best developing session yet

[FrankS]

I've been using HC-110 for the last year after many, many years using Ilfosol S developer. I am using 1:100 dilution with the HC-110 and agitate every 3 minutes for about 20 min. for HP5+ film. Tonight, I decided to try stand developing and doing different films in the same batch. I loaded 2 rolls of HP5+, I roll of APX 100, 1 roll of FP4, and a roll of some Kodak 200 colour neg film onto reels and placed them into a tank. I poured in the 1:100 HC-110 @20C/72F, agitated for 1 minute, then left if without touching it for 1 hour. The negs all came out looking great on the 400 and 100 speed B+W films. The colour film was pretty dark but I can see some images. But the B+W's look great. Dense, rich tones perfect for printing (but perhaps not so good for scanning which prefers less dense negs.) And it was so easy! I'll scan some tomorrow night to share.

 

[eli griggs]

Frank, are you exposing the film at box speed?

Cheers

 

[FrankS]

Yes, box speed. If the exposure is tricky, I try to err on the side of over-exposing, however if the light is low, I just set the lens wide open and set the slowest camera speed I think I can hold, which sometimes results in under exposure.

 

[FrankS]

Here are 2 shots from an HP5+ roll.

 

[eli griggs]

Thanks Frank, I believe I'm shooting my first HP5 in almost 30 years (IIRC) and where I usually down rate my film, I'm shooting this at box speed.

This is in my Leica IIIc and I've been using best guess Sunny 16 with occasional incidental meter readings; most of my shooting has been on my walks in the late afternoon/early evening in mostly tree covered areas with sharp contrasting light breaking through in some areas. I'm also exposing wide open in some cases and at some slow speeds so I'm very interested in your stand development work which sounds promising. I'll give it a shot with this roll and see what's what.

Cheers

 

[FrankS]

I'll have to see how these print. In scanning, I had to lighten shadows and reduce contrast. I'm worried that highlight detail is burned out. I'm not seeing the compensating effect that I was hoping for with this stand development. Maybe shorter time overall. Perhaps 45 minutes or a bit less. I need to keep experimenting, I think.