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Response to drying marks on Agfapan 25

from Peter Merts (pmerts@levi.com)
Martin, thanks for your reply. According to Kodak's tech support, the symptom of too much PhotoFlow is a residual scum on the film -- which I do not have. The differential drying marks which I am getting are, according to Kokak and Agfa, a classic symptom of too little PhotoFlow or LFN. However, I have increased the concentration of PhotoFlow up to 3 times Kodak's recommendation, but I still get the marks -- which are the result of differential rates of drying for the contiguous areas of film (the wet film is swollen, as it dries it reduces -- but because there are wet spots surrounded by dry areas on the emulsion side of the film, the reduction is differential.)

If you hold the emulsion-side of the film against the light just right, you can see the "step" which is the edge of the drying mark -- the drying mark is togographically different than the adjacent film, and prints as a white outline. On the non-emulsion side of the film, there is a small indentation or dimple, where the substrate is buckled due to the stress caused by differetial drying of the emulsion.

What's curious to me is that I do not have this problem with TMAX -- only with Agfa. I asked Agfa what might cause the difference -- they pointed out that the emulsion layer of Agfa film is thicker than that of Kodak, but did not understand how that might contribute to these drying marks.

(posted 8741 days ago)

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