My current standards:
FP4+ at ISO 65 or 125
HP5+ at ISO 200 or 400 (and going into pushing now)
All development in Rodinal 1+50 and experimental development times (of which I'm not 100% happy yet)
But... I've just ordered a batch of ADOX (EFKE) film (ART100 and PRO400). The PRO400 should be identical to HP5+, but the ART100 will require some new standardizing.
I'd be very much interested in your method of standardization! There are so many parameters to tune (dilution, time, agitation, temperature) and I'm pretty clueless what's the effect of these. I can understand that more time, less dilution, more agitation and more temperature will increase the development effect and create denser negatives, but I've got no clue as related to the more subtle effects like contrast, shadow detail, grain,...
Do you use special calibration targets to compare the development effect?
I've been thinking about a scientific approach:
1. shooting a roll, the subject being a white wall, giving each shot one stop more than the previous, such that the measured exposure is the shot in the middle.
2. Then develop and scan the negative.
3. Read the average pixel value for each shot and put this in a graph (will have to be logarithmic, I guess).
4. This will draw the typical S-curve that's found in film documentation and you can easily read contrast (slope of the linear part of the curve) and dynamic range (min and max pixel values) from that curve.
5. If the results are not according expectations (*), the test is done again with modified development parameters and the result is re-evaluated; until the desired result is reached
6. This test can also be used to establish the optimal ISO setting for a film/development combination, indicated by the center of the S-curve (at least if you want equal detail in shadows and highlights) (**)
(*) question is: what are the expectations? I think you want to map the S-curve's active range onto the average exposure range of the subject. For high-contrast scenes, there's a wide exposure range, so the S-curve has to be stretched. For low-contrast scenes, there's only a very narrow exposure range (maybe not more than 4 stops) and the S-curve should be narrowed, in order not to waste dynamic range.
(**) maybe this alone is reason enough for doing the test. Normally, we do it the other way around: e.g. pushing a 400 film to 1600 is done by increasing development time by X minutes, but it makes more sense to start from the fact that you'll be developing for X extra minutes and then find the optimal ISO to shoot at...
Groeten,
Vic