Thin, purple coloured negatives

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I believe I have used a bad developer, but I was wondering if anyone else might know more about it.

Recently, I began using a bottle of ilfosol-s developer I had bought around March of this year. It has been open since then. This week, I decided to start using it again, on a few rolls of Tri-X film.

My results were bad. Very thing emulsion, and in one case no emulsion left. The negatives were tinted purple as well. I followed the specified developing times but nothing seemed to change on the other rolls.

So I decided I would try Tmax developer instead, which was a new bottle, and my negatives came out almost perfect.

So why did the ilfosol-s do this? Does this chemical really not last long? I know the bottle says it only lasts 4 months, but I figured my results wouldn't have been so dreadful.

-- Geordie (clarke@uvic.ca), November 22, 2001

Answers

It's probably the fixer, but I'm not convinced. The same thing happened to me a couple of weeks back. HP5+ (2 rolls) processed in ID-11 1:1, brand new developer, stop bath and fixer right from the store. The negs came out with very little detail, thin and underdeveloped, and with a pink/purple cast.

The next couple of rolls I tried with dev, stop and fix from the same batch came out perfect. I am as perplexed as you are. Any comments anyone?

-- Sriram (r_sriram@ziplip.com), November 22, 2001.


Hmmmmm, but I'm not convinced it's the fixer, because I did 4 rolls of film with the same bottle of fixer. Three rolls were with an old bottle of Ilfosol-S, and the last roll was new Tmax developer and a new kodak stop bath. Perhaps the stop bath did it? The stop bath I used with the Ilfosol was the same age as the developer. I don't know why I don't jsut use water...

Anyway, right now I'm going to induce that it was the old developer that did this. I don't want to chuck out a bunch of chemicals, but trial and error is telling me this bottle of developer is the culprit.

-- geordie (clarke@uvic.ac), November 23, 2001.


Bad fixer would give you normal negatives with a grey veiling over them, and a milky appearance where they should be clear.
The Ilfosol-s has oxidised and gone bad, simple as that. Some developers just don't keep very long once they're opened.
March to November? Hmm, let's see, that's twice as long as Ilford recommends, so what do you expect? Didn't the slightly brown colour tell you something?

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), November 23, 2001.

Yes, now that I look at it, it is brown. Unfortunately, it was the first bottle of Ilfosol-s that I had ever used, so I was unsure of its chemical properties.

But now I know! And I only ruined three good rolls of film in the process! Don't I feel like a winner!

Oh well, easy come, easy go. Thanks for clearing it up.

-- Geordie (clarke@uvic.ca), November 23, 2001.


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