Developing B&W 35mm film: Did I do something wrong???

[canoncajun]

Hi there all!! My name is Alan...I'm new to developing B&W film, but something appears to have went wrong. I have a roll of Kodak Tri-X 400 that I want to develop, but am testing out my developing skills first on a few rolls of cheap Arista.EDU Ultra 400 film that I bought from Freestyle. When it was all said and done, I started to squeegee the film, and bits of the film were coming off, one image had a huge chunk that came off. So I'm looking for advice. I'm thinking that maybe it might have been the fixer, or possibly that I didn't wash the film long enough. But here's what I did and I've also posted some pics below showing how my film turned out (and I used all Arista chemicals and mixed everything according to the directions on the packages):

Arista 76 Developer: 1:1 working solution @ 68°F....12 1/2 minutes with agitation the first 30 seconds, and then agitation for 5-10 seconds every 30 seconds as per the directions on the Arista.EDU Ultra 400 box.
Arista Stop Bath: 30 seconds
Arista Arifix Fixer: 4 minutes (the package says 2 minutes, but I tested the fixer on a leader from the film I clipped and the film did clear up within 2 minutes, but after researching, I doubled the time as others have suggested and determined that the fixing time should be 4 minutes)
Arista Hypo Wash: 5 minutes with flowing water, 5 minutes in the Hypo Wash with occasional agitation, and then another 5 minutes in flowing water.
Arista Wetting Agent: Added during the last 30 seconds of the wash.

When I took the film off the reel, everything appeared fine, but when I started to squeegee the film, that's when I saw that parts of the images were coming off. So did I not fix long enough, or wash long enough, or did I just maybe squeegeed too hard??? Need advice!! Thanks!

~Alan

 

[Light Guru]

I don't think it would be your chemicals, more likely it's bad film stock.

 

[gsgary]

I would try another without sqeegee i never use one, what tank did you use ? is there any chance the film was touching each other in the tank ?

 

[Rick58]

I've developed a lot of film in my life time but I've never seen this. I'd bet bad batch of film

 

[The_Traveler]

water hot?

 

[canoncajun]

My dad used to develop B&W film a long time ago, so I showed him the film when he woke up this morning. He said that it was likely the squeegee. He said he never used to use one either. He said he would just pull the film off the reel and immediately hang it up. So I'm going to keep everything the same when I do my next roll and just not use the squeegee. We'll see how it turns out on the next one.

 

[Rick58]

I'm not sure I buy the squeegee explanation. I never wanted to take a chance scratching the emulsion, but many, many people do. For me it was just the wetting agent then onto the cloth pin in a dust free room.

 

[dxqcanada]

Hmm, I have used squeegee's and I have never removed the emulsion ... just scratching.
I have never seen the emulsion being removed like that, like its being torn off.

Were you lightly using the squeegee or did you press it completely closed ... I only use enough force to contact the film ... and I always try to test the squeegee on the leader part of the film first before going the rest of the way.

 

[webestang64]

I've seen this before but it was with a film not fixed in a hardening fixer. Your wash times are too short. I'd do 10 minutes each instead of 5.

And DO NOT USE A SQUEEGEE.........if you use a wetting agent such as photo Flo you DO NOT NEED TO USE A SQUEEGEE......do you use sand paper to wax a car.......no.

 

[timor]

It looks like inconsistent quality of gelatine used for this batch of film. Nevertheless touching wet emulsion with anything is a bad, bad idea. There are other, much safer methods of shaking off excess of water from film by light shaking or, I admit I do that, by wiping down with soft cloth the base side of film. Your film should be fine, if you do so. Arista Edu is a Foma film. Foma itself is not bad, but under name Edu may hide not very successful batches of Foma. I never had a problem with Arista Edu 100 in 135 or 120 format, but batch of Arista Edu 200 in 120 format was a crap, what, as turned out, everybody new except me. Yet Freestyle was still selling it.

 

[Derrel]

water hot?

Ummmm, yeah, that is my thought too. My guess is that in the wash, the water was allowed to get very hot.

 

[timor]

water hot?

Ummmm, yeah, that is my thought too. My guess is that in the wash, the water was allowed to get very hot.

Might be, but even Foma gelatine should withstand 27 C without a problem or came off uniformly. I wonder, if OP controlled the wash temperature at all and it's quite possible, that not.

 

[Derrel]

water hot?

Ummmm, yeah, that is my thought too. My guess is that in the wash, the water was allowed to get very hot.

Might be, but even Foma gelatine should withstand 27 C without a problem or came off uniformly. I wonder, if OP controlled the wash temperature at all and it's quite possible, that not.

That is my thought EXACTLY....that after a while, the hot water from the water heater got reallllllly hot. I've seen this issue before, and that was what it was from; HOT water wash.

 

[limr]

It seems there are three variables that could have caused this:

-hot water
-squeegee
-bad film stock

The easiest thing to do is to develop two more rolls of the Arista EDU separately and change only one variable each time: first, do everything exactly the same but don't squeegee; then, be very careful about the temperature but go ahead and squeegee.

I'll say that I'm learning towards bad film stock because of the number of problems I've read about concerning the Arista EDU in both 35mm and 120 (either Foma or Shanghai emulsions), but it will be interesting to learn the results of any more testing that you do.

 

[gsgary]

Why has hot water been used

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