Paul's Film Photography Blog

In part 1 I noted that my HP5+ negatives were rather thin. The next roll I developed for 13 minutes at 68F in Rodinal 1+50 and the results were much closer to what I’m used to with Tri-X and Acros. Still a little low in contrast compared to them, so the next one was souped for 14 minutes.

This is the first time I’ve had to really dial in a film, Tri-X and Acros development times were about spot-on first time I tried them. I’m pleased to have been able to diagnose the problem too, maybe I am learning something after all?

Otherwise I am definitely happy with the results. On a light table with a 10x lupe I’m unable to notice much of any difference between HP5+ and Tri-X shot in the same camera and developed the same way. Similar grain, similar sharpness. Same thing when scanned. I have no complaints so far. Still curious to see what, if any, difference I’d see with enlargements made in a darkroom.

On the basis of something mentioned over at TOP recently about getting better results by pulling one stop and under developing (thereby increasing shadow density while controlling highlights), plus the “I think it’s undercooked a stop” experience of my first two rolls, I’m shooting my last roll of HP5+ at EI 200 and will be developing it for 11 minutes.

On a related note I now have 7 rolls of Ilford’s mid-speed FP4+ in the fridge awaiting their turn. My starting point there will be EI 64 and whatever Ilford’s official time for Rodinal 1+50 is.

My first two rolls of Ilford‘s HP5+ film have been shot and developed.

The film was shot at box speed (400) metered using the ever reliable Gossen Luna Pro F. I developed in Rodinal 1+50 dilution for 11 minutes at 68F. This is the official time recommended by Ilford and also listed in the Massive Dev Chart.

First of all, I’m pretty certain that the development time was too short. Almost all of the negatives came out quite thin. I know my metering was correct, especially so for the incident metered shots which were very consistent in their difference from what I consider normal. I’m reasonably sure that the Yashica’s shutter speeds are in spec, or certainly not out by a stop or more. I haven’t had any trouble with previous rolls of Tri-X, Acros and Ektar run through it. I used all the shutter speeds throughout the roll and counted out some exposures in the 2-4 second range with the shutter set to bulb. Just can’t see all the speeds suddenly being out of whack by the same amount and my counting to be off by the same amount.

Also the edge markings on the film seem to be rather thin-looking.

So next roll I develop I’ll try something else. Possibly 13 minutes with normal agitation (30 seconds at start, 3 inversions every minute).

I also got a reasonable answer on my “which reciprocity adjustments to use” question: the Ilford official adjustments resulted in an overly dense negative, even with everything else on the roll looking thin. The shorter time garnered from testing yielded a negative with tones a lot closer to the other shots on the two rolls. I’m going to stick with those times and throw the datasheet’s recommendations under the bus.

I did notice that the lights in my night shots seem to be very dense despite the underdevelopment. Perhaps this film would respond well to a reduced agitation approach. Perhaps I’m used to Fuji Acros 100′s ridiculous ability to hold onto highlights.

What else? I like what I see so far in terms of detail and grain (supposedly Rodinal and HP5+ are not a match made in heaven, but I’m not seeing any big problem. Then again I’m not pathologically averse to grain either). I’ll be picking up another few rolls of this and refining my development.

The short answer? DON’T DO IT!!

OK, with that out of the way… so a few nights ago I re-fixed and re-washed a couple of rolls that hadn’t been fixed properly first time around. I loaded the cut strips onto my plastic reels and did them in the daylight tank, no problem at all. I decided to leave the film on the reels to dry, and shook as much of the water off as I could.

First, there are drying spots. This I expected and they’re not too hard to gently wipe off, but it’s worse than I usually get with the film hanging up and photo-flow used in the final wash, and harder to remove.

That’s not the big problem though. The big problem was that one strip had a big wet patch in it where there was still water trapped between the strip and the reel. The bigger problem was that 3 other strips had stuck together in the middle, obviously having been touching while drying.

But don’t panic! All is not lost.

First up, I soaked the partly dry strip under the faucet until it was uniformly wet again, shook it off and this time hung it up to dry.

Secondly, I gently soaked the stuck strips in water. After a minute or two, they came unstuck with no sign of emulsion damage. Phew…crisis averted. Same thing with those, washed and hung to dry.

After a couple of hours they were dry again and ready to be re-sleeved. Yes, they were insanely curly length-wise, but across the width of the negative they were fairly flat. A couple of days in the sleeves being gently flattened has the curl tamed again, and in any case that kind of curl is well handled by the scanner’s film holder.

No more drying on plastic reels though!

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and mix fresh fixer.

Doing some scanning over the weekend I noticed that several recent rolls of black and white I’d developed were looking kind of…well, yellow. Jaundiced, even.

One roll had splotches of yellow forming all over and streaks of yellow coming from the sprocket holes. Another looked like it had a uniformly yellow tint. Another had a small amount of yellowing along the edge of a strip. Not good.

Well it occurred to me that I’d been pushing it a bit with my fixer. I was up to about 6 minutes clearing time on a test strip, with rapid fixer. OK, make that pushing it a lot. The film seemed OK, but could it be…?

A quick trip to The Google confirmed my suspicion; my film wasn’t properly fixed. It also confirmed that I could re-fix and re-wash the affected film and all would be right with the world once more. Last night, after developing a roll I’d been sitting on for a couple of weeks, I tested one strip of 6 negatives which had the yellowing. Sure enough, it came out clear and also with less base fog than it had before the yellowing set in.

So tonight, I tackled the first two of four rolls to be re-fixed. They were already cut into strips, which complicated matters somewhat as I don’t have any decent means to hang up more than a couple of strips at a time. It also would have been quite a pain to individually fix and wash 11 strips of negatives the same way as I’d tested the one strip last night.

The solution? Carefully put the cut strips, end to end, back onto my plastic developing reels, and run them through fixer and wash in the developing tank as normal. To dry, I’m having to resort to hanging the reels up with film still loaded. Far from ideal, but I’m not exactly spoiled for choice here. No photo-flow so as not to leave dried gunk on the reels, either.

How will they turn out? No idea, I’ll check in the morning when they’ve had plenty of drying time behind them. I do know that the one strip I did last night is looking much better now. Which is good because one of those frames is lined up for an 11×14 print in the next few days and I need it at its best!

I’ve become quite keen on Fuji Acros 100 stand developed in Rodinal at 1+100 dilution for an hour, with a minute of gentle inversion agitations to start. It makes for negatives with just a little grain that I find pleasing and great retention of detail over a wide contrast range.

However, I did stumble into a problem with it the last time I developed some medium format film that way. My negatives had a gradient in the base+fog with one side being noticeably darker than the other, even with the naked eye on a light box. The effect was very pronounced in the scans. What happened?

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