Stop over-agitating your black and white film in development

I noticed a bunch of people ruining their negatives by shaking the tank way too hard when developing HP5 and Tri-X. I did it myself for about six months until a guy at my local camera shop in Austin showed me my negatives had massive surge marks and uneven density. He told me to just invert gently once every 60 seconds instead of all that aggressive swirling. Since I switched to that method last spring, my scans come out way cleaner with no streaks. Has anyone else dealt with weird contrast issues from too much agitation?

2 comments

2 Comments

faith_perez1d ago

Does anyone actually presoak their film to even out development?

richard_mason1d ago

Forgot to presoak once and got some really weird streaky negatives that looked like bad water spots.