Assistance sleuthing a light leak. Your thoughts?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fotoobscura

Bill was right. I fixed for an additional 3 minutes and the images cleared. Now, why literally fresh fixer (as in, a few days mixed) couldn't fix a roll in three or four minutes escapes me. This has been my process for at least 10-15 years with no problems. Clearly I made a mistake somewhere in mixing the fixer. I guess.

---

Two possibilities to consider:

1) did you inadvertently mix it to paper strength dilution, rather than film strength dilution?;
2) did you "double-dilute" - i.e. did you inadvertently take working solution fixer (e.g. at 1 + 4) and further dilute that (e.g. at 1 + 4)?

Creative slip ups are my speciality :laugh:

Bill this little mistake ratcheted up my diligence that was probably (obviously) severely lacking. I used to spreadsheet all my temperatures/formulas/mixes (date mixed, even periodic hypo and clip tests) and I got lazy. The amount of effort required to test for "active" fixer or developer is so small that if you really want that roll or rolls to come out it makes sense to me to do periodic staggered sampling just to make sure...

Thanks again!

Matt,

1) I mixed a gallon of stock fixer. I think what I did NOT do was two things- the water temperature was not warm enough and I did not mix the powder thoroughly enough. The fixer DOES in fact work, it's just quite dilute (and does NOT seem to be improving even after *laborious* mixing). 8+ minutes to clear a roll of 35mm is ridiculous when mixed as stock.

2) I've done that before! HA! (not this time though).

My biggest mistakes are generally tragic and on the whiskey. Like mixing up developer and blix and then blixing then developing...

Furthermore, I tend to never write down the creative mistakes that turned out in my favor..

I'm doomed!

Time to give a bit back to the community for me ;-)

the "leaks" at the sprockets are the result of to heavy/fast agitation with the developer ... the time I shot 35mm it has been my main fault to ruin my negs. Something similar exists with 120 also from the film edges ...

I agree that there were two problems here: the fixing, which caused the cloudiness (could have been badly loaded on the reel as well, i.e., touching), and the agitation, which causes the surge marks at the sprocket holes. For this latter, make sure your reel is not sliding up and down in the tank when you agitate and use the "torus" motion, i.e., twisting and inverting at the same time, and see if that helps.

You've fixed your own fixing problem :-)

Best,

Doremus

www.DoremusScudder.com