Black film from Ilford?

[mfogiel]

This morning I've developed a couple of rolls of FP4 in 120, and to my amazement one of them came out completely black, even on the edges and under the tape that was sticking the film to backing paper. Upon closer inspection, this does not even look like film - it is simply a piece of black plastic, somewhat thicker than normal film base, and the edge is at times slightly irregular. Maybe it was an error, but then how come it was packaged like regular film? I am starting to think somebody tried to be clever. It was from a batch expiring Feb 2016 - has anybody had a similar experience?

 

[Ansel]

Send it back to the shop where you purchased it from.

 

[Sparrow]

... this stuff?

 

[sevo]

It is rather unlikely that anybody would bother to manually roll waste plastic into 120 film for fraudulent purposes - hand rolling 120 is quite difficult.

Motion picture leader is film strength opaque black acetate - your description sounds different. And it is never cut to 60mm, so a mistake there is unlikely to slip by.

My guess would be that someone did not strip the FP4 master roll of its protective wrapping when putting it into the slicer, so that some of that sheet ended up cut and rolled into film. Or a rolling machine calibration strip made it into a film roll. In either case, Ilford will want to know the batch number and place of purchase, to check whether that is a unique mistake, and issue a recall if it is not...

 

[Mackinaw]

Maybe post this on APUG. Simon Galley, who works for Ilford and is a frequent contributor, can maybe offer an explanation.

Jim B.

 

[Steve M.]

I've seen just about everything w/ film, but not that one. I once got some Ultrafine 120 film that had fogging and numbers all over the images. Junk film. I stick to Tri-X now. Most of my film problems....well, let's just say that I know who screwed up :[

 

[Highway 61]

In either case, Ilford will want to know the batch number and place of purchase, to check whether that is a unique mistake, and issue a recall if it is not...

....... +1

 

[charjohncarter]

They do have to work in the dark, don't they? I'm surprised they don't have more mistakes.

 

[MrFujicaman]

I once got a bottle of Edwal FG-7 that was just pure water.

 

[mfogiel]

I've checked this again after the film dried, and it looks like completely exposed film with unevenly cut borders - probably some inadvertently packaged beginning or end of a kilometric strip... Will send it to Ilford to see what they say, maybe they will be willing to sell me some film at a discount, haha.

 

[KoNickon]

I second the suggestion to contact Simon at Ilford. Their customer service is quite good, and he may know exactly what happened (they may have gotten other complaints).

 

[Ansel]

Simon is the Ilford Marketing guy... what normally happens when you have a dud product is you take it back to the store for a refund, the store then process it for their own refund and it gets reported back to the distributor/supplier. Take it back to the store with proof of purchase.

 

[Fotohuis]

In this case I should sent it directly to Ilford/Harman in Mobberley UK. It seems to be a production error.

 

[pixelated]

+ on sending it to Ilford, the retailer or distributer might get it to them eventually. More likely though they'd shrug their shoulders and bin it. But Ilford would definitely want to see it. Might as well deal with the source.