Correct orientation of LF film in hangers

[Alan9940]

Perhaps a dumb question, but I had something odd happen this morning during development of a sheet of 8x10 Fomapan 100...

I've always oriented the emulsion side of the film toward the holes along the three sides of the hanger, but this morning I have impressions of each and every hole right along the bottom edge. Since I've never had this issue, I began to question if I was loading the hanger correctly? For those of you using hangers, how do you position the film? Emulsion facing or turned away from the holes? I just had to be playing around with a new (to me) developer (Obsidian Aqua) too which, I suppose, adds an unknown variable.

Anyway, please set me straight and I'll try, again, tomorrow morning.

Thank you.

[tundra]

Perhaps a dumb question, but I had something odd happen this morning during development of a sheet of 8x10 Fomapan 100...

I've always oriented the emulsion side of the film toward the holes along the three sides of the hanger, but this morning I have impressions of each and every hole right along the bottom edge. Since I've never had this issue, I began to question if I was loading the hanger correctly? For those of you using hangers, how do you position the film? Emulsion facing or turned away from the holes? I just had to be playing around with a new (to me) developer (Obsidian Aqua) too which, I suppose, adds an unknown variable.

Anyway, please set me straight and I'll try, again, tomorrow morning.

Thank you.

I use them either way without issue BUT ... the one circumstance that I've seen this is when I am doing semistand or EMA long/low agitation development. In that context, I NEVER use framed hangers, and instead use Kodak #6 pinch hangers. Long standing low agitation development begs to produce bromide drag and the frames tend to trap development on the edges and cause problems.

So, in that one case, I use the pinch hangers and hang the film horizontally to get it well off the bottom of the tank.

[Michael R]

That’s a tricky one to diagnose. From what I remember of the Kodak framed holders there’s quite a bit of room for the sheet to move in the channels so that whichever way the sheet is loaded the emulsion could end up in front of or behind the holes at different times during development, so I don’t know that it matters how you load them. I checked the Kodak J-1 publication I have and although fairly detailed there is no mention of a correct/incorrect orientation.

Those hangers can be tricky to use and it can take practice to get the agitation right for a given developer/film. Kodak notes this. They are ideally used in gas burst systems and with manual dip/dunk those holes can be problematic (a better manual dip/dunk hanger wouldn’t have the holes). Since some staining developers are generally going to be somewhat more sensitive to agitation, fluid flow etc. anyway, you might have no choice but to sacrifice a few practice sheets/exposures to find what works.

Not sure if this helps at all but anyway.


Perhaps a dumb question, but I had something odd happen this morning during development of a sheet of 8x10 Fomapan 100...

I've always oriented the emulsion side of the film toward the holes along the three sides of the hanger, but this morning I have impressions of each and every hole right along the bottom edge. Since I've never had this issue, I began to question if I was loading the hanger correctly? For those of you using hangers, how do you position the film? Emulsion facing or turned away from the holes? I just had to be playing around with a new (to me) developer (Obsidian Aqua) too which, I suppose, adds an unknown variable.

Anyway, please set me straight and I'll try, again, tomorrow morning.

Thank you.

[Alan9940]

Thank you both for the replies.

The issue I saw this morning definitely threw me for a bit of a loop because I've used these Kodak hangers for many years with several different development techniques--regular Ilford style agitation, minimal / semi-stand agitation, full stand agitation--and many different developer formulas, both "normal" developers and staining developers, and this issue this morning is a first for me. I had beginner issues early on, of course, like surge marks from agitating to vigorously, etc, but I've long ago worked those out...or, so I thought! ;)

Since I was processing only a single 8x10 sheet, I did do a couple of things differently than I usually do; probably not the best idea when odd things happen. So, tomorrow I'll process a single sheet like I would when doing multiple sheets, and then...well, we'll see.

Sounds like the answer to my question regarding orientation is that it doesn't matter. I'll go with that, for now, until proven otherwise.

Thanks for the input.

