Tuesday, June 15, 2010

How not to dry negatives and other misfortunes

With the confidence that I now know how to do it I thought this time I will develop the two Ilford HP5+ films together, in other words in the same developing tank.

So far so good. With a bit of spillage and mess since I didn't get everything mixed when I should have done so I got the films developed.

Opening the tank, first film looked ok. However disaster struck with taking out the second film. Now, films go into the tank on a small spiral. As a result the end of the second film, which was at the bottom of the tank on the inner side of spiral looked suspiciously dark. At first I thought I have accidentally exposed it to light, on a second thought I realized it was left under-developed! I used the amount of developer I should have however I should have left the films for may be another minute or so in the developer...

Well, since I couldn't fix it thought I will move on and put the films to dry. So there they were hanging in the bathroom and I knew that now I will fix the mistake from previous time and won't leave water marks. On comes the cloth and down it goes until I don't see any watermarks. Only to realize I have deeply scratched both films! 

Because it is a very thin layer of chemicals on the film even the smallest speck of dust can scratch it... and you will end up with this


Here is some of the underdeveloped film...




I have about 5 more exposures left in the Zenit which I need to finish this week, as well as the colour in the Smena. 

Points to remember: 
- meter properly
- do not wipe the negatives to death

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