# Question about ruined negatives



## physics_student (Dec 16, 2006)

Hello,
We took several photos on a B&W film, and when we developed them, unfortunately most of the negatives were white (as if the aparture never opened (the environment was well lit)). One frame (a rectangle exactly the size of a single photo) was entirely black and there were some thinner black stripes near the beginning of the film. There were no "greys" anywere on the film.

After checking the camera it appears to be alright and its aperture opens. Can anyone propose according to their experience in which stage the problem could be?

The camera is Canon EOS 3000V and the film is KODAK PROFESSIONAL T-MAX 100. The development procedure was:
6 minutes in a D19 developer (mixing 10 seconds per minute)
1 minute wash in flowing water.
10 minutes in a fixer (mixing 10 seconds per minute) [I don't know it's name but it contained mostly (1 mol.) sodium thiosulfate, and a smaller amount of other chemicals.
1 minute wash in flowing water.

The film itself was of course acquired as is, but the chemicals were made in our lab (by physicists, who never took a photograph on film in their life...). We're far from professionals but we did it twice before and it worked (with an other, but similar camera, though).

I'll thank whoever can help.


----------



## Alex_B (Dec 16, 2006)

Did you take the lens cap off?

Sorry, that was a totally unqualified statement and just my sense of humour 

Welcome to the forum anyway! I see, a fellow Physicist 

To me it seems more like a problem with exposure/the camera, and not so much with the developing procedure. Since you have one image black and all others white, you where able to develop at least one exposed frame. But i might be wrong here

Could it be something withthe shutter? I had a problem with a canon shutter some years ago, it would sometimes not properly open, and sometimes it would close too slowly. so that then gives you overexposed and very underexposed images. if your camera takes this to the extreme, you might get white and black shots ...

try some cheap colour film and get it developed in a cheap lab to see if the problem is camera related. and as said, tzhen m,y guess would be the shutter!


----------



## Digital Matt (Dec 16, 2006)

I'm a little confused when you say most of the negatives were white.  Do you mean clear?  If the negative recieved no exposure, it would be clear.  If you have some that are black, then they have reached Dmax, and are completely overexposed.  If you had a light leak in the camera, they would all be black, or striped, or fogged.  It could be a problem with the shutter sticking.  Shoot a roll of color print film through the camera and drop it off to a 1 hour photo lab to test that theory.


----------



## Torus34 (Dec 16, 2006)

Sounds like a bad film load.


----------



## Flash Harry (Dec 17, 2006)

Try cleaning the contacts on the lens and camera, I once had a similar problem that was due to the aperture not closing down when the shutter was fired giving me massively overexposed/black negs, but as Matt says if the negs are clear your not getting an exposure at all, set a slow shutter speed, load no film, open the camera back, look through and fire the shutter, if its sticking you'll see no light, so no need to waste a film the camera needs looking at.


----------



## Alex_B (Dec 17, 2006)

soo .. what came out of this? looks like the one asking the question did not come back to the forum yet. maybe he did not expect us to reply that quickly


----------

