Help with what went wrong . . .

[gevalia]

Guys,

I need a little help here trying to figure out what went wrong. It was really foggy over the weekend (250 feet max) and I went to the beach and then into the woods. Nveer shot fog before. I'm in CT and it was in the 40's with snow on the ground so it was dense. I am a newbie (less then a year) but I have spend a while getting a pattern of development down to I know I am consistent. And the water is filtered.

Here are the particulars:
1. TMAX 400 developed in Precsysol EF and fixed in an alkaline fixer. Both fresh before start. Both in filtered water. Same amount of time, temps, agitation, etc - consistent.
2. They were shot at different locations and 2 were after a fairly long walk so the film should have acclimated to outside temps.
3. Developed in daylight tank that I am consistent in using and did not have a problem.
4. The 3 photos were in 2 different batches. In each of these 2 batches there were also other sheets (that were not taken in the fog) that came out exactly as I planned.
5. Developed at N+0 which is 10.5 minutes in the Prescysol EF.

I'm at a loss here. is there something I need to know about shooting in dense fog? Is this "fogging"? I cannot say that I have ever seen fogging (just read about it, not seen it).

I'm at a loss...

** Please forgive the "quick" scans. A lot of dust on the glass.







Thanks,
Ron

[Ken Lee]

Looks like insufficient agitation.

[gevalia]

My agitation routine is :
1. Continuous for 1st minute.
2. Then for 10 seconds every 3 minutes thereafter.

The shadows seem okay, it's just the highlights(fog) that is screwed up.

I use the same routine for all films in Prescysol EF.

Again, other sheets developed at the same time (in the tank) came out as expected. The sheets that came out as expected did have substantially more shadows.

[John Kasaian]

Is your daylight tank a "Yankee?" It looks to be yankeedaylighttank-itis

[Toyon]

Could be contamination in the chemistry. A small amount will cause that. Oh the horror.

[gevalia]

John,

Nope. It's the Combi tank which takes 6 sheets. And the images posted were developed in 2 batches and each of those 2 batches had other sheets along side these that came out with no problems at all.

When I look closely, I see that the trees and the Jetty seem to not be afflicted by the swirling. This is what strikes me as odd. When I forst started developing, I screwed up a few batches and got bubbles and streaks and problems where I did not load enough developer to cover the entire sheet.

"My" Combi tank did have problems in the beginning but I have worked out all of them and now it is a "consistent" breeze to use.

[mcfactor]

It looks like uneven development. I dont think it has anything to do with fog (in the atmosphere or on the film).

3 minutes seems very short for sheet film, perhaps the developer didnt have enough time to evenly develop the sheets.

[gevalia]

Toyon,

Problem is that other sheets developed in the same batch came out without issue.

Just for my own sanity -- when you shoot in dense fog, there is nothing special I need to do? I know this sounds dumb (and I'm kicking myself for even writing it) but I have to ask. You see, I shot 20 or so sheets that day and every one except those in the dense fog came out just as expected.

[Nathan Potter]

You've developed some silver density in areas that should presumably be clear. Furthermore that density is uneven so shows a mottled appearance. There are (particularly in photo #1) some pretty strong swirl marks indicative of a problem during processing. If you can rule out Kens notion above, I'm going to guess that you might have had some developer carry over into stop and or fix so continued to build silver unevenly thru one or both of the subsequent steps. But to do that you will have had to have some light available during those steps. Could this be the case? How long did you use the daylight tank - thru both stop and fix? Ever run into this problem before using the same development scheme?

I can't think of any condition that would produce such an effect during exposure in the field. Condensation on film would be more uniform I would think and on lens or filters would not be imaged on the film.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[panchro-press]

Just a thought; but are you sure they're fixed sufficiently?