I hope you never have to ask yourself this question…

My negatives came back from the lab today. I normally go to Panda Lab in Seattle but today they were only operating on a reduced schedule so I thought I’d try another highly recommended lab here. While the colour slides and film look great, currently I’m seeing at least two rolls of Fuji Neopan 400 (out of a total of four rolls so far) have exhibited an unsightly characteristic which I believe is film reticulation.

Film reticulation is a nasty side effect which occurs when the negative comes into contact with two liquids of a significantly different temperature. The result, which Fuji Neopan 400 is apparently susceptible too, is a “cracked” look across the surface of the film. I’ve never seen it before but got it twice today. I will be contacting the lab (Capitol Hill 60 minute lab) to let them know, in case this was caused by their developing process and they can prevent it.

Here’s an example of someone who actually purposely used did this on one of their images to create this unusual effect. I’m less excited about the prospect of this “technique’  - it’s not noticeable in low res web postings but definitely very apparent in large prints. The effect can be reduced somewhat by noise reduction, etc – and I’ll live with it on a couple of shots from those rolls which are just so good I am going to pretend it was intended :). But for most, I’m ready to throw the rest of the shots away for anything than 800 pixel web posts. Here’s an example of one of my shots which I believe is riddled with reticulation.

A shot on Fuji Neopan 400 which is affected by film recticulation. This is straight off the scanner. You can see some slightly more than usually noticeable grain on this image.

Here’s the crop – see that weird pattern – that’s the effect. A perfectly nice landscape, rather effectively ruined :)

Some hard core for grain lovers may argue it’s not that bad on a landscape. I think it looks horrible though and can say for sure it kills portraits.

I have a couple more rolls left – here’s hoping I don’t seen another appearance. Anyway, I thought that’d be interesting and something to be aware of if you develop or use Neopan 400.