Negative Problem Diagnosis.

[Bill Koechling]

Hard to say for sure. Could it have been a water spot from pre-soaking? A water spot on the negative would not necessarly speed up the rate of development at that point. It could retard it, in fact probably would, depending on the time and rate of induction.

However, the impact of a single drop of developer is not clear to me. I could see how a drop might impede overall development since it would cause local exhaustion at the point of impact. In any event, for whatever reason, these marks look like splash marks to me.

Sandy King

Well, pre-soaking is pre-soaking. Where would the water spot come from? It's soaking in water. I see what you mean about the water spot possibly retarding the development but I just don't see it as a result of pre-soaking. I also see your point about the drops of developer. I just don't see how it would get on the film but maybe it does.

Poor guy learning how to develop film & has to worry about all these mystery spots. If it were digital I guess it would be dead pixels to worry about.

Bill

[Patrik Roseen]

Further up in the picture is another spot and on top of that there is a piece of dust/small hair. They seem to be in line with the smaller spots you pointed out in the crop as far as I can tell. Could it be that the spots were caused already at the time of exposure? It looks as quite a wet day, salt water etc. Would there be any particular reason for dust or humidity to stick to this 'line'?

[cyrus]

they're strangely symmetrical and identical

[Paul Coppin]

They look like water spots on a dry negative, before going into the developer, or, as was mentioned, developer splash. If the former, development will get a faster start on a wet spot than on dry film.

[frank pinchak]

I don't see any hypo remover in the description of your procedure. A five minute wash for film without it is short. I would wash for 30 mins Also use photo flow as mentioned above.

[ageorge]

Frank,

I do have Hypo in the line up for 2 minutes: d-76(depends->stop bath(30s)->fixer(7m)->rinse(30s)->hypo(2m)->wash(5m).

-alan