hello everyone.
I think I have gotten a faulty Kodak Portra film package. I know this is basically unheard of. But trust me, I have thought a lot about this.

I shoot maybe 70-200 boxes of Portra 160 4x5 film per year since ruffly 10 years. That makes for over 12000+ negatives (last time I counted). So I have experience in film Photography.

The thing is, Ive gotten 10 negatives developed that all came out 100% black, All the way out in the edges, so even the Kodak emulation print is missing. Ive got 8 Fidelity boxes that I load, and I do of course always write down every exposure and cassette + lens and other details. So its all well documented. I tried to scan the black negatives, since I know I have exposed them, but there is absolutely nothing to be found, except blackness all the way out in the edges.

Since I dont always shoot 8x2 images at each job, I normally load the first 10 form a new box, and the last ones from a new, or previously opened box. In this case it looks like this:

The first 10 photos are fine. Then the broken ones begins. They where in serie, however, since I don’t always do 10, and the Fidelitys aren’t always lying in order in the film pup tent, they where actually spread out over different jobs, different days, and different development batches on different development days plus different lenses. But they are all after the first 10 negatives and all probably form the same box. They are always grouped in A+B side of the fidelity. So basically it would make extremely much sense that one Box contained broken negatives.

Since every box has a emulation no. I can se that there was only one serie that was other then the rest in my storage. Normally I buy 20-30 boxes at a time, and they have the same Emulation no. But one box was no 412111. The rest begins 413111 or 413XXX and has worked well. Maybe it was the 412111. I cant say for sure.

So How likely is my conclusion?

Since its the first time ever for me (to get broken film), it of course makes photographing professionally extremely complicated, If i cant trust my film.

My lab recommends me to swap to fuji, since they are according to them, nowadays a much more stable company for analog equipment. But Ive always used Kodak since the good old NC time. And I like working with negativ film.