Looks liked a lense flare right of middle and maybe a light leak, lower left.
Looks liked a lense flare right of middle and maybe a light leak, lower left.
Did you try soaking and rinsing again? Has that color of anti-halation layer.
Hmmm I certainly can try that - although wouldn't that show up on the un-exposed edges as well? Those look normal - it's just the exposed area that's odd. The chems were at about end of life in terms of the recommended number of sheets Unicolor suggests, but was in spec. My other negatives came out quite good from this batch (including other Ektar sheets). That makes me think it's not strictly the chemicals, though running it through another blix/rinse stage can't make it any worse I suppose.
I thought about flare - and it does kinda have that look. The weird thing is the last time this happened I exposed a sheet of Ektar (which ended up with a green cast on the exposed part of the negative just like in this case) but a sheet of Velvia right after without moving the camera that turned out rather good (not casts, proper exposure, good color, etc.). If it was flare that would be odd it didn't impact that sheet. Those sheets were lab scanned as well (at Blue Moon Camera as I was visiting Portland at the time - cool place to check out by the way!) In the Portland case I was at that typical beach with the mountain and rocky islands that seems to be a place lots of people take photos. It was overcast and I had multiple negatives end up with this green cast.
Another time I took some shots of the kiddo for his first day of school. In that case, the HP5 turned out great, but both the Portra sheets I used had this same green cast. For all these I didn't see any flare looking at the GG.
In all these cases, except the portrait of the kiddo, it was an overcast day. But that's still weird - the color should shift towards blue not red.
I had hoped it was the film holders (since I never get the green cast of evil on 120 or 35mm) but nope there's no common thread there. Since it was multiple holders (I think even different brands), it would be odd if this was caused by a light leak but...hmm I have an Intrepid with red bellows on the outside - I'm fishing real bad here, but if there was a tiny light leak that was reflecting that color, I might not see it through the GG but the film might? Maybe? Still weird I didn't get a cast of any kind with the Velvia sheets though...I haven't tested the Intrepid for leaks though so perhaps I should do that.
Bad film? The good sheets plus bad one all came from same lot, not expired?
I thought about bad film sheets. With as much as color sheets cost in 4x5, that would be make mildly upset but that could be possible for sure yep. These were freshly bought stocks not more than a few months old and have been fridge stored in plastic bags in my veggie drawer. I went through my entire binder and all told it was:
5 sheets of Ektar
2 of Velvia
2 of Portra 160
Those Velvias I had forgotten about - it was from a beach trip where I was trying to shoot a sunrise and using ND filters (one shot was using Hitech's square graduated ND and the other was a screw on). They have a red cast, which makes sense since my Ektar and Portra negatives have a green cast. I think these beach ones may have been flare. The green cast I got at the Portland beach was during an overcast day though (and my T-Max 100 and Velvia shots there turned out great).
Color shift? What was exposure time? With nd filters if film sensitive to NY amount of IR you can get a red cast, and flare from light leaks if exposure long enough. I use IRND filters designed to block all uv for digital and film. Did your colors look washed out on velvia with nd filters?
Exposure times for all these were short. I can go look them all up but under 1" but likely well under. In the case of the fence one (the one I posted here), it was 1/30 at f32 on my 150mm Fujinon. I DID use a Hoya HTCP on this one, but I've had shots where I didn't use any filter on the lens and still seemed to get this green cast of doom.
I got excited when I realized maybe I just red-scaled it by loading the film in backwards, but alas no, the composition on the negative is correct so I have to discount that. Plus I thought when you redscale you don't get ANY blue when converting? I managed to recover some blue from all the green cast of doom sheets.
The only commonality I can find is the camera. But I mean it's just a boxAnd if it was a lightleak it'd be weird it was only on the red channel (which is on the bottom layer of the emulsion?). I plan on testing for light leaks today though just in case.
Super frustrating because I absolutely love shooting 4x5 but yesh I wish I'd at least know the cause. Operator error would be fine if I knew what it was to improve upon. Only thing I can think of is, if it is somehow underexposure, to start rating Ektar at 50 ISO. I'd rather go over than get red casts.
I contact Intrepid about it and ended up getting an e-mail back from Max (I think THE Max). He thinks, as some have said here, it might be a development issue though admitted it is odd not all the sheets are affected. It otherwise looks like that to him. So I wonder if maybe my agitation scheme isn't ideal or perhaps that sheet exhausted the developer around it more quickly (more back to agitation). It is odd I got green casts from lab developed sheets though but the fact I don't really see bad BW sheets indicates a chemical issue there as well.
Either way I'm thinking about doing the following:
* Checking for Light Leaks (Max mentioned that leak on the side may be the camera, not the holders).
* Switching from Unicolor to Kodak or Fuji chemicals (larger quantities as liquids instead of power and some can be mixed as needed and I can use a separate bleach and fix instead of a blix)
* Moving away from Patterson/MOD54 to using something like a Jobo tank and use a hand roller (I can't afford a JOBO processor yet) at least for the color film
* For sure shooting doubles for important shots and only developing one of the sheets in the set at a time
I already basically have all the stuff to make a hand roller (no way I'm buying JOBOs WTF overpriced one for $100 - nearly lost my lunch when I saw the pricetag on that thing - it's $2 worth of parts!)
I thought about the SP445 as well but I was going to start testing a JOBO tank for the tiny formats (playing with Vision 3 and ECN2 in 35mm) so once I get that down, I can look at sheets. The perk of the JOBO 2500 for 4x5 is it seems folks have better luck with the thin Rollei IR sheets (lovely film, nightmare to develop in sheet form since they're so thin).
I use the sp445 and unicolor and have not gotten any green casts. I did get green streaks when I sent my film out. The sp445 is perfect for this. When doing the inversions, do them with the long edge facing you only, never the short edge facing you. There is a video on this from Stearmen. And it is only 80 bucks.
Thanks Steven!
Good point (and by the way thanks for all the help and comments on this thread in general!)
How does it fare with scratching and leaks? I wasn't doing inversions for the Patterson because it's leaky and I don't want to get C-41 chemicals on anything (especially the Blix since it's stains). I've seen some YouTube folks using the 445 though and yeah it looks like it could work well. Bonus points that it only does 4 at a time hehe - I like that better because I typically shoot in groups of 4 (mostly for easy filing into PrintFiles).
Only negatives I've heard is that it can scratch negatives and the seal can eventually start to leak? The guy that makes them seems like a pretty cool dude though! Good point!
Oh, do you know if the 445 can do Rollei's thing sheets (like IR)?
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