Dark specks on film

[Tori Nelson]

I'm hoping someone here can help me figure out what may be causing these and what I might do to get rid of them. There is a sort of gritty feeling to the emulsion side and the specks can be scratched off with a fingernail. Sacrilege, I know!

HP5 8x10 film, exposed 2 years ago, processed yesterday (:o ) with Rollo Pyro in a Jobo drum. 2, 20 second pre-washes with filtered water, developer mixed with distilled water, 2, 30 second filtered water stop baths, 6 minutes with non hardening rapid fix and then 20 minute wash with filtered water and a final rinse with distilled water.

I should mention that the A & B solutions are about 1 1/2 years old and had been in storage most of that time. Also,the solution B is a half full bottle with about a 1/4 inch of sediment at the bottom, which I shook up before adding with solution A and the distilled water. This is likely the problem but even B&S hadn't heard of this one yet. Their suggestion to remove the specks was to try washing again in a solution of distilled water and sodium sulfate, which I tried but it did nothing.

I have ordered new chemicals to see if that is the problem but would love to hear some other ideas and any thoughts on how to get rid of the dark specks.

Thanks, Tori

[CG]

Crud in the bottom would sound verrrry suspect. New chemicals will probably fix the problem entirely. I would also wonder about a year and a half old mix of Rollo Pyro. Maybe someone who uses Rollo Pyro could speak from experience.

C

[Andrew O'Neill]

HP5 8x10 film, exposed 2 years ago, processed yesterday

I had the same problem on a few sheets out of a box of HP5 8x10 this past summer. All were developed in fresh pyrocat-HD. I've never had this problem before. I still can't figure it out. I also developed a few sheets of 8x10 FP4 from the same trip with no problems at all...very frustrating after driving over 5,000 kms gathering images.
I have no idea how to get rid of the black dots. I'll just leave them there and spot the prints. I guess black spots on negs are better than black spots on prints!

[Bruce Watson]

I'm hoping someone here can help me figure out what may be causing these and what I might do to get rid of them. There is a sort of gritty feeling to the emulsion side and the specks can be scratched off with a fingernail.

It's certainly something in your process. Could be from the developer. Even more likely is silver precipitate from reusing fixer. One of the joys of Jobo tanks for me is that I can use all chemistry as one-shot without feeling overly wasteful. When I started using fixer as one-shot, most of my remaining problems like this went away. Now all my dust problems really are dust.

[Toyon]

Use a gold permanent coffee filter to find crud in your solutions. Quite likely it is in the fixer.

[keeds]

Silver from reusing fixer would be my guess also. Or even fresh fixer in a reused fixer storage bottle.

[Tori Nelson]

I don't think it's the fixer as it was a newly purchased, freshly opened jug and I only mix up what I am using for every other Jobo load (done back to back). I have done a check for exhaustion each time I reused. Maybe it's a bad batch of Ilford Rapid Fix. I should have my new Rollo Pyro by tomorrow or Saturday and I will try a test neg. Thanks for all the input everyone! And Andrew, you are indeed correct about spots on negs being much better than on prints; I have my #0000 brush ready and waiting!

[Andrew O'Neill]

I use fresh solutions including fixer, and I still got that problem with a few sheets out of a pack of 25.