Odd stain on my Tri-X

[naren]

I got an odd stain on my negs (meaning uniform over 3 rolls), a warm color... yellow/redish, as opposed to the typical neutral/purplish tint... I was using a public darkroom where they have the chemistry all there for you. Intructions are there for people to dump everything out except return the fixer to the bottle. One of the people who runs the darkroom tested the fixer for me and it was good. She also tried using on a sample of my film, which did nothing. We couldn't figure out what happened and I can only assume that someone used the developer and returned to the jug (although I would expect my negs to be thin in that case, and they did look well exposed with good contrast). Anyone had this happen before? One of the 3 films was from a different batch too, so it certainly seems chemistry related. If it was reused developer or hypo that did it, is there anything I should do to try and rectify it (although they are already cut and sleaved)? I hope they don't fade away or somthing. Maybe someone with more understanding of the chemistry can give me there guess as to the archival quality of my film now? Thank you much.

 

[MartinP]

Could that be the result of slightly exhausted fixer leaving a faint light-brown amount of emulsion behind ? Together with the base colour you could get that reddish effect. This is easy to check if you refix one of the strips in completely fresh fixer, and then wash in the usual way. You could fix in a paper-tray, but the washing might be easier in a development tank.

Note that developing black-and-white film is very easy to do at home too, with minimal gear needed !

 

[mllanos1111]

I spoke to Tom A. a while back when I had a similar problem. He said Tri-X is pretty bullet proof film except that it is not tolerant of under fixing.
Now I always make sure to add more time to the fixing and I've never had the issue again.