issues with FPP 16mm film stock, very thin negative

[Cranford Heights]

Hello all!

16mm film processing question here. I’m not a newbie to film or processing, but I’m using a new film stock, in a new environment.

I’ve started using the black and white negative Cine16 400 stock from Film Photography Project, and am having some issues. I don’t think I’ll be using this stock in future, despite the great price.
This is an unknown stock (they call it fresh stock but won’t disclose the manufacturer) with no markings on it to help with identification. It’s said to be panchromatic, with a rating of 400.

I used it for a music video shoot, and am now processing the footage as negative. A clip test done at home with Cinestill D96 looked good. So I went in to the lab (a local darkroom film lab) and ran the first 100 feet in a Lomo tank with D96 (mixed by the lab, not bought by me) for 10 minutes at 68 degrees , and the labs fixer.

Practically no image, and the heads, which should be black and very very dense as it was exposed in loading, is a medium grey and transparent.

I’m trying to figure out what happened here. I’m ruling out underexposure as the clip test was good, all reels were shot with the same camera and settings, and if it was exposure the heads would still look properly dense, with just the image being thin.
 The D96 was mixed 10 days ago, the logbook says it has run 200 ft of film so far and all looked fine, and I trust the person who mixed it. I have double checked that they mixed stock solution, and they say yes.

There was an issue with fixer. As it was sitting in the fixer (I fix for 7 minutes) I tested some of the fixer with hypo and it came up as bad. So I poured out that fixer and poured in fresh fix, and fixed for 7 minutes.
So possibly it could be overfixed, but 14 minutes does not seem to be long enough to cause such drastic changes. But the fix being bad does raise the question of whether the developer was also possibly questionable.

The D96 at the lab is mixed to Kodak’s recipe for D96. The D96 I used for the test was out of the package, the manufacturer was CineStill. Are there different recipes for D96?

The other factor is the film stock. Is this mystery stock perhaps very sensitive to slight changes in chemistry? Sensitive to overfixing? I will say that I’ve used this stock for teaching purposes in the past and it’s always been fine.

It is really pointing to the developer being exhausted, diluted, or mixed wrong. If anyone can think of a factor I’m overlooking please let me know.

I’m going to get a fresh package of D96 from B and H, and also bring my own fixer, and run several 1ft tests to see if I can get a decent image.

The footage was shot interior at night, with two 1K lights with diffusion about 4-5 ft from the subject. I don’t have my logs at the moment but it was a 10mm prime lens at f 2.5 or so (may have been up or down a half stop). Bolex reflex, which gives a shutter speed of 1/80. This should give plenty of exposure at 400 ASA, and the clip test looked properly exposed.

 

[Robert Houllahan]

I think that one is Orwo if I remember right.

In our Allen linear machine processing we run F76 at 75deg 3min in a 150Gal dev tank with constant turbulation.

[Simon Wyss]

7 hours ago, Cranford Heights said:

(a local darkroom film lab) and ran the first 100 feet in a Lomo tank with D96 (mixed by the lab, not bought by me) for 10 minutes at 68 degrees , and the labs fixer.

It is really pointing to the developer being exhausted, diluted, or mixed wrong.

Yes. Who takes responsibility today for her his doing? You can’t trust anybody anymore. I know what can go wrong at a film lab, I had one myself.

The stock is ORWO N 74 because that’s the only ISO 400 panchromatic negative film available in 16 now.

 

[Sebastian Bock]

It could be a mix of different factors. 
If the developer was a bit more exhausted than expected, if your thermometer is a bit off, the temperature dropped a bit during the 10 minutes, your agitation was a bit too lazy and you emptied the tank a bit too early - if all factors that influence the density of a negative are on the ‚bad‘-side, you could get a thin result. 

I once read a nice saying that‘s supposed to be from a Kodak brochure:

Photography is almost impossible. The shutter speed can deviate by up to 50%, as can the aperture, not to mention the thermometer and the clock in the darkroom. If all the tolerances swing in one direction, the result is a white or black negative. But since they rarely do, we photograph with passion.

I‘d say it’s very unlikely that the fixer caused that. 

Good luck for the other rolls!

Sebastian

 

[Cranford Heights]

Thanks all for the responses, and knowing the film stock is a first step, thanks for the id on that. It's double perf, so maybe FPP is buying some big lot of it in double perf and re canning it.

When B and H opens on Sunday (these things always happen on a friday or saturday in nyc don't they) I'll pick up some fresh chemicals and run some tests.

I agree it has to be the developer.

It was pretty cold yesterday, but I warmed the developer to 68, but do I trust the thermometer now.....

 

 

[Cranford Heights]

So I have been running clip tests, and everything looks correct with the fresh developer. So it was definitely a problem at the lab.

It could have been:

-exhausted or diluted D96 (D96 exhausts very quickly, much more quickly than other developers.) Using a Lomo tank, someone could have diluted the developer with water, as everyone there likes to do pre-soaks of film and it's hard to get all the water out of the Lomo after that.

-the pre-soak itself, which I don't usually do, but did a 1m presoak that time. Why do i listen to people.

-the thermometer was off. It was about 30 degrees in NYC that day, and I warmed the developer to 68 but didn't check with multiple thermometers.

-differing D96 recipes. I have an email chain going with CineStill to see if their D96 matches the recipe published by Kodak. I doubt this would be the problem though.

I'm running the rest of the footage based on the tests tomorrow wednesday, using fresh chemistry I'm mixing myself, and my own thermometer. Hoping for no further mishaps.

I was going for a bit of a rough look with the music video, which is probably why I was a bit lackadaisical about using fresh developer etc. But a barely visible image would NOT fall into creative intention here. Live and learn. When I get the scans I can post a few.