This was not good. This was the first time, and hopefully the last time, I really couldn’t get the film on the developer reel. I use a Patterson tank with plastic reels and ratcheting ball bearings. Those balls are supposed to make sure that the film feeds one way onto the reel, which spirals to the center. The reel is designed to leave space in between each winding of the film, so it doesn’t touch itself. Unfortunately, when it does…
…this happens. The developer and fixer can’t get to the spots the film is touching, leaving ugly spots and splotches on the negative. The film did NOT want to go on the reel. It bunched up about 3/4 of the way through. I’ve tried restarting several times, but after about a half and hour fiddling in the changing bag, I forced the rest on there and hoped for the best. Luckily only about 5 frames came out with spots on the negative, and one frame had crescent moon marks from the man-handling the film on the reel.
So why was this one so difficult? I learned later that the film reels need to be COMPLETELY DRY. Looking back, I’m pretty positive they were wet. Regardless, when I pulled the film out, there was silver halide still on the affected pieces (the film was still opaque in areas). I took those frames and submerged them in fixer for a bit longer. It helped a little, but the spots are there to stay.
Another worthy mistake to note is that of flash synchronization. The flash fires at certain speed, which should match up with the shutter. If the shutter is too fast, part of it blocks a portion of the frame, as in the picture above.
Well, all was not lost on this roll. I got quite a few good pictures. It was my first time shooting Ilford HP5+. As with all of my first rolls of film, I did not push or pull process it. It got the same Rodinal 100:1 semi-stand treatment for one hour.
There was quite a bit of editing done in post as you can imagine.
Note the creases in the film on the top-center.
HP5+, while not being my favorite, is still pretty good. It was a shame that the first time I developed with this film, it got bound up in the reel. Lessons learned.