Reticulation - finally saw it!

[skygzr]

Hi All -

 

Every darkroom book you ever read tells you to keep all your solutions at about

the same temperature. If you don't, the emulsion might crinkle and you'll

suffer the heartbreak of reticulation.

 

It never happened to me, so I never worried about it. In fact, I even tried to

make film reticulate. I thought it might be a neat effect. I

temperature-tortured film every way I could think of...no wrinkles.

 

This weekend I made a mistake during processing. I started, as always, with an

ambient-temperature presoak (probably about 15C) and then poured in warm water

after draining it (that was the mistake). I don't know exactly how warm the

water was but it was warm to the touch. Anyway, after the film dried I noticed

it looked funny. Sure enough, the surface had a small-scale crinkle to it.

 

I printed a negative and was amazed at just how NOT visible the reticulation

was. Maybe it was a relatively mild case. I expected it to be more apparent.

 

The film was Verichrome Pan 120. I bought a bunch of it right before it went

out of production. Its been in the freezer since I got it, but the film was at

ambient temperature for at least a week prior to shooting and processing. This

was the only time I've ever seen the effect.

 

I might try it again with different film if I have some spare curious minutes.

[michaelging]

Older films used to be more susceptible to Reticulation than the new modern films. The way they now put the silver onto the base of the film makes it harder to get.The Tabular grain films like T-max are almost impossable to reticulate.

[mitchell_kirschner]

Ah, well I was lucky. I got reticulation on my very first film ever developed. It was fresh 35mm Neopan 400. At the time, I knew about the importance of temperature control, and used a Weston thermometer, etc, but I somehow messed up, probably with too-cold rinse water whose temperature I forgot to measure.

 

The reticulation wasn't evident on visual inspection but appeared on a film scan (I don't do wet printing, unfortunately). Nothing extreme, but definitely present.

 

The biggest problem with that very-first roll, though, was under development, thanks to cheap plastic measuring cups that were VERY inaccurate (which I didn't realize at the time). That led to a too-high dilution of HC110 and very poor midtone development.

 

Needless to say, I've been extremely careful with temps (and volumes) ever since, and reticulation has not been a problem for me.

[larrydressler]

I have been able to get Foma and Fomapan to do it but not with any Kodak film after 1980.... Good luck getting it to do it again.

 

I loved Verichrome pan I always thought in 120 it had a better tonal range than Plus-X.

 

 

 

Larry

[larrydressler]

Correction in that last post I ment Fortepan .... and Foma.

 

Sorry for that

Larry

[kim_kolakowski]

One of the easiest ways to make reticulation is the use of salt water. The salt causes the emulsion to swell.

Kim

[will_h]

Yeah I got it once back in high school. I had to enlarge pretty big to notice it, but the print I made is one of the few I still have from back then... Great stuff.