Silvering with Fomaspeed PE for

AndreasD · 2012-01-18T11:10:53+00:00

Vor ca. 4 Wochen habe ich einige Planfilme auf Fomaspeed Grad 2 als Kontakte angefertigt. Ordnungsgemäß entwickelt, fixiert und gewässert. Kurze Zeit späte...

AndreasD

About four weeks ago, I made some contact prints from sheet films on Fomaspeed Grade 2 paper. I developed, fixed and rinsed them as required. Shortly afterwards, I noticed tiny silvery-brown lines and a few spots in certain areas of one of the prints; however, these are only visible upon close inspection and under certain lighting angles: Lines along the flat film holder mask (like a microscopic string of pearls) Lines along some cloud contours (also like a microscopic string of pearls) Two small spots (like microscopic clusters of dots) in certain areas of the clouds It doesn’t seem to be blooming; silvering after just a few days or weeks – I can hardly imagine that. In short: in over 30 years of developing my own black-and-white film, I have never encountered this phenomenon before. However, this is the first time I have used Fomaspeed. What has been your experience (with Fomaspeed fixed-grade)? Many thanks and best regards, Andreas

AndreasD

Hello, I have now attached a picture of the photo mentioned in my previous message. The quality is poor, as it was taken very close up and the spots are only visible from a certain angle and under certain lighting conditions. The picture shows the brownish-yellow spots in the darker parts of the clouds. Many thanks and best regards, Andreas[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

MirkoBoeddecker

Hello Andreas, If you’ve got 10 good prints from the same batch and just one shows this effect, the statistics suggest it’s down to the paper rather than your processing; an emulsion fault (though I’m not aware of any such fault) would affect all the sheets. At first glance, one might think that perhaps two prints stuck together in the fixer or the wash tank. Did you fix and rinse the prints individually? Did you make sure the water was 20 degrees? Sometimes this also happens if you’ve turned on the light whilst still in the stop bath or after fixing for too short a time, to see how the contact print has turned out. Best regards, Mirko

AndreasD

Hello Mirko, Thank you very much for your comments. The chemicals were freshly prepared, and each print was processed individually at 20–25 °C. What’s strange is that the spots/lines seem to follow the contours of the image (cloud edges, shadow lines, etc. – see my first enquiry dated 18 January 2012). Since yesterday, I’ve had a new insight: Yesterday I developed some sheet films using Adofix from the same concentrate bottle as the ‘problem image’ described here. In doing so, I noticed – unfortunately only after developing – some slight flocculation. The Adofix concentrate must therefore have been too old. With yesterday’s sheet films, I had to determine the settling time anyway, so there really shouldn’t have been any problems with the ‘stored’ concentrate for these films. The situation may have been different for the contact prints mentioned above (Fomaspeed Grade 2). I fixed these at 1+9 for 90 seconds. The flocculation may have led to insufficient fixing and thus to rapid browning – that is my current theory. Best regards Andreas

MirkoBoeddecker

The strange thing is that the spots and lines seem to follow the edges of the image (the edges of clouds, shadow lines, etc.)

...which also points very clearly to a ‘glitch’ in the processing. Fixer goes off too. Especially once it’s been opened. It starts to smell (...different...). It smells of sulphur. It’s possible that dissolved silver from the light areas (clouds) wasn’t sufficiently absorbed by the fixer and then re-deposited itself in the darker areas where it came into contact with developed silver. Best regards, Mirko