My last batch of processing revealed two possibly separate issues in the negatives. I did a bit of searching around the forum and believe I know partially what's going on. If anybody else wants to share their theory, I'd love to hear it. Thank you in advance for reading my technically inept rant
1. Air bubbles on the emulsion and muddy tones - Insufficient agitation? I was actually agitating more frequently than I do with roll film, though definitely not as vigorously, so how does one agitate a Yankee tank enough without the developer spilling out?
2. Fogging in the corners - for the 30 sheets I processed from the same box of TXP320 dated 05/18:
-22 with consistently bad fogging in the corners - see example posted. From a December 2018 road trip across the Southwest. The sheets were transferred to an empty film box for storage the day they were exposed, which was kept in a ziploc bag with a desiccant in a cooler (basically a lunchbox) for the past six months, trying to avoid excess humidity or drastic changes in temperature until I could process them.
-6 have no discernible fogging, exposed just prior to that December road trip, and stored in the same box in the same conditions.
-2 with no fogging issues, exposed about 18 months ago, stashed in a box in the basement and forgotten about until this week.
I want to blame the storage conditions for the fogging but the fact that 6 sheets with no visible issues were exposed around the same time as the problem negs and kept in the same box makes me reluctant to do that. The only thing I can think of along those lines is that the more recent sheets closer to the top of the storage stack somehow got hit with light and/or ambient radiation. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that processing film immediately after exposing it like every manufacturer recommends would probably mitigate the fogging...
The basic setup-
Txp 320 exposed at box speed
Xtol 1:1
Yankee daylight tank
10 minutes, 30s continuous agitation at start, then 10s agitation every 30s
Chems mixed with tap water. no idea how old the stop, fix and permawash were.
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