Just an experiment on stand developing really:
35mm Tri-X rated at ISO12800, stand developed in Rodinal 1:100 for 2 hours, scanned in an epson4490 and then pushed the jpeg one more stop in photoshop.
It (supposedly) lets you pull more detail out of the shadows without blowing out your highlights. Since you don't agitate, the developer around the highlights on your film gets exhausted, and development slows down or stops there. Meanwhile, in the shadows, the developer *doesn't* get exhausted and continues to work and work and work, giving you more speed there. At least, that's how the theory goes.
kidtexas wrote:
It (supposedly) lets you pull more detail out of the shadows without blowing out your highlights. Since you don't agitate, the developer around the highlights on your film gets exhausted, and development slows down or stops there. Meanwhile, in the shadows, the developer *doesn't* get exhausted and continues to work and work and work, giving you more speed there. At least, that's how the theory goes.
Sounds like a solid theory - maybe i'l try to push tri-x to 12800 aswell, since Spyro's results look better than i get pushing Delta 3200 to 6400 in D76
I say supposedly though because a lot of it comes down to how you meter, what you meter on and for. If you meter on the shadows and just use that reading directly, you'll get a lot different results than if you metered on gray and used directly, etc.
12800 out of Tri-X is a 6-stop push. That's pretty massive. I would think results would be very dependent on how you metered.
Another thing to look into is Diafine. A lot of people get rather nice results out of Tri-X at 1250 with Diafine. It's a compensating developer which helps reel in the highlights, and since it's divided, doesn't depend on temperature or agitation (for the most part).
If possible, i always meter from greycard with external lightmeter, for consistency. It's possible that i just haven't seen decent scans as i usually enlarge 13x18 pictures for previews. Scans i have posted here are scanned on Frontier and they aren't usually as nice looking as 4x5 scans from V700 (strictly comparing tonality, ofc.).
kidtexas wrote:
It (supposedly) lets you pull more detail out of the shadows without blowing out your highlights. Since you don't agitate, the developer around the highlights on your film gets exhausted, and development slows down or stops there. Meanwhile, in the shadows, the developer *doesn't* get exhausted and continues to work and work and work, giving you more speed there. At least, that's how the theory goes.
When will they find a way to make digital sensors work like that...
Kidtexas, I metered from the highlights because I was mostly interested in highlight detail for very contrasty subjects with deep blacks. This was only a test roll and it all looks pretty much like this, but I'll keep trying different things and posting as I go. If anyone is interested, water temperature was 20 (Celcius) and I did slow inversions for a full minute in the start, then a gentle swirl (like with a glass of wine) every half hour for 15".
I think I have finally found my camera and film stock/developing technique for low light B&W
