Bum- 1st bad home dev

menthel

menthel

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Right, just cocked up home developing for the first time. Main question- just opened a new bottle of ilfosol 3 and it was clear and colourless. Should it be? I thought it was supposed to be yellowish. I think this may be the route cause of the problem. The negatives had barely developed, one had some images visible but extraordinarily faintly.

So a crock batch of developer or a different cock up?
 
developer looks like wee when it starts to oxidise ,so it should be clear ,whats the writing down the side of the film like ?, if that looks good then it might be really underexposed
 
donutagain said:
developer looks like wee when it starts to oxidise ,so it should be clear ,whats the writing down the side of the film like ?, if that looks good then it might be really underexposed
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Can't see anything, it's the whole film rather than the frames.
 
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if its underexposed , you should still be able to read the name of the film down the side of the strip ,so if you cant read that it looks like a developement problem . didnt cock up the timing or temp did you ?
 
Two things.

1) The ilford fact sheet states that it should be "Light (or pale) Yellow Orange Brown"

2) There is a hole in my changing bag. (Dear Eliza, a hole!)

Looks like a couple of light ruined films to me. New changing bag time (will grab one tomorrow) but I am still not reassured by the colour of the developing fluid.
 
menthel said:
Two things.

1) The ilford fact sheet states that it should be "Light (or pale) Yellow Orange Brown"

2) There is a hole in my changing bag. (Dear Eliza, a hole!)

Looks like a couple of light ruined films to me. New changing bag time (will grab one tomorrow) but I am still not reassured by the colour of the developing fluid.
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How do you make that out? Light ruined films would give fully black film, they are negatives you know, therefore when you print they then become fully white.
 
If your negatives are thin but the image numbers of the frames are okay it's under exposure.

If the negatives are very dark with little pale or clear areas the negatives are overexposed, if the frame numbers are okay.

If the negatives are thin and the film frame numbers are thin, it's underdevelopment

If the frame numbers are a bit fuzzy and very dark along with dense negatives then it's overdevelopment.
 
EdBray said:
How do you make that out? Light ruined films would give fully black film, they are negatives you know, therefore when you print they then become fully white.
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Exactly, its all black (with some very faint images visible) and I was barking up the wrongish tree with the developer. It was the bag.
 
Well, looking at it the bits of the film with a very ghostly image visible (only just!) in the murky black are at the beginning so would have been at the centre of the reel. Perhaps these had the least light exposure. The latter parts are completely black with nothing visible, including film markings. We live and learn!
 
Sorry all, reading this back ideally didn't make it clear that the whole thing came out of the tank black. I guess that was the big clue to what had happened!
 
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Understatement of the year!

Sure it wasn't overdevelopment with the new, fresh and more active chemistry?
 
fixedimage said:
Understatement of the year!

Sure it wasn't overdevelopment with the new, fresh and more active chemistry?
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No. I was using the massive dev chart timings, so shouldn't have caused any problems.
 
As a postscript to this sad tale, I patched up the bag and have just developed a roll of acros in rodinal. Looks lovely!
 
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