Hi Greg, In a word YES!! This numbnut has probably done exactly as you stated. He has stretched or attempted to replenish his soup. As it gets past its usable life he probably turned up the temp and increased the dev times to compensate. He probably has not changed the filters either. The chemistry and the system needs to be periodically changed and or cleaned so that crap does not end up in or on the film. Check the edges where the bar codes are and see if they are clear and fully developed. Usually (and I have not done this for some time) the edges will show some lack of clarity and the bar codes will not fully develop. The bar codes are flashed onto the film base during manufacturing, and should be properly exposed. Perhaps there are others on the list here who are more familier with the barcodes, but I think you are probably spot on. I would not let him dev anything from here on out and I would tell eveyone about his level of "service". take care, Les I shot a roll of film to test exposure using some new lights. Not really caring about the quality of the negatives I took it to the hack next to my office. This guy has taken negative mishandling to an art form. I one time watched him scrape a piece of gunk off a negative with his fingernail. When scanning the negative, I was thrilled to se that he surpassed his usual level of incompetence. Indeed the scratches were deeper and more abundant but not only that, he's now adding (free of charge) extra flecks of crap and whole galaxy-like smears of foreign matter. Astounding! Now the thing that troubles me is that the film is Kodak Portra NC 160 which I have shot many times before and I have never seen grain (or noise) that apparent with this film. Even the shots I took in full sunlight show pronounced grain/noise. Now perhaps my scanner has suddenly decided to introduce excessive noise but I rather suspect that the lab owner has decided to stretch the life of his chemical. So my question is this: If the processing chemicals are past their lifetime, will the film exhibit pronounced grain? Greg
