[Leica] OT: What went wrong? (B&W developing resulting intransparent negatives)

[mail at steveunsworth.co.uk (Steve Unsworth)]

If the film was completely clear (no frame numbers) it sounds as if
either the developer wasn't working, or you poured fixer in first. The
extra time in the stop bath shouldn't have caused any problems.

A cap full of wetting agent sounds like far to much. I use 5 drops with
400ml of water for a single film in my Jessops tank.

Steve


-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+mail=steveunsworth.co.uk@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+mail=steveunsworth.co.uk@leica-users.org] On Behalf
Of Marc Osborne
Sent: 09 January 2005 05:51
To: lug@leica-users.org
Subject: [Leica] OT: What went wrong? (B&W developing resulting
intransparent negatives)


Hello everyone,

After a 10 year hiatus I decided to dust off the darkroom equipment and
start doing some B&W shooting, developing, and printing again. I went to
the local camera store and bought Sprint developer, stop bath, and
fixer. This is a local company, based in Rhode Island, that I remember
as making fairly good products, already in liquid form, so the final mix
was alway easy to do.

I never had a problem through the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. I used my
father's (now mine) IIIf and generally Kodak film and chemicals so
ending up with a completely transparent roll of film was very
disappointing. Here was my process: Loading the film onto the Patterson
tank was no problem. I had complete darkness. Chemicals all at 68
degrees fahrenheit. Sprint recommended time for Tri-X 400 was 10
minutes. Poured in the diluted 1:9 developer and agitated and knocked
off bubbles as per standard photography book and patterson tank sheet
recommendation. Poured out developer back into what I thought was empty
developer bottle. Poured in properly diluted stop bath REALIZED I might
have poured developer into fixer bottle:( Poured out stop bath and ran
downstairs to remix fixer...lost maybe 2 to 3 minutes in doing so. At
that time the stop bath had been poured back into it's proper container
but the roll of film was undoubtedly still dripping with it. Poured in
fixer and agitated for three minutes. 
Poured out fixer and washed for 30 minutes.
Mixed bottle cap of photo-flo with 1 quart of water.
After 30 minutes of washing and occasional agitation poured out water,
poured in photo-flo and thought it was pretty darn bubbly. Agitated for
a minute, made it more bubbly, poured it ouf, poured in more water to
get rid of bubbles. Pulled film off the reel and looked right through
it. Completely transparent end to end.

This was not the return to my glory years of B&W that I had foreseen. I
just bought an M2 to I could gradually retire the IIIf and make use of
all the advances of the M series. But this was a rude shock. Please
help. Where did I go wrong? Was it the interval between the stop bath
and the fixer? Could the Sprint chemicals have been on the shelf too
long? I don't know where to start again.

Thanks,

Marc
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