Can film really be pushed?

[Honus]

Excellent thread full of good, thoughtful discussion. There are times in which pushing becomes necessary, such as shooting at 2000, then opening the camera to realize you had Delta 100 loaded. Stand development with dilute Rodinal+Xtol produced better than anticipated results. I wouldn't recommend it as a normal practice, of course.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Compensating developers, as entirely accurately described by David, are another game entirely. The inevitable consequence of good shadow detail (generous development time) and good highlight detail (very low agitation) is compressed mid-tones.

Many claimed compensating developers are nothing of the kind -- people see what they want to see -- but the ones that do work must inevitably compress the midtones.

Cheers,

Roger

 

[kaiyen]

I have gotten lazy lately and done stand development for a lot of rolls, even when not needed. I have suffered from some serious mid-tone issues as a result. Bad move on my part.

In theory, compensation occurs when you dilute and reduce agitation with any developer, right? But obviously to different extents and results.

I ran an "eyeball" test a while ago with TXT in stand development at some crazy speeds - I think up to 25,600 - in Rodinal and I lost any difference between film base and detail in the zone III towel I had in the scene at i think EI...1000? It certainly wasn't Zone III anymore at that point, but I could still distinguish it via a loupe from the film base up to that point.

Very unstructured test, obviously.

 

[Pherdinand]

kaiyen, care to upload somewhere the details of your "unstructured" test with some examples eventually? i would really appreciate it!

interesting discussion.

 

[Roger Hicks]

As for the second observation, generally, very true indeed -- though I have seen reliable reports of anomalies. I've a friend staying at the moment, an ex-member of the ISO film speed standards committee, so when he gets back (he's out for the afternoon) I'll ask him about this too.

He doubts how reliable they are...

Cheers,

R.

 

[kaiyen]

Pherdinand,
I'll try after I get back from this conference. It wasn't scientific by any means so I might have to write a page of qualifications on my blog first 🙂. I was actually just disproving someone else's claim, so I like to hide my egotism with qualifications if I can...