Fomapan 400 coating defects 35mm factory-confectioned

koraks · Feb 15, 2025

I sometimes develop some film for my niece and she has the questionable habit of shooting Fomapan 400. Price is a factor, for sure. She bought some rolls at FotoImpex in Berlin probably around 18-24 months ago. On some of these rolls I encounter coating defects. A roll I processed yesterday was particularly bad:

(Ignore the light leak top left; it's an unrelated issue).

I stopped using this film when I worked my way through a 100ft bulk roll and found that it had a lengthwise line of minus-density running along about 2/3rd of the entire length of the bulk roll. That one looked a bit like the longer dark line about 1/3 from the bottom of the frame shown above, but as you can see, on this roll it's a mass of stripes. The defect is also quite different from the well-known defects on Fomapan 200 in 120 format - and note that this is 35mm, not 120.

I was wondering if anyone else has run into this. I'm kind of surprised that I've not seen this issue being reported more frequently. Maybe it was an isolated incident? As said, this film is likely around 2 years old.

Lachlan Young · Feb 15, 2025

koraks said:
I was wondering if anyone else has run into this.

I've had similar linear defects a couple of years ago with a roll or two of Ilford film where the aperture of the cassette had apparently been set fractionally tight for the tension of the particular camera it was used in.

Harry Callahan · Feb 15, 2025

I have two questions in my mind, but i don`t think they would apply:

First i am wondering whether this effect could be temperature-related. The picture was taken during winter and you say that on some of these rolls this effect present. Is it only on rolls used in the cold?

Second i know nothing about film coating but that the base moves pretty fast through the coating machine. If there were air bubbles in the emulsion or if viscosity of the emulsion wasn`t even - shouldn`t there be stripes only?
There also are darker spots in this picture, rather round/symmetrical, could such spots from at all at such a coating speed?

Ivo Stunga · Feb 16, 2025

Harry Callahan said:
First i am wondering whether this effect could be temperature-related. The picture was taken during winter and you say that on some of these rolls this effect present. Is it only on rolls used in the cold?

Shouldn't be. I've shot film at -20C and no problems with quality film, no difference than at summer. Static discharge COULD be a problem when advancing and handling, but this is not it.

I've had a variety of defects with Foma films (Fomapan 200 and especially Fomapan R 100) - QC inconsistencies are common with Foma unfortunately. Therefore I'm super glad that Kentmere 100 arrived on the scene - a quality cheap film.

Agulliver · Feb 16, 2025

That looks like the kind of coating issues that people used to report with Foma films 15-20 years ago. I've shot a lot of Foma 100, 200 and 400 in 35mm bulk and Foma confectioned and haven't seen anything like that. Hopefully an isolated incident of a bad batch getting through. 24 months old shouldn't be a problem nor should the cold. It doesn't look like a camera problem either.

loccdor · Feb 16, 2025

I think maybe a reason you don't see these issues reported more is because in many cases Foma films are the cheapest films available and probably about half of the Foma I've used has had some defect, though usually not an extreme one. That said I enjoy using all 3 of the most common Foma films and feel their imperfection brings something to the table, but I like them more for their unique rendering. I don't know where the idea came from that Foma solved their coating issues. They happen often enough that people accept them as a possible characteristic.

Could the issue be caused by dirt on a roller of their film making equipment? If so that would explain its sporadic nature, sometimes they clean it, other times it's left with dust or debris.

koraks · Feb 16, 2025

Lachlan Young said:
I've had similar linear defects a couple of years ago with a roll or two of Ilford film where the aperture of the cassette had apparently been set fractionally tight for the tension of the particular camera it was used in.

This was a bog standard EOS camera and a factory-loaded 35mm cassette. Also, in-camera scratching due to transport issues is sharper defined. This really is a coating defect.

Harry Callahan said:
whether this effect could be temperature-related

Nope. At a theoretical level, there's no explanation that would make this work, and moreover, I've processed other rolls from the same batch shot under much warmer conditions and they showed the same kind of defects.

Harry Callahan said:
If there were air bubbles in the emulsion or if viscosity of the emulsion wasn`t even

I think you're on to something here. I was musing about this and I suspect that bubbles in the emulsion could explain this. Most of the bubbles get 'smeared out' as the film passes the coating head, leaving a thinner zone of emulsion.

