Topic: Ektar mystery

[jharr]

So I recently pulled a roll of Ektar 100 through my Voigtländer Bessa 6x9, stopping periodically to briefly open the shutter. I dev'd in my usual Unicolor C-41 and have just finished scanning. The film seemed a bit dustier than usual and oddly, most of the dust was black instead of the usual white specks. To me that means pinholes in the emulsion. Now here is the weird part. The 2nd to last frame I scanned was pretty much unusable. It was covered with hundreds if not thousands of black specks. the first attached pic is a 100% crop of a 3200 ppi scan. Then I scanned the final frame and there was maybe 4... on the whole 6x9 frame. It was practically dust free! (see 2nd attachment) Mind you these frames are right next to each other and scanned at the same time.

Any thoughts on what I'm seeing here??

[astrobeck]

It looks like debris from bad felt, or light seal material...
a mystery...

[02Pilot]

Look closely at the bellows. Were you extending and collapsing the lens from shot to shot?

[Francois]

Definitely something with fibers is wearing out.
I know it sounds like a dumb idea but you can always pop the bellows out and vacuum the inside very carefully...

[jharr]

Yes, I fold that camera frequently. The fibers get embedded in the film? It seems like they would wash away in the initial warm-up rinse.

[Late Developer]

I recently got some XP2 Super processed (rolls of 120 and 35mm) and on both types, I got a load of crud deposited on the negative to the point that I've given up hope of ever being able to use most of them in any meaningful way.

My cameras don't have bellows and I'm assuming that the detritus is linked to the solutions used for developing - possibly (probably?) the result of old / over-used chemicals that contain goo that wouldn't be there if the machinery was cleaned more regularly.

If you dev'd your own, I'm assuming there's some issue with the film.  Like you say, it seems unlikely that anything from the camera would be transferred and become part of the film and wouldn't wash off when rinsing.

[astrobeck]

Yes, I fold that camera frequently. The fibers get embedded in the film? It seems like they would wash away in the initial warm-up rinse.

sometimes static cling is a beast.....

[jharr]

The mysterious thing is that adjacent images are so different.

[Pete_R]

Are we looking at positive or negative images?

You said the spots were black instead of the normal white so I'm a bit confused.

Do you have a strong lupe you can inspect the film surface? Is the crap foreign body still on, or in, the film or are we just seeing the image produced by it?

[jharr]

Are we looking at positive or negative images?

You said the spots were black instead of the normal white so I'm a bit confused.

Do you have a strong lupe you can inspect the film surface? Is the crap foreign body still on, or in, the film or are we just seeing the image produced by it?

The images are inverted negative scans, so the 'black' stuff is actually 'clear' when looking directly at the negative. I will take a look with a lupe tonight and see if I can discern what it is.

[Pete_R]

The images are inverted negative scans, so the 'black' stuff is actually 'clear' when looking directly at the negative.

So I guess this was dust on the film at exposure which is probably now gone. As to why it sould be worse on some images than others - maybe connected to when you opened and closed the camera? Maybe the bellows closing pushed more dust onto some frames?

[mhcfires]

It really looks like dust to me. Dust is a big bug-a boo, I know, hard to get rid of, but I would be willing to bet on it being a dust problem. The suggestion to vacuum out the inside sounds good to me.

m

[Francois]

The thing with dust is that even if it washes out at dev time, the damage is already done since it blocked the light when you took the picture.

Now if it was white spots, that would be crud in the developer. I know commercial labs are getting worse and worse nowadays. I now tend to favor sending the film to big commercial labs who run film in a big continuous loop machine. I figure that if a small shop can get away with one wrecked roll of film, the big lab can't afford to waste maybe 50 rolls at a time.