Results from first home dev - some blotchiness

thecornflake

thecornflake

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Simon
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So I'm scanning in the negatives from my first attempt at home developing. Pretty good results, but the dark areas are very blotchy. Here is how I did the development -

Camera - Canon AE-1
Film - Ilford Delta 400

Temp - 24c
Developer - D76 1:1
Fixer - Ilford rapid fix 1:4

I filled a large jog with some water and left it for a few hours to bring up to room temp and also let it gas oof a bit as I didn't have any distilled water. I then measured the temperature and used the water in the jug to mix the dev and fix, plus for the stop stage.

Loaded the film onto the reel (using Paterson System 4 tank) in a changing bag. Seemed to go ok.

The clearing test in fixer took 2:20 so I doubled this and rounded up to 5 mins for the fixing time.

Dev stage - 10:07 (according to the Massive dev app). Ilford data sheet states 11.5 for D76 1:1 at 24c so maybe I underdeveloped slightly?
Inverted for the first 60 seconds, then 10 sec every 60 secs.
Stop - Filled tank with water from the jug, 10 sec invertion, drained, repeated this for total of 1 minute.
Fix - Initial 10 sec inversion, then 10 sec every min.
Wash - Filled with water, inverted a few times. Then ran tap through the tank for 2 mins. Added a drop of washing up liquid, ran tap through for another 5 mins.
Film was hung up to dry in a bathroom for a total of around 20 hours.

Scanned on Epson V600. Below is one of the images, with a smaller crop showing the blotching in the black area. This seems to have affected most of the negs, although otherwise they seem ok.
View attachment 16051
View attachment 16050
 
Actually, this isn't all images. I just scanned this from the same film -

Scooter by simon-berry, on Flickr
 
the dev time for delta 400 @ 24C is just under ten mins in id11, whats the " letting the water gas oof as i didnt have any distilled water " bit ?
the fixer should clear the film in 30 seconds ,
did you use a stop between dev and fix?
i cant see the point of adding washing up liquid then washing it off again for five minutes .( in fact i wouldnt use washing up liquid as wetting agent dosent break the bank and it lasts for ages )
and i would have added cold water to get the temp down to 20C .
and they look ok to me ,,cant see any blotchy bits that jump out at me .
 
Look spot on to me Simon, there's a little grain in the deep shadows but thats to be expected.

I think you may be making life a bit more difficult for yourself than you need to. I get my chems to the right temp by either popping them in hot or cold water (this time of year its cold water), load the reel whilst that is happening and then follow the massive dev chart on my tablet for whatever film/dev combination I am using.
EG Fuji Acros 100 in Ilfotec LC29 is

5 mins developing, agitate for the first minute then 10 seconds each minute after
1 min stop with agitation for whole minute
5 mins fixer same agitation routine as the dev
Pop the tank under the tap to fill, add a drop of washing up liquid and agitate the reel for a minute or so then leave it under the running tap for 5 or 6 minutes.

Never had anything but success so far.....

Andy
 
The development time of 11.5 minutes looks correct to me according to the Ilford data sheet; it's what I would go by if I ever used Delta 400. If you are not going to reuse the fixer, then a single rinse with water will do for the stop bath and you can fix for the time recommended on the bottle. Incidentally can you use a less concentrated mix, maybe 1 + 7, in order to save money? - I'm using Agfa fix at the moment and that gives times for 1 + 7. I also reuse the fixer so I take my times based on a clip test. At 1+7 concentration I have never seen the film clear in 30 seconds even with fresh fixer.

I can't see any blotches on your photos, they look fine to me. Regarding the distilled water: if you live in a hard water area, you might find that supermarket 'basics' still table water gives better results than tap water if used for the final rinse . I used Sainsbury's version at about 11p/litre when I lived in London. I'm not sure where the water came from originally, I suspect it was just soft tap water that had been filtered. At least it had no bits in it.

One last suggestion regarding drying: If you can attach something to the bottom of the film to pull it away from the vertical so that it hangs at an angle of 20 or 30 degrees, then you will find that the frames at the bottom dry a lot quicker, as a water drop at the top of the film will not have to travel the whole length of the roll.
 
Last edited:
donut said:
the dev time for delta 400 @ 24C is just under ten mins in id11, whats the " letting the water gas oof as i didnt have any distilled water " bit ?
the fixer should clear the film in 30 seconds ,
did you use a stop between dev and fix?
i cant see the point of adding washing up liquid then washing it off again for five minutes .( in fact i wouldnt use washing up liquid as wetting agent dosent break the bank and it lasts for ages )
and i would have added cold water to get the temp down to 20C .
and they look ok to me ,,cant see any blotchy bits that jump out at me .
Click to expand...
Leaving water to stand for a while lets some of the chemicals release, its done for aquariums and I saw it mentioned somewhere related to photography, although the main reason was to bring it to room temp so the temp then wouldnt change during the process.
On my screen that black area looks really mottled but on my phone its fine, I had thought the image was underexposed and the scanner has lightened it too much. If you brighten a pic in Photoshop too much its a similar effect. However it could also be my monitor calibration.
I did a stop in between dev and fix, using water from the jug for a minute or so with some inversions.
The wash phase was using water direct from the tap, so it probably was a lower temp.
 
Btw, what was the 30 sec clearing time? It took just over 2 minutes but this was using the already diluted fix, should I do the test with stock fixer?

Also the negs had some water spots on them when I hung them up. I have read that these would just be absorbed into the film as it dried but I'm not convinced. I very carefully touched a piece of kitchen roll to each drop without touching the film to soak them up but did I need to worry about them?
 
@thecornflake The fixing time honestly doesn't really matter, you would have to leave it in the fixer for many many hours to over-fix. It's all too easy to under-fix though - especially with tabular grain films like Delta where the clearing time should really be tripled in my experience - so I generally just fix for 8 - 10 minutes with all films. As long as the wash is within 5 degrees of the dev and fixer temperature then it'll be fine (as Kodak recommend) so I wouldn't be too worried about meticulously controlling the wash temperature, I just use the cold tap.

I would get some rinse aid as it lasts for ever, and does help prevent drying marks (its like washing up liquid but without the fragrance).
 
when i mix up fresh fixer ,( ilford at 1 to 4 ) it clears the film in about 30 seconds ,,
i live in a very hard water area and havent had any problems using water straight out of the tap.
i thought that water for aquariums was left to stand for ( quite a while ??? )to get rid of the chlorine ,but im sure someone with fishy fingers will be along to put me right soon .
with regards to the picture of the church ,the ( hedge ? ) that you've blown up cant have been totaly black ,some light must have reflected back ,and i think thats whats you are seeing as blotches ,
the thing with developing is to try and be consistant all of the time ,so that if something does go wrong you know that your procedure has been the same all along and so it may have been something else thats gone wobbly bits up .
 
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