Blobs on one edge developing problem?

compulsivehordr

compulsivehordr

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Alastair
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Just processed a roll of Neopan Acros 100 with FX-39, 1+19, 11 mins, agitating every minute etc, just like the Massive Dev App told me. Got weird blobs on the left on some of the frames mid-roll. Any ideas? Could they be caused by crinkling the film when (mis)loading onto the spiral?
 
Doesn't look like crinkled film to me - that would more likely be a curved line or series of lines where it got kinked. This looks more like either slight fogging of the edge of the film or a chemical problem such as a tiny amount of fix left on the spiral from previous use. Is this 120 roll film?
 
Was this one roll of 120 in a Paterson Super System 4 universal tank?
 
compulsivehordr said:
Yes, it was. I feel a schoolboy error moment coming on....
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Not your fault at all, it's poor design on Paterson's part.

This is caused because the spiral goes up the column as you invert the tank - there's enough space on the column of a Universal tank for a 120 spiral to go up by quite a bit. As a result, the 500mL of developer no longer fully covers the whole spiral, and you get that under-development on one side of the film.

On older Paterson tanks they supplied a little white stopper to ensure that spirals didn't move, but they omitted them in the Super System 4 range. As a result, every few months we get someone (including myself, a while back) posting with the same problem.

There are a few different solutions - the one that I do is to emulate the white stopper by getting a thick rubber band, putting it around the column (after the spiral has gone on), so the spiral cannot move up any further.

The other alternatives is to put an empty spiral to fill up the column space, so your spiral physically cannot move up further, although this means more (somewhat unnecessary) cleaning, or just to use more developer (more costly, a tad unnecessary as well) in the tank.

Yours hasn't fared too badly - my agitation technique is quite vigorous so when it happened to me, the roll moved quite far up the tank, causing this: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=379354
 
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I wonder if Paterson has taken up on this design fault....indeed are they even aware of it?

Perhaps they will re introduce the white stopper at some point in the future.

As FC2 says, you've got off quite lightly tbh although still frustrating for you.
 
Thanks guys - I have a packet of fat rubber bands before me now. Annoyingly, I am sure I have one of those clips somewhere but didn't know what it was for, so put it somewhere safe. Cheers! :)

Asha said:
As FC2 says, you've got off quite lightly tbh although still frustrating for you.
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- It was a rubbish shot anyway!
 
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Bubbles

Whether these are due in part to the spiral riding up or not, you don't want em.
Consider good practice in avoiding tank contamination and after each agitation, tap the tank to dislodge bubbles, sometimes they get trapped in and amongst the film and spiral...:)
 
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