Ivo Stunga said:
Static discharge COULD be a problem when advancing and handling, but this is not it.

Indeed. Btw, there's something on this roll in two places that looks like static - and then again, it doesn't:

The length of the 'legs' is about 5mm.

Agulliver said:
I've shot a lot of Foma 100, 200 and 400 in 35mm bulk and Foma confectioned and haven't seen anything like that.

Yeah, I've also not seen this specific problem except what I mentioned in the OP, despite having shot a decent amount of Fomapan film.

Agulliver said:
24 months old shouldn't be a problem nor should the cold. It doesn't look like a camera problem either.

I agree; it's logical that those factors are brought up and it's good to consider them, but they're not the cause here.

loccdor said:
Could the issue be caused by dirt on a roller of their film making equipment? If so that would explain its sporadic nature, sometimes they clean it, other times it's left with dust or debris.

Dirt, abrasions or just lack of preventive maintenance; something along those lines. Effective quality management is holistic by nature; I can imagine it's hard to implement something like that and at the same time serve the bottom-end of the market, price-wise.

Alessandro Serrao · Feb 16, 2025

Never had any issue with Foma films in 35mm.
With the batch number handy I'd contacy Foma and see what they have to suggest.

Lachlan Young · Feb 16, 2025

koraks said:
This was a bog standard EOS camera and a factory-loaded 35mm cassette.

The camera I had issues with was also motor wound in a similar manner to EOS cameras. Was not a problem in manual wind cameras.

I still think it's tension stress (possibly from slitting/ spooling in the factory before the emulsions reached peak hardness, possibly from the camera) rather than a coating defect. Coating defects would generally, for lack of a better way of putting it, be bubblier and rather less multilinear - it would be more breakup of the bead/ curtain and follow more distinct forms than linear lines. Emulsion stress is much more likely (and can look very weird).

The other possibility (which I have also seen quite a few times from end user error) is drying the film too fast in conditions with too low an RH % relative to temperature, this can cause strange soft streaks. Again, this could potentially happen in manufacturing, but would probably follow slightly different forms depending on whether the drier is a tunnel or festoon.

koraks · Feb 16, 2025

Alessandro Serrao said:
With the batch number handy I'd contacy Foma and see what they have to suggest.

I doubt I'll go through the trouble; as said, it's not my film.

Lachlan Young said:
I still think it's tension stress

We disagree.

Don_ih · Feb 16, 2025

Did you develop it in a Jobo?

I face the emulsion out when developing film in a Jobo to prevent any source of abrasion racing along the inside of the film from doing damage. Foma is quite soft and very easy to damage.

The last manufacturing defect I saw in Foma was about 10 years ago, when I had some rolls in 120 which had almost completely lost sensitivity. They replaced them.

koraks · Feb 16, 2025

Don_ih said:
Did you develop it in a Jobo?

Nope. I've also never run into the kind of issue you imply despite having used Jobo rotation development for many hundreds of rolls of film.

Don_ih · Feb 16, 2025

koraks said:
I've also never run into the kind of issue you imply despite having used Jobo rotation development for many hundreds of rolls of film.

That's great.

Why don't you send some photos of the emulsion damage to Foma? Mail them a strip of it.

koraks · Feb 16, 2025

Don_ih said:
Why don't you send some photos of the emulsion damage to Foma? Mail them a strip of it.

koraks said:
I doubt I'll go through the trouble; as said, it's not my film.

I'm really sharing this online so that people who may experience the same problem have another data point that can help in their own troubleshooting process. I have no interest in trying to fix this problem; if the photographer in question wants to solve it, I'll repeat my earlier recommendation to her: use different film.

Paul Howell · Feb 16, 2025

Too bad, I hope that due to higher demand for B&W Foma is not taking shortcuts of letting QC slip. I have shot a lot of Foma, branded and third party brand and so far have not had any issues.

