Something wrong with C-41 process?

<p>Several times I've gotten color negatives back from a local lab in which the more exposed regions seem to have something wrong with them. The bright areas look as if they've "melted" a bit, and hence spread out some distance into the surrounding parts of the image. I've attached an example, which is a 100% crop of 120 Kodak Portra 160 VC-2, scanned with a Nikon Coolscan 9000 at 4000 pixels per inch.</p>

<p>This doesn't look normal to me. In particular, it doesn't look like what you get from an out-of-focus bright area. (And the examples I've seen aren't all out-of-focus in any case). I suspect there's something wrong with their C-41 process, but I've no real idea what (wrong temperature? wrong concentration of some chemical?). </p>

<p>Does anyone here have any idea?</p>

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<p>Look at the film with a loupe. If you don't see the same look, it could be a scanning artifact. (Say, Digital ICE gone nuts?)<br /> Or, it might be retained silver in the dense areas of the negative from inadequate bleaching.</p>

<p>Thanks! BOTH your ideas seem like they are correct.</p>

<p>Below, is the same part of the frame without ICE enabled. It now looks normal. </p>

<p>This still leaves the question of why ICE goes nuts. It shouldn't, on colour negative film. So maybe your idea that there is still silver there due to inadequate bleaching is also right. Is this the sort of thing that happens often? I'd have thought that if they're using some "minilab" (as I presume) the amount of bleaching would be standard, and hard to somehow get wrong. Or can they adjust this, and might have skimped to save processing time?</p>

<p>I also might have thought that retained silver would have other bad effects. Maybe it does, but they're not obvious (eg, lower saturation or contrast than there would otherwise be)?</p>

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