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Pyrocat-HD, wrong stain color?

from Ken Miller (klm@shetlandsoftware.com)
I had a really strange thing happen on the way to a negative yesterday...

I had six negatives to develop - I use four tubes, so it takes two runs to do 6 negs. I use Pyrocat-HD (Sandy Kings formula) for most of my negatives, and in this case, I used it for all six.

After I finished the run, and let the negatives dry, I tossed them onto my light table, and was shocked to see that the first four negatives were not stained at all, but were silver-like - it almost looked like I had developed the negatives in XTOL, or something similar. The two negatives developed in the second run were fine - they had the characteristic brown color of a Pyrocat-HD developed negative.

I can't figure out how this happened - I mixed up both batches exactly the same, except the second batch was smaller in quantity (2 vs. 4 negs). Same tubes, same fixer, water stop, etc. *Nothing* was different.

The film I used was HP5+ - I've had very consistent results with this developer/film combination....

Can someone explain to me how these negatives have NO stain?

Thanks!

-klm.

(posted 8308 days ago)

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