Sometimes by getting it wrong, I got it right.
It was Spring 1984 when I made this black & white photo of Conrail’s SEBO-B climbing east through Warren, Massachusetts.
Until a couple of day’s ago, this negative was lost and unprinted, part of a group of Conrail negatives on the Boston & Albany.
When I first relocated these images after 32 years, I was puzzled.
What had happened and Why?
Then I remember the situation: I’d messed up the processing of the negatives at the time and I was disgusted with the results. And, so I’d put the negatives away in a general file, where they were mostly mixed in with similar outtakes from my High School yearbook collection (I was a sort of unofficial class photographer.)
In 1984, I’d typically use Kodak Microdol-X as my black & white developer, aiming to work with this solution at 68 degrees F.
To mix the solution from powdered form, I’d have to bring the temperature up to about 120 degrees F, then let it cool (often in glass bottles soaking in ice water).
I must have been in a hurry, and in this instance, I’d failed to allow the developer to cool properly. When I processed the negatives the solution was still over 80 degrees F. Worse, the rest of my chemistry was still at 68 degrees.
The result was that my photos were grossly over processed, but since the developer was highly active, it affected highlights and shadow areas differently. This provided much greater shadow detail to highlight detail than I’d normally expect.
Also, the shock to the emulsion when I dropped the hot film into relatively cool stop bath solution caused it to reticulate.
Reticulated emulsion results in grain clumping that lowers the sharpness, produces a ‘halo-effect’, and creates a speckled and uneven grain pattern that is most noticeable in even areas such as the sky.
Since the negatives received much greater development than usual, they are very dense, and back in my day printing photos in the family kitchen, were effectively unprintable.
With modern digital scanning and post processing techniques, I was able to overcome difficulties with the density and contrast.
I find the end result pictorial. Perhaps, it’s not an accurate rendition of the scene, but pleasing to the eye none-the-less.
I’m just happy I didn’t throw these negatives away. After all, Conrail SD40-2s were common, and I had plenty of opportunities to photograph freights on the B&A.
Stay tuned for more!
Tracking the Light is Daily!
T-Max was introduced in late-1986, two and half years after I made the photo in today’s post. I was at RIT (Rochester Institute of Tech) when Tmax came out and Kodak supplied us a couple free rolls of T-Max100 to try out. Kodak’s Tmax400 followed later. I used a lot of Tmax when I was at school, but I never got satisfactory results. I found the 100 better than 400, but I stopped using it in the 1980s. I wasn’t aware of a ‘bad batch’ of the film (or if I was, I’d forgotten). Occasionally, I get a bad batch of Kodachrome though.
The difficulty with T-max is that it uses a ‘T grain’ structure (thus the name), which in theory optimizes the surface of the grain relative to the film plane, however, if processed incorrectly (and/or with excessive or violent agitation) the emulsion is prone to grain clumping. This is an unsightly and unpleasant effect, conceptually similar to my problem with reticulation.
That’s pretty cool. Wasn’t that the era when a bad batch of Tri-X got out onto the market too? Or was that T-Max? I got some of the bad film and have my negs stashed in my files as well. .I’ll have to revisit them thanks to this post!
If you can scan them, I could take a look and give you an idea what happened. Many problems with commercially processed B&W film can be associated with over-processing or excessive/aggressive agitation that can cause grain clumping.
Interesting information. I have a black and white slide film, professionally processed, where the sky (only) exhibits a kind of crazy paving effect. Perhaps a chemical issue during processing? It only ever occurred on two films, processed at the same time, I think.