I have just developed my 1st roll of film and the negatives seen to be very light. I used Acutol at 30ml to 300ml at 20degrees C . Following the instructions on the bottle the film was imersed for 11mins, film was Ilford 400 Delta Pro. Have I done something wrong?

Scott.

-- Scott Thomson (scottthomson@btinternet.com), June 30, 2001

Answers

You are not giving us enough information. For example, the negatives could be underexposed (and probably are) rather than incorrectly developed. What does the shadow detail in the negatives look like? Did you expose the film at 400 or some other speed? What were you photographing? The subject matter could result in the negatives appearing to be light--especially to the inexperienced.

-- Joe Mille (jmmiller@poka.com), June 30, 2001.

I suppose you gave it enough agitation? 3-5 inversions every half minute, for example. :-)

-- Patric (jenspatric@mail.bip.net), June 30, 2001.

Agitation was 10second every min, another film I took in the same setting and lighting (shop developed) turned out ok. Should I over expose my film next time? Scott.

-- Scott Thomson (scottthomson@btinternet.com), July 01, 2001.

Could it be you used the new Delta 400 with times intented for the old Delta 400? (Some of the times for the new film are very long, like 11 mins in Acufine at 20°C for 500 ASA, I get 800 ASA from TMY in less than 5 minutes.)

-- Wolfram Kollig (kollig@ipfdd.de), July 02, 2001.

Scott, I have no experience with Acutol. If you are sure that you followed directions correctly, you may need to do a little testing to come up with the correct ISO for your film/developer/equipment combination. For example, I expose Delta 400 (the old) at 320 and will probably need to test for the new formultion. Testing is a real pain but sometimes it is the only way to nail things down.

Of course, you could have just made a mistake somewhere in mixing. It is just hard to say. If your negatives are REALLY lacking in density this may be the case. At the very least you might try bracketing some exposure and then developing another roll.

BTW, I have always developed my own film but I have printed negatives that were shop developed for other people. To say that some of these were overdeveloped is vast understatement.

-- Joe Miller (jmmille@poka.com), July 02, 2001.