Brown tint to Tri-X negatives

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I recently developed five rolls of Tri-X, some I rolled myself and some were store-bought rolls. The negatives have an overall brown tint to them that I have never seen before.

Now, I figure either the developer was bad or the fix was. Anybody got ideas. The negatives look like they may be a little more contrasty than I am used to. I shot this stuff at ASA320 and used normal development. I've never had this happen before, what to do, what to do.

CC

-- Chuck Cypert (ccypert@mindspring.com), July 01, 2001

Answers

Sounds as if you got off lucky. Usually, bad developer gives thin, low-contrast negs, while spent fixer imparts a blotchy cloudiness, which can be cleared by refixing in fresh fix. Did you use a developer that in the past has not produced brown Tri-X negs? If so, I'd dump that batch of developer. As for what you have in hand, you might try refixing a roll or strip to see whether the color goes away. Otherwise, print and see how you go.

-- Keith Nichols (knichols1@mindspring.com), July 01, 2001.

What developer did you use? Microdol-X always gave me brownish negatives when I used it, but other developers have not. (Though Microdol-X never gave me contrasty negatives.

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), July 02, 2001.

I've found an assortment of developers to give brownish negs with several films, especially the slower finer-grained films. Sometimes the negs appear brown to the eye and sometimes not, but even if the brown tint isn't readily apparent a color densitometer will show it. Sometimes developing for contraction will show a stronger brown tint than N development.

Word from Kodak around the time Xtol appeared on the market was that a brown tone in negs frequently went along with fine grain. I don't know how valid that is, but I don't worry about it any more.

-- John Hicks (jbh@magicnet.net), July 02, 2001.


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