christian_welham

<p>after inspecting the shutter, everything seems to be working perfectly. Very stumped on this one</p>

<p>Could it be an issue with the fixer I was using? Ive just read that old fixer can give you bands on the negatives. Would refixing resolve this if that is the case? Or can processing issues be ruled out due to the consistent clarity in the rebates?</p>

<p>Ive attached some better photos, hopefully they'll be a lot clearer! <br> I personally agree that its most likely a problem I had with the camera at the time. Would issues with the film advance lead to problems with the shutter sticking etc? Now that Ive fixed the film advance with a new spring would that most likely solve the issue? I guess its speculation at the moment and theres no way of telling until I run some more film through it.<br>

<p>I'm fairly new to film processing (about a year into it) and have probably processed around 40-50 rolls, but came across something earlier that I've never experienced before. The film of HP5 at 400 ISO I processed has multiple dense and dark vertical bands at varying intervals throughout its length. I don't currently have access to a scanner so have posted some photos of the film, which doesn't show the bands too well so I apologise!<br> The photos were taken on my Zenit B in Italy about a week ago. I took the film through airport security in my check in but was not allowed a hand check of my luggage. The film went through the scanner once, but I do not think the bands are due to X ray fogging as I have developed two other rolls from the trip without the same issue. As the film is mid speed I wouldn't have thought that X ray fog would give such obvious irregularities!<br> This was the second to last roll I took however before the shutter/film advance broke and became too gritty to use. On the last roll I shot, the advance mechanism seized up and I couldn't advance the film smoothly and it became gradually worse until I couldn't move it at all, meaning I had to abandon the roll midway through. I have changed the spring in the camera now, and it runs smoothly, so I can shoot another roll tomorrow to find out whether it was a problem with the camera rather than the processing.<br> The interesting thing is that the first 5 or 6 exposures on the roll (the deepest in the reel) came out fine and the banding starts from around exposure 10 until the end of the roll. The spacing in between the bands varies from around 2 or 3 in a single exposure to about 6 in some. There doesn't seem to be any pattern in the distribution of the bands.<br> I developed the film for 13 minutes in fresh 1+1 ID 11 at 20 degrees, with 3 taps on the bench followed agitation every minute for 10 seconds. I have read about "bromide drag" but that seems to give more equidistant bands and the examples of it I have seen seem to be a lot more subtle in density. The rebates on the film show no signs of light leaking and appear to have been processed normally, and the vertical bands do not extend to the rebates. Could this indicate a problem with the shutter before I fixed the camera? The Zenit has a focal plane shutter with no obvious problems with sticking etc.<br> If anyone could give me an indication to what may be the cause of these bands, I would be very appreciative! As far as I can tell the problem is either due to: X ray fogging, an issue with the shutter/advance from when the camera started to fault or bromide drag from over/under agitation, but I have no clue! Im apprehensive now to develop any other rolls from the trip incase its fault with my processing rather than the camera.</p> <p>Photos:<br>