It's been a very long time (decades) since I was able to process any black & white film. Finally had the opportunity to do so over the last couple of days, and it did not go well.

Here are the relevant facts:

TMax 100 (EI 80) roll film processed in Jobo tanks with Xtol 1:1 at 68 degrees for 9 1/3 minutes. Developer mixed immediately prior to use. Used Photographer's Formulary TF-4 fixer. Following their instructions, I washed the film with water post-development as a stop bath. The Xtol package had a date of 2019/08/09 which should be a safe production date, based on the Xtol thread that I reviewed. Chemicals were mixed with tap water run through a water softener.


Ilford FP4+ (EI 80) roll film processed in Jobo tanks with HC-110 Dilution G for 14 minutes, tank development, no rotation. Developer mixed immediately prior to use. Used Photographer's Formulary TF-4 fixer. Following their instructions, I washed the film with water post-development as a stop bath. The developer was mixed from an unopened, very old bottle of HC-110. Chemicals were mixed with tap water run through a water softener.


All of the rolls came out completely transparent, with no edge markings. From what I was able to find, this happens when there is no developer used. But, I did use developer. At any rate, this should indicate that there is no mechanical issue with the camera. I noticed that there was a purplish tint when dumping the developer in both instances, if that might be useful to know.


The fact that this happened with two different developers and two different films has me wondering if there might be some issue with the water stop bath step and the TF-4 fixer. However, I can't see how that would be a problem, based on the reviews of TF-4 that I've seen on here. My basement is consistently around 66-68 degrees F, so chemicals and water temps stick around that point, until mid-summer or so. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wouldn't expect the use of softened water to cause a catastrophic image loss.


This is pretty frustrating, since I can't point to a specific cause. What am I overlooking here?


Thanks for any feedback,


Ed