[jnantz]

Hi Alan

How are you lowering your film into the tank ?
like you said surge-mark artifacts like that sometimes happen when you lower the hangers in the deep tank too fast or when you raise / lower them not at a 45º angle for your "agitation scheme" .. I've never used J's OA with deep tanks, but I know surge marks happen with Sprint, DK50, X-tol, GAF Universal, TMAXRS, and everything else I've used ..
Development artifacts are a drag ( if you don't want them .. ) I hope you track down the cause and eradicate your problem!
John

[Alan9940]

Hi AlanHow are you lowering your film into the tank ?


Hi John,

Always nice to hear from you...

My "agitation scheme" is what I'd call "classic": raise tilt left, lower, raise tilt right, lower. At each tilt, I pause for about 2 seconds to let the developer drain off and I at the end of the cycle I raise the hanger straight up just enough to "drop" it against the tank top. I do this to prevent air bells, but I've never been sure if it's really necessary because I've never tried not doing it. The agitation cycle is completed in a somewhat slow, very smooth motion. This is the technique I evolved to because of getting surge marks along the bottom edge due to the developer "spirting" up through the holes. So, I know what surge marks look like and what I saw, yesterday, was definitely not that.

I did have the passing thought, yesterday, that it could have been a bad piece of film...it is Foma, after all! ;) That said, though, I've been shooting 8x10 Foma 100 for many years now and I've never seen any quality issues with the film. I've heard and read stories of folks having quality control issues with Foma films, but I've never personally seen it.

Anyway, I'm going to try another test sheet today with OA and see what happens. If I have the same or some other issue, I'll move on to some other development technique when using OA. Other than the issue I had, I am very impressed with the results from this developer.

[jnantz]

Hi John,

Always nice to hear from you...

My "agitation scheme" is what I'd call "classic": raise tilt left, lower, raise tilt right, lower. At each tilt, I pause for about 2 seconds to let the developer drain off and I at the end of the cycle I raise the hanger straight up just enough to "drop" it against the tank top. I do this to prevent air bells, but I've never been sure if it's really necessary because I've never tried not doing it. The agitation cycle is completed in a somewhat slow, very smooth motion. This is the technique I evolved to because of getting surge marks along the bottom edge due to the developer "spirting" up through the holes. So, I know what surge marks look like and what I saw, yesterday, was definitely not that.

I did have the passing thought, yesterday, that it could have been a bad piece of film...it is Foma, after all! ;) That said, though, I've been shooting 8x10 Foma 100 for many years now and I've never seen any quality issues with the film. I've heard and read stories of folks having quality control issues with Foma films, but I've never personally seen it.

Anyway, I'm going to try another test sheet today with OA and see what happens. If I have the same or some other issue, I'll move on to some other development technique when using OA. Other than the issue I had, I am very impressed with the results from this developer.

Hi Alan

it's a real riddle then !
I had a feeling you were doing it right but you never know, this is the internet after all, and it could have been a 14 year old girl who hacked your account, and just started posting playing it off like she knew what she was doing to rile up the over 20 crowd .. ;). I always leave my password as password#1234 on my accounts just in case someone wants to give me a hand, it's not easy being online..

I've never done hangers with 8x10, biggest I ever did was handfuls-at-a time - 5x7 - hangers in one of those giant 5 gallon tanks 2-3 hours a morning, M-F .. those were the days! .. 10 years back when Jeeves was still my Butler and I was in the Iron Lung, it was suggested I use OA I was trying ( actually it was Jeeves who was doing it for me ) to enlarge grainy try x and hp5+ to 30x40" and get no grain and OA was the developer I was told to do, JDF is quite the developer wizard is all I gotta say ( and he comes up with some cool names .. )

hope you figure it out !
John

[Tin Can]

I us only KODAK Hanger

with DIY Gas Burst

I drop mine in as quickly as possible

AND only use ONE SHOT 1/100 RODINAL

then quickly into water stop

then TF5

Gas burst is easy to add to tanks

[Alan9940]

FWIW, a test negative developed this morning is drying and a quick glance, after pulling it from the washer, lead me to believe it's good. I'll have to print it to be sure. No idea what happened, yesterday. I'm chalking it up to not wearing my luck underwear! :)