeping properties of Ilfosol. It goes bad really quickly, kind of like a perishable food item. My suggestion is use another developer with better keeping properties, or use Ilfosol quickly! I hope this helps!





 Scott McFadden   (K=5663) - Comment Date 6/1/2007
A very unreliable and somewhat harsh nasty and despret move may be to try farmers reducer.
But its probably better left untested as the poor result your left with would only frustrate you more.





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