OK, what have I done this time?

[N Dhananjay]

I'm stumped. I was developing a bunch of negatives yesterday (FP4 in HC110 - Uni color drum on motor). Finished processing, turned on the lights and looked at th em and they were fine. I was processing them in batches. So I took the first one s out of the wash and tossed the next lot in. I set the first lot on the edge of the sink so that I could do a final wash of all the negatives and then run them through the wetting agent. Here's the wierd part. The first set (the ones leani ng against the edge of the sink) have these strange, well, splotches is thee onl y way to deescribe them. I picked them and saw the blotches and it actually look ed like parts of the emulsion had lost water i.e. had started drying. So I tosse d them back into the water but they never went away. They're still there after t he final drying. Its not water quality - I've never had this problem before. Its not airbells, the negs looked fine when I first took them out of the fix. Any g uesses? DJ

[Sean Billy Bob Boy yates]

Presumably you haven't had a chance to print them yet? It would be interesting to see what if any results the blotches have on the print.

Could it be soap residue or oil? Is the sink used for anything besides developing film?

Is it possible that something came in contact with the inside of the Unicolor drum and was washed off after coming in contact with the first batch of negs so that it didn't show up on subsequent passes? Do you use the same drum for all your runs?

There are at least two film cleaners on the market - PEC 12 and something Edwal makes that evaporates very quickly. Try a little from column A and a little from column B and see which works best.

[Dan Smith]

Your description sounds as if you set them on the edge of the sink in contact with each other. Is this correct? If so, you didn't rinse all the fix out of them and the direct contact allowed residual fixer to stay on the film and bleach out the area a touch. Or, it and/or the water stuck on them while some areas dried a touch. Both can happen if you let negs stick together for a bit. If so, you won't get it off even by re-fixing though you just might be able to reduce the effect a bit.