Uneven development in skies

[Steve Hamley]

Thanks everyone! Looks like more agitation possibly with a brush might be a good place to start. And yes it is uneven development in mostly even toned skies, not underdevelopment.

I've attached a crop of a jpeg. The sky is clear blue, cloudless, with a very little haze near the horizon. Please note that the "spots" in the left hand sky are a result of the scanner platen and are NOT present on the negative.

Frank, the artifacts are visible in the negative.

Tony one-by-one from presoak to developer. Agitation is by fore-aft, side-to-side, and a "circular" or "rotational" rocking of the tray - I usually do some of all three every agitation cycle.

Sandy thanks for the info. My contrast is about right so I'll have to play with agitation methods.

And thanks everyone - this is just the kind of information needed to help solve problems.

Cheers, Steve

[David Schaller]

I essentially follow Sandy King's advice above. I do two 8x10 negatives at a time in 1:1:100 solution at 70 degrees, starting with one liter of water. I agitate constantly for the first minute, then every 30 seconds rotate the negatives. The trays are just a bit bigger than 8x10, so I don't think you need bigger trays.
Dave

[Steve Hamley]

Thanks Dave,

I was trying to get away from the long development time by using 2:2:100, but maybe that was a bad criterion.

Anybody have comments on using the 2:2:100 dilution with success in trays?

Cheers, Steve

[sanking]

Thanks Dave,

I was trying to get away from the long development time by using 2:2:100, but maybe that was a bad criterion.

Anybody have comments on using the 2:2:100 dilution with success in trays?

Cheers, Steve

Steve,

Just agitate more frequently, and make sure that you give a very vigorous agitation when you begin development.

Sandy

[mandoman7]

I found that sorting through the stack with the emulsion up gave uneven skies in my tray processing (pre-jobo). The developer is sloshing over the edges when you push down giving more development to the edges where the agitation is more vigorous.

When I turned the sheets over and developed with the emulsion down, then pulling the bottom sheet out gave a sudden exposure of the sheet to new developer all at once. At the time I was having this problem a few years ago, I tried many approaches. The emulsion down approach, with flat bottom trays (to avoid scratching) was my solution.

[ronald moravec]

Uneven developmet is almost always from two causes.

slow uneven immersion. The wet dry edge must start and proceed across the film rapidly and without stopping or backtracking.

insufficient agitation upon immersion.

I never presoak. This is only to make hand stack agitated film not stick. There is no other reason to presoak.

All the above true for 35 120 4x5

[bob carnie]

I have found that the first 15 seconds of development are critical and agitation is needed to move the developer onto all areas of the film.
We use Jobo for the last 15 years and to this day still manually agitate to make sure developer is reaching all areas of the film for the first 15 seconds.

Your sample is classic {under agitation} during the initial stages of the development process.

[Filmnut]

I agree that it is uneven development. Now I have also had that problem in the past, but after having lost nice images to uneven dev., I now tend to over agitate (within reason!) if my subjects have large areas of sky, or a similar even toned subject, and I haven't had any trouble with uneven dev since.
Keith