Developing snafu? What did I do?

[krsboz]

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Greetings all! I just finished developing two rolls of TriX and the results of one roll has me scratching my head. Both shot on my M4.

 

I'll call the rolls Roll "Good" and Roll "Bleh."

 

Roll "Bleh" was shot on Thursday of this week. Uneventful loading and shooting. I've done this dozens and dozens of times. Roll "Good" was shot on Friday. No issues.

 

Today they were both loaded onto their spools in the same bag, at the same time. Roll Good was first and wound up as the bottom reel in the (Two-Reel) Paterson tank. Roll Bleh was the second one loaded and became the top reel.

 

I developed. D76 stock, etc. I used 800ml of liquid per step. i.e. 800ml of D76, 800ml of stop, etc.. I've processed my own film hundreds of times. This was an uneventful processing.

 

When I finished and unrolled to hang, Roll Bleh was first unspooled. An iPhone pic of the negs are attached.

 

The header was fully exposed. It then fades into a slightly lighter dark. And it then fades into some sort of partial-horizontal fog for nearly the entire roll. The tail frames of the film was entirely unexposed.

 

Roll Good, at the bottom of the two rolls is 100% fine. Perfect frames throughout.

 

The horizontal fog tells me that it's a processing issue?

 

Roll Good was shot after Roll Bleh so nothing tells me it's a camera issue. No?

 

Perplexed. Anyone have any thoughts? Many thanks.

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[pico]

Tank light leak.

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[krsboz]

Hmmm.. Ok I'll buy that. Thanks.

[pop]

Tank light leak.

That would account for the dark border; but where are the pictures? Even if the tank leaked, the exposed frames ought to be visible.

[fotomas]

Looks like the film is completely unexposed. Maybe the film was not transported in the camera and the bottom plate was not locked? Don't know if this is possible with the M4. I have a M6.
One time I have missed to lock it and noticed it later on while shooting when it suddenly opens a bit.

[pico]

That would account for the dark border; but where are the pictures?

 

Pictures? You want pictures?

[krsboz]

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That's what's been bugging me about this.. There's not any frames demarcated anywhere along the roll.

 

I've always do a pretty good job of loading and advancing at least one frame while the bottom plate is still off. I'm a bit anal about making sure the film is caught and advancing before I close it up. Short of videotaping the fact that I did that with this roll, and being able to watch back that video - I'm pretty certain that the film was exposed. I also had zero issues with rewinding - there was the usual mild tension during the rewind.

 

Strange. I'll have to be more deliberate I guess.

[250swb]

The frame numbers are on the film edge, so you've developed it OK, as in put the dev in first etc. and of course the bottom roll is fine. So for lack of frames the roll hasn't gone through the camera, did you for example watch to see if the rewind knob turned when you first loaded it? And then there is the light leak, only you can decide what happened there. So two separate problems, but look on the bright side, if the light leak was from the tank at least the failed top roll protected the bottom roll.

[honcho]

Looks very much as if the film has not wound on. You could waste half a new film by tripping the shutter and winding on with the baseplate off and the back open to eliminate any winding-on issues. Do the same without a film in the camera and lens removed with the body pointed towards a bright light at successive shutter speeds to Determine that the shutter is running correctly.

 

As for the light leak, try a roll of C41 and get it processed by a lab (Boots or similar 1hr would be ideal if they can be trusted not to mess it up for you!) to eliminate a leaky camera and point towards your changing bag, darkroom or Paterson tank for light leaks.

[105012]

I agree, this looks like a film that did not wind on. And is the reason I favour the M3/Barnack style film loading system...

[Martin B]

I had a situation like this with "empty" 4x5" negatives when I used a decayed Xtol developer - the fixer then washed away (or more correctly complexed) all left silver ions from the negative foil since they weren't reduced to metallic silver by the developer. I suspect that your bad roll didn't get in touch with enough of developer fluid in the first place since it was on top of the tank. Another hint supporting this theory is the black strip on top (or better said on the bottom of the rolled negative film) - here the strip came in touch with some developer and silver formed. Potentially you had a light leak at some point, too - that's what made it so pitch dark. So you have to work on two separate problems - easy fix for the developer wetting - use more developer fluid within the tank for two reels to develop. The light leak might be not as easy to resolve where it derived from.