It's good but it's not right

That was the catchphrase of a TV game show host a few years ago - a guy by the name of Roy Walker, if memory serves me correctly.  The game show was, rather aptly, called Catchphrase and is still going today, albeit with a different presenter.  A thoroughly decent chap Mr Walker was, too - from Northern Ireland, so that's a given, I guess ;)

It always struck me as a particularly polite way of telling a contestant that his or her guess was completely wrong.  You can't really tell them, 'Wrong!' or 'Nope!' and 'Hmm...not quite' is a bit fence-sitting but 'It's good but it's not right' is just a rather lovely way to let them down gently.

This was how I felt about this particular print, of clouds over Portstewart:

Clouds over Portstewart, with added bits.  Ilford Warmtone fibre paper

If you click on the image you'll see the problem - the white dots (black on the negative).

This is a good example of what happens when you step outside your comfort zone.  Unfortunately this is a film developing problem and it arose because I had run out of my usual ID-11 and had only a fresh box of DD-X to hand.  The DD-X I had bought for a specific use in mind, namely some Ilford Delta 3200 that I have sitting waiting to shoot.  But I'd used DD-X years ago with HP5 and knew it to be a super developer, albeit it on the pricey side.  No matter, I mixed it up (1+4) and away we went.  And about half the frames came out with a good covering of black dots.  Not always easy to diagnose the problem but I think it may have been down to the DD-X having settled a bit in the container and perhaps it needed to be mixed with the water a little more energetically.  The other possibility is air bubbles but I always tap the tank after inversion and have never had this problem before, so I'm blaming the DD-X.

I cropped judiciously in software (it was a 120 neg) and got this - which is OK for Web but I doubt I'd get an acceptable print from it.

Severely cropped