CatLabs 80 4" x 5"

Sometime around 2018 or 2019 a new large format sheet film came on the market.  It was called CatLabs 80 and it was advertised as being reminiscent of the older thick emulsion films of several decades ago.  I immediately bought two or three boxes of the stuff and shot it from time to time.

I saved up the exposed sheets of film until I had a enough for a batch.  A couple of years ago I processed that first batch of film and was really disappointed.  Many of the negatives displayed a mottling that essentially ruined the image.  This was most obvious in areas of uniform tone, such as the sky.  I basically gave up on the film after that and stopped shooting with it.  

Recently I was mixing up some Kodak HC-110 developer with the intention of doing a mixed batch of old film that needed to be processed.  This included some Ilford HP5 that was to be given plus development, as well as a few test shots of Bergger Pancro 400.  I had a handful of exposed sheets of this CatLabs 80 stuff left hanging around and thought I would try that as well.  The previous batch that had the mottling issues was processed in Kodak D-76 developer.

The HP5 and the Pancro stuff turned out fine, but once again, most of the CatLabs negatives had the same issue with mottling.  I sent scans of two of the negatives to the supplier in Boston.  I explained that the film was exposed at different times and processed in different developers....

They got back to me with this response...

Rob,

Unfortunately, we ran into this issue with our old film.

It is related to storage conditions and the way the film is packed.

We have since changed the production and QC of our sheet film, while retaining a very similar look and feel, the film is much improved and does not suffer from this storage issue. 

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards, 

That was it...!  An explanation, but no offer to do anything about it.  I thought they might have offered a box of the new version for free, considering that I had paid for three boxes of the old stuff.  But no such offer was forthcoming, so I have come to the conclusion that I have to give up on this film.  There is no point wasting more time and money on material that can not be counted on to yield a satisfactory result.