scratches on fomapan

[surfer dude]

Hi,

I hope someone can advise me. I've been processing a whole bunch of film I took on my recent trip to England and I notice that on the Fomapan 100 rolls I am seeing scratches along the negative, like so:

This is from a cropped portion of about 20% of the top of the picture area

These are occurring from rolls used in both my M6TTL cameras. Rolls of Tri-X I ran in the same cameras do not have the scratches. The scratches are on the emulsion side, are very regular and even, and presumably are caused inside the camera bodies, as I don't squeegee or otherwise touch the film during processing.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Should I have the cameras checked out?

Thanks in advance,

 

[xwhatsit]

"Content Protected by Owner"

Going by your text, though, you don't bulk load, do you?

Otherwise, maybe some grit in the felt light trap of the factory loads?

 

[surfer dude]

Hi Xwhatsit,

Thanks so much for your quick reply.

No - something similar did happen ages ago when I did bulk load some Rollei retro 100, but these were definitely factory loads.

I think you may be right. I've just been examining them closely under a loupe and the scratches only occur toward the ends of SOME of the rolls of Fomapan. Sometimes there seems to be "trauma" to the film rebate area ie a bit of scratching and dinging there. One roll was particularly bad for this. The Tr-x is uniformly without blemish, despite being in the same cameras interspersed between rolls of Fomapan.

I am therefore thinking along the same lines as you, that there might have been grit or something in the felt, or perhaps there was some lapse of quality control at the manufacturing plant in Croatia and the ends of some rolls were scratched.

Has anyone else had this experience with Fomapan?

 

[tanel]

Have had this as well with Fomapan. At first I figured it was something inside the camera, but this occured only with Fomapan.
It might be some fault in the film cassette. The quallity of film base also varies. Some stores didn't scan few rolls because they said it to be too thin for the scanners to recognize that anything is even in the scanner, while other rolls were scanned just fine.
I've only shot iso 400.

 

[Mablo]

Fomapan is an old and soft emulsion. They don't call it "Classic" without a reason 🙂 It scratches very very easily. Bad patches of film are not unknown either. Same applies to Efke by the way.

 

[surfer dude]

Thanks a lot Tanel and Mablo,

It seems that the fault could very well lie with the Fomapan. That is a great pity as I love the tonality and the "classic" rendering of the film - much like older APX 100 or old FP4.

Still, I might in future stick with FP4+ which is beautiful film but unfortunately a lot more expensive than Fomapan.

I really appreciate that you've taken the time and effort to answer.

 

[tanel]

I'm not able to see the picture you posted in the first post ("Content Protected by Owner") but in my case the scratches were bearly visible. They were there but they don't show up on prints or scans.
It's a very grainy film (iso 400 version), but that's pretty lovely in some cases. 🙂

 

[damien.murphy]

Heard the Foma films can be very soft when wet, and thus easily susceptible to scratches at this point. I have a few rolls of Foma 400 in 120, and will have some hands on experience after processing those. Will probably be a while though, as I'm not shooting much 120 at the moment.

Interested to hear peoples experiences so I am forearmed myself when it comes to developing.

 

[surfer dude]

Oops! I only just realized that "content protected by owner" means that no-one else can see it! Sorry about that! I've unprotected it on my zenfolio account so it should be visible now:

Notice also that there are scratches parallel to the top two within the landscape.

Thanks for all the responses. I am 100% certain that it did not occur during processing, as I am very careful with film and did not squeegee these films or otherwise touch the film. The scratches are very noticeable from scanning, as I hope is now apparent.

What would be your opinion - do you think this happened during manufacture, because of faulty cassettes, or due to sharp edges in two M6TTL camera bodies?

 

[ZeissFan]

Nope. Still can't see it.

 

[MIkhail]

Fomapan is an old and soft emulsion. They don't call it "Classic" without a reason 🙂 It scratches very very easily. Bad patches of film are not unknown either. Same applies to Efke by the way.

I had similar experience. Very easily scratched.

Cannot see the picture still.

 

[surfer dude]

Sorry. This is embarassing.

Is the (above a few posts) photo visible now?

Best regards

 

[ZeissFan]

Nope. Not visible.

 

[surfer dude]

Surely - now it is visible? Please advise if STILL not. And my sincerest apologies.

 

[jmcd]

Those sure look like some little tire tracks. I did have some very similar marks on several Foma printing paper sheets about a year ago (still love Foma.)

 

[surfer dude]

Thanks jmcd, and I'm glad the picture is finally working!

I have no issues with the look and tonality of Fomapan, but if there are quality control issues, I just can't risk using it on a trip that I just completed, travelling halfway round the world to find my film scratched and some of the pictures unusable.

I'm pretty confident now, having thoroughly checked the Tri-X and some Portra negs I ran through the M6TTLs, that the issue is with the film manufacturing or cassettes.

A shame, and not good enough from Foma.

 

[HuubL]

I experienced the same with fomapan 200. I bulk load into Leica cassettes and those are made in such a way that scratching is almost impossible. The scratches were present exactly as was mentioned above, towards the end of the roll. I thought it was my own fault, but now I'm beginning to doubt that.

 

[surfer dude]

Thanks for that info, Huubl. That does make it seem more likely that some rolls of Fomapan are experiencing quality control issues than that a variety of cameras are causing scratches just on Fomapan...

The issues they have seem to be sporadic which makes it hard to identify as a manufacturing problem but I am now pretty convinced that is where the fault lies.

I just wish I hadn't found out on my overseas trip!