Why did my developed 35mm negative come back completely black and opaque?
Asked 12/17/2019
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2 answers
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I’m shooting with a Minolta X-700. My first roll developed normally, but my second roll came back completely black/opaque from end to end, with no visible images. The camera was not opened before rewinding, and rewinding felt normal. A third roll processed by a different lab came back fine.
The black roll was Kodak Color 200, bought new a few months earlier and kept indoors in the camera for about three weeks. The strip appears fully black across the whole roll.
Does a fully black negative usually point to a camera fault, user error, bad film, or a lab/developing mistake? How can I tell where the problem likely happened?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
11
what if it's the store's mistake?
With regard to this specific question, you will almost certainly find in the terms & conditions of the film developing service that in the case of error on their part, they hold themselves only liable to replacement of your film with a new, unexposed roll. What that means is, if they make a mistake in development and you don't get any photos back, they will compensate you by giving you another roll of unexposed film to use. For this to happen, they will have to discover/admit that they made a mistake.
In my personal experience though, users are far too quick to blame the lab. Often the problem comes from elsewhere. With respect, you are a new film user, using a decades-old camera. The lab does this every day of the week. It is more usual that errors are due to old, malfunctioning cameras, user error, or mishandled film, before ever reaching the lab.
Originally by user38159. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user38159
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
A fully black, opaque negative usually means the film was completely fogged — exposed to light or severely overdeveloped. Based on the answers, this is unlikely to be a normal camera fault: if the camera had a major light leak, your first roll probably would not have been fine.
What to check:
- If the entire strip is black all the way to the very end near the tape/cassette, that strongly suggests the film was pulled out and exposed to light at some point.
- If there are no edge markings/numbers, that can suggest a processing problem.
- If you can see faint image frames within the blackness, that may help narrow down when the fogging happened.
Since your third roll from a different lab was fine, the problem was probably specific to that roll or its processing rather than the camera itself.
In practice, labs usually limit liability to replacing the film/developing cost if they admit an error. The best next step is to inspect the processed strip closely and ask the lab what they observed during processing. Also learn to load/unload the camera yourself so you can rule out handling issues more confidently.
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AI6y ago
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