Don_ih · Feb 16, 2025

Paul Howell said:
I hope that due to higher demand for B&W Foma is not taking shortcuts of letting QC slip

They aren't necessarily. This bit of film could have been damaged by any number of things after leaving the factory and before being scanned. If Foma never gets it as a sample, or anything else like it, there's nothing they can say or do about it.

koraks · Feb 16, 2025

Don_ih said:
This bit of film could have been damaged by any number of things

Nothing happened to this film that would explain this sort of anomaly.

Don_ih · Feb 16, 2025

koraks said:
Nothing happened to this film that would explain this sort of anomaly.

Certainly. I imagine nothing happened to it.

koraks · Feb 16, 2025

The film was taken from the packaging, loaded in the camera, exposed, then handed to me and I processed the same way I've processed loads of film. I guess there will always be a tendency in some people to become very creative if the suggestion of coating defects is offered, but I'm not really looking to have a discussion on cognitive dissonance and other aspects of psychology. This is a photo forum and that's where my interest is.

Don_ih · Feb 16, 2025

Is it possible some moisture entered the camera at the take-up spool side, made the emulsion stick to itself as the moisture evaporated, then cause the issues upon rewinding?

koraks said:
I'm not really looking to have a discussion on cognitive dissonance and other aspects of psychology.

That's great, too, by the way.

koraks · Feb 16, 2025

Don_ih said:
Is it possible some moisture entered the camera at the take-up spool side, made the emulsion stick to itself as the moisture evaporated, then cause the issues upon rewinding?

Moisture damage tends to leave permanent marks on the emulsion of the film that leaves even traces after processing. Also, you tend to see clearly defined edges to the affected areas where the emulsion sticks to something and those edges translate into the image density variations. The streaking pattern here is not sharply defined and the emulsion-side of the film looks pristine when viewed under high magnification and oblique light - apart from the lower image density which of course shows up, subtly, due to the tanning action of the developer used in this case.

If moisture would have been in the camera, it would likely have remain trapped in the coiled-up film. During loading of the film unto the development reel, there was no sign of a sticky emulsion. Everything seemed perfectly normal.

Here's a snippet from a roll of film from the same batch, exposed in the same camera, that I processed in August 2024:

100% crop at 2400dpi. Another minus density line. It extends through multiple frames; I didn't think much of it because it looked virtually identical to the defect I ran into with the bulk roll of Foma 400 I mentioned before. This particular roll also showed lightning bolts that I found two of on the recent roll reported on in #1 as well.
Another roll processed in september also shows subtle longitudinal low-density anomalies.
3 or so rolls from the same batch that I processed last year came out clean. They're interspersed, so one roll shows problems and then the next may be totally clean. It's hit & miss, but the roll I showed a frame of in #1 is extreme in the extent to which the problems show up.

albireo · Feb 16, 2025

I have to say I have had pretty good luck with Foma 400 so far. I have used hundreds of rolls both in 35mm and 120 over the past few years and I've not encountered defects worth mentioning. This particular defect described above is something I've never seen on any film I've used.

In my experience Foma 400 has been a pretty consistent film, just like all other Foma in 35mm.

Their stuff in 120 is more erratic. Foma 100 has been largely problem free for me in 120, though some batches have had the undissolved antihalation spot issue. Zero issues with Ortho 400 and Retropan.

The really problematic one for me has been Foma 200 in 120, which I've abandoned for good (I posted in a separate thread about this some time ago).

mshchem · Feb 16, 2025

Don_ih said:
the emulsion out when developing film in a Jobo to prevent any source of abrasion racing along the inside of the film from doing damage. Foma is quite soft and very easy to damage.

What? Where's this coming from???

I believe whatever works is AOK. I know a fellow who would load old Nikor SS reels with 2 36exp rolls of Tri-X, back to back, one emulsion in and one emulsion out. He'd develop 16 rolls at a time in an 8 roll tank. This guy was a working professional, he got acceptable results.

Don_ih · Feb 16, 2025

mshchem said:
Where's this coming from???

I was getting scratches on film developed in a Jobo. They went away when I started putting the film emulsion-side-out. So, you could say it came from personal experience. It only happened rarely.

mshchem · Feb 16, 2025

Don_ih said:
I was getting scratches on film developed in a Jobo. They went away when I started putting the film emulsion-side-out. So, you could say it came from personal experience. It only happened rarely.

Fomapan 400 coating defects 35mm factory-confectioned

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