Xp2 Super Bad Processing?

I just picked up a roll of Xp2 left in my regular independent photo dealer, and

set up for scanning. The results are far from ideal!

 

The images have a darker purple region (after scanning) on either side at the

film edges, and I am certain that I'm seeing vertical streaks!

 

Now, given that the camera is older than me (Only just! It's an old

Rolleicord.) and it's the first time of trying, I initialy thought light-leak'.

But of course that would produce bright streaks, not what I'm seeing.

 

I don't usually develop C41 chemistry myself, but this looks like an agitation

problem to me. However, the film used is rather old got very cheap in a boot-

sale, so I'm wondering if it could be a poblem related to it's age. I got

about 100 rolls of the stuff, so it would be nice if it wasn't!

 

The pic below is a scan of one of the frames. I haven't mucked it about

digitally except to reduce it to a reasonable size. There has been no colour

correction applied at the scanner so what you see is what I got!

 

Has anyone seen this before with old Xp2, or should I be advising my local

dealer to switch his lab!

 

Gordon.<div></div>

Well if it was not exposed aound the spool( check edges), it is poor fix or bleach

I've seen XP2 prints come out like this before. When I scanned I just desaturated the image.

If you're scanning from a print, keep in mind that it can be pretty hard to get real B&W prints back that don't have some color cast in them.

1. Not scanned from print, from neg. The cast is not uniform.

 

2. Scanning as monochrome leaves dark bands at the edges. The neg is lower density at edge as well as discoloured. (The discolouration is harder to see in the neg.)

 

I expect to get a little darkening at the corners on a 6x6 neg with this type of camera, especially noticable in shots with lots of sky, but not just along the edges.

 

3. Exposed edges from loose winding on the spool would not give dark bands on printing, but light ones surely? (Iv'e seen the result of that before!) The effect is if anything worse on frames from the middle of the roll. I would expect loose winding to affect one end more than the other. (See pic for a mid-roll shot.)

 

4. The neg shows signs of vetrical streaking, which makes me think of insufficient agitation. Take close look at the scan and you may see than some at least of the streaks appear to line up with the fence posts. I may be imagining that, but there are definite vertical streaks in the sky.

 

5. Good point about bleach/fix. I have seen questions/answers about this before but in those cases the answer was inssuficent time, and the samples at least looked uniform.

 

The prescence of streaking and the fact thet the negs are lower density at the edges looks reminiscent of examples I've seen of poor tank agitation technique, but Iv'e never actually seen examples of this with Xp2.

 

I don't know if the lab actually does hand develop these, but I suspect not, and I don't know if these symptoms can be produced by a minilab!

 

So is this poor development, and could it have been none in a minilab?

 

Gordon<div></div>