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

[firkin at ncable.net.au (Alastair Firkin)]

Once this happened to me: I had a very "important" film, so I decided 
to wash it in hotter water: washed the emulsion clean away: as a 13 
year old, I will never forget the way the emulsion stayed in the tub as 
I pulled the clear film out :-(

On 09/01/2005, at 4:51 PM, Marc Osborne wrote:

> 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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>
Alastair