Patterson Orbital Processor Help

[buze]

I use a sharp blade to gouge the bottom of my Orbital in some sort of regular pattern. I had tried 4 "dud" non-exposed sheets before without the gouge and they /did/ stick to the bottom. With the gouging the slight relief prevents this from happening.

I develop using 150ml of solution and only intermitent agitation (10-20s per minute) and have nice evenly developed negs.

I've seen reported that too much agitation can create unneveness around the position of the two "blades" on the inside of the lid; I suposed that the turbulences from these fins must have some sort of impact...

[jimbobuk]

Thanks to Pete Watkins, I'd had a go at modding the orbital processor as he had with the small beads on the base.. i ended up just using the adhesive they came with.. I guess I can super glue them if they start to come off.

I developed a set of test shots last night.. i've also acquired the automatic base and so developed with that.. no mess and nice to be able to be a bit lazy..

The shots have come out with a few problems on them again though..

They didn't stick to the bottom and came out clean, not dripping purple... here are the shots

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbobuk/251260349/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbobuk/251257142/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbobuk/251253484/

Most have a light leak, or brightened area or two... when i took the lid off after washing one of the negs had escaped the confines of its corner, I don't know when this happened, or how.. i assumed due to the tilts to drain it out...

I also left the auto base on all the time as i was worried that at 150ml the developer wouldn't be touching everything unless it was being agitated..

I've heard about the lines on the lid potentially causing problems.. do they look like this??!

I've got a polaroid back now, and after a mistake and messing up the first one i've took 1 successful shot indoors which looked fine... I need to go out in the sun and shoot a few more to ensure its not the camera causing these marks...

Then i'm left with the film/film holder (slide)/developing as what could be causing the problems.

[jimbobuk]

buze, how intermittent is your agitation.. perhaps i should turn on and off the base whilst i'm doing it in a similar frequency..

[Pete Watkins]

Hi Jim,
This is either flare or are you pre-washing Ilford film? DO NOT pre-wash Ilford film. If you pre-wash the stuff you will get uneven development, bin there, dun that.
Best wishes,
Pete.

[jimbobuk]

light levels were very low for all of this... it was approaching dusk... i need to give the lens a good clean to perhaps remove any possibility of problems..

i'm following ilfords instructions, developer is the first thing to touch the negs..

the only thing i worry about is if its me touching the film as i'm loading/unloading it... sometimes i do this by touch to feel that they're loaded correctly.. wouldn't expect it to do much though.. i've always been so impressed by how tolerant film is to abuse.. to a point anyways.

Not sure what pre-wash is, dont think i'm doing it

I still wonder if my handling of the film/slides is the problem.

[Pete Watkins]

Jim,
I might be paronoid but I always wear vinyl gloves when handling film and chemicals. Clean up a piece of brass and then handle it, see what the sweat in your fingers has done to it. I learnt the hard way, I had to have a few days off work after using selinium toner without gloves (it might have been my cooking, but I doubt it). Vinyl gloves, Sainsburys, Homebase and B & Q all stock them. The worst thing that can happen now is that you discover that you are allergic to vinyl.
Good luck,
Pete.

[jimbobuk]

I have some latex gloves that i do use whenever handling chemicals.. on one hand only usually with minimal contact with the other hand... they're powerdered on the inside, not sterile but seem to do ok..

Do you recommend wearing the gloves when loading/unloading film .. i'd worry that losing that bit more tactile feedback would make it more difficult.. i also seem to need to use my nails to grab the film to pull it out of the slide.. i still seem to pull up too often and am forced to continue pulling away from the slide bending the neg a bit as it gets stuck to slide out if you pull it away from the slide only slightly.

I'm sure this could be the problem, i'm just a little shocked as i've found rollfilm to be suprisingly robust in this manner of handling.. only once did i get a real wrestle trying to load medium format on a reel.. hands got so sweaty and really struggled forcing it in.. in the end i swopped for a reel that had more obvious guides and did it quite quickly.. a few frames got damaged but this was a lot of handling.. i'm always being quite careful handling the sheet film.

I do pull the sheet film out of the pack by only pulling apart the 2 cardboard pieces enough to let the sheet film come away cleanly.. don't know if this could be scratching them on the way out..

I'll try to improve.. practice practice practice..

[Colin Robertson]

Hi Jim. There are two or three issues here.
First, if you have a motor base let it run continuosly. The orbital processor holds a small voume of chemistry, and the constant agitation keeps sloshing it over the film. It isn't really suited to intermittent agitation- you might just reduce developing time by ten percent.
Next- vinyl gloves beat latex. Much less risk of allery. Having said that, you should be able to handle the film without damaging it. Just wash and dry hands properly before handling film.
Next- and most importantly. The shots you have posted look like they have suffered light leaks, not processing errors. If your camera is a Shen Hao it pobably isn't very old and should be in good shape. Your film holders are more likely to be at fault (Or, just possibly, how you seat them in the camera). What kind/age are they??

[jimbobuk]

I've had a look inside the bellows with a torch in a dark room.. annoyingly there seems to be a lot of pinhole leaks in the corners of the bellows.. I was wondering if the bellows SHOULD be perfect and completely light tight or are the extreme corners of each pleat ok to leak slightly as the light is so little and will be occluded from the film/lens by the pleat it is the corner of?

How can you go about fixing this.. I could try with tape but being on the corners i imagine its going to have a fair amount of stress.. its the Shen Hao one, can you just replace the bellows?

May start another thread about this one.. don't think this is the problem, as they look so small that surely they couldn't have such a drastic effect? that's my inexperience i guess, or optimism

[Colin Robertson]

Just been to flickr and sen the pics of your Shen. Looks older than I expected. YUP- if you can see pinholes in your bellows then that exactly explains the problems with your posted photos. I'm been shooting LF less than a year, so I have no idea if they are repairable or if you should replace. Post a new question and drag in some experienced folks. . .