my photo consultant

The neighbor's cat has been very patient in helping me to sort through some problems I've been experiencing in processing Kodak Tri-X.  I managed to use up a five-pack of the film before I finally figured out that the inconsistent results seemed due mostly to the film not loading properly onto the metal reel in my steel developing tank.

I have processed a lot of 120 roll film in my steel tank with very few failures, so I'm inclined to think at this point that the film has undergone some changes which have prompted the problem.  While I'm not totally sure on the details, my guess is at this point that the film has more of a curve across the width which is causing it to slip out of the spaces in the wire reel, preventing proper exposure to the developer.

So, today I shot a quick roll in the Bentzin plate camera and loaded the film into the plastic reel of my Paterson developing tank.  I processed the film in HC-110b for six minutes at 20 deg. Centigrade and got pretty good consistency in negative density from beginning to end.

I still have four rolls of 120 Tri-X in the refrigerator, so I'm looking forward now to trying some different developers and processing, possibly including some stand development.