developed my first film - questions

[raytoei@gmail.com]

Hi, Thanks to everybody and the fantastic posts here, i took the plunge and developed my first film ever this evening.

I have the negatives drying in the bath room, and tomorrow, I will either buy my scanner or will send it for printing. Room termperature development with XP-2 and Rodinal developer, 1:100 dilution and Ilford Fixer.

I have some questions:

a. I used 5ml with 500ml dillution in a system 4 paterson tank. If I were to put 2 rolls in the tank, do I increase the rodinal to 10ml, while keeping the 500ml constant ? (the tank limit is around 600ml). Or do i just keep it at 5ml and 500ml regardless.

b.I was considering the Plustek 7200 but I am considering a Canoscan 8800f, as it scans multiple strips at once. Does it come with multiple negative holders ? Any comments on the mentioned scanners ?

c. I kept the fixer in a clear plastic container. I presume this is reusable until it gets discolored ?

Too early to celebrate my first film development, I see lots of black (overexposure ?) and lots of white (underexposed ?). But I kept records of what I did, so I see lots of future experimentation.
raytoei

 

[SebC]

Re: Plustek - I have a 7400i (newer, LED light source). If your negs are clean it's fine, but it shows any dust very clearly and doesn't have dust/scratch removal. It struggles with slides and dense negatives, and the software is horrendously obtuse. The negative holders are quite flimsy too.

Having said that - for the money it's pretty good. Small, quick, plenty good enough for web and small prints. I'm happy with mine.

 

[fidget]

Too early to celebrate my first film development, I see lots of black (overexposure ?) and lots of white (underexposed ?). But I kept records of what I did, so I see lots of future experimentation.
raytoei

You may well be out there on your own for most of this.
I can't imagine B&W chems being better for C41 film than a C41 process.
There are many things which can upset the developing process, even though it is quite simple and easy, analysing defects and problems can be difficult. Processing in the wrong chems seems to be very adventurous.

I did a roll of XP2 in error in ID11 thinking it was HP5+. It came out pink. took some time to figure out that I had dev'ed my scrap roll.

Replacing the fixer. I once dropped in a small piece of film and measured how long it took to clear. When this time had doubled I replaced the fixer.
Now, I use a method described by others on this forum. I use an Old fixer and a New fixer. My films get 5mins in the Old then 5 mins in the New at 20c. When a film finishes not cleared (just pop it back in for a few mins) I throw away the Old and put what was New into the Old bottle, so it becomes the Old, and mix a new batch of New.

Have fun...

Dave....

 

[tj01]

Canon 8800f comes with 35mm, 120 and slide adapter. For 35mm, it scans 12 bulk in around 15 mins. Software for Mac is some unheard of software, but does the job well. Good luck

 

[Michiel Fokkema]

XP2 is supposed to be developed in C41. In Rodinal might work but I'm sure it is not optimal.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

okay. This is a follow-up post. I developed this yesterday. And today I bought myself a 8800F scanner.

I ran the negatives through the canon scanner and I found the images too dark. I almost always had to increase brightness and decrease constrast in Photoshop. (I later tried Vuescan and found that it could auto-adjust throughh the film type, though using the XP-2 setting I found the images too flat).

A couple of observations:

* from the roll of 30 exposures, about 5 were unusually grainy and unpleasant looking, what I remembered was using my Hektor at 5.6 aperture with a Shutter-speed of 60 in an ISO of 400 indoors. This could either be due to extreme underexposure causing the graininess or due to uneven development.

* There is a noticeable loss of sharpness. But an increase in tonallity.

* I can't comment on Contrast except that I had to turn it down in PS.

* comment on this picture:
- Dust is an issue I have to fix.
- This picture reminds me of images found in old leica books
- Summaron 3.5 at 1/60s

* Same location as the first one and similar exposure settings

* I had to tweak in PS to turn it grey scale from b&w negative scan. Still experimenting.

* A bit too dark for my liking even though I tweaked it in PS.

* Loss of sharpness on all my hektor shots. May not be due to developer but my clumsiness on the 135mm lens.

* me

cheers!

raytoei

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

I developed my 2nd film today.

* My pictures are definitely more consistent in the Image Quality
and I had only 1 image which was too grainy. The overall
tonality is very nice especially for portrait pictures. (see image 1 and 2)

* However, the images aren't sharp enough even with my
Summicron-R., even when I upped the dpi to 4800 from 2400,
turned on sharpening etc. This issue *is* consistent with my
earlier film development. (See Image 3, the deli is just too blur)

----- The changes between this attempt and the earlier experiment:

a. used 5ml rodinal and 525ml of water instead of 5ml/500ml previously
b. No mid-point agitation
c. I forgot to Thump it 3 times until after 2 mins in the "Standing" period
d. I used a wetting agent after the washing process
e. Reused the fixer

-----

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

5ml of Rodinal in 500ml of water is a 1+100 dilution. If you increased the rodinal to 10ml, you would have a 1+50 dilution, so you don't want to do that. At 1+100 I would do one film only in a 2 roll tank. Use the full 500ml of solution though. At a 1+100 dilution, Rodinal isnt strong enough to develop 2 rolls.

Your pics look badly underexposed; Rodinal highly diluted cuts speed at least 1 stop....take that into account when you shoot. Overall I think a 1+50 dilution works much better with modern films using normal agitation (first 30 sec, then every minute)

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

Hi,

I developed my 4th film using XP-2 and Rodinal.

** Due to previous underexposure, I shot this ISO 400 film at 200.


The method I followed is derived from P. Lynn Miller with some additional modification as XP-2 Super is a C-41 machine wash film.

10 min soak with tape water
Developer diluted with 600ml of water to fit the paterson system 4 tank and 5ml of Rodinal (1:120)
1min agitation (about 25 - 30 inversions)
59 Stand Development
Stop bath with tape water, rinse, agitate and repeat three times
Ilford Rapid Fixer at 8 mins, with agitation 10 seconds every min
Wash with 5, 10 and 20 inversions
A few drops Ilford-type photo-flo
Dry for a couple of hours
Scan with 8800f

I am getting good tones but not sharp images. Tomorrow, I will bring the negatives tomorrow to the photo labs to be printed and compare it against my scanned images. Reason is to check if 1. my scanner setting is not optimised but the negatives are sharp 2. My development has issues 3. My choice of lens is soft wide-open.

I am using Canon 1.9 ltm collapsible at various apertures.

The pictures developed so far is turning to be great for Portrait. But I reserve my judgement as I continue to experiment.

** I shot roll 3 with Agfa APX 400 at exactly the same procedure/mix but found that it developed too much grain.

 

[Joao]

Hi
I did it using paRodinal (and fixing for 5 mins), stand development.
Results here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joaofreitas/sets/72157606624905040/
Regards
Joao

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

i am sure the following white halo (okay more like outline ) around the head is due to film development and perhaps rodinal's high accutance gone awry.

 

[MartinP]

For the first umpteen (= lots) rolls I'd strongly recommend using black-and-white film and following standard times and methods for the development. These things are standardised because they do work. After that make a contact sheet to assess your negatives.

 

[ferider]

Try a black-and-white film. I'm at roll 13 now and very satisfied, Rodinal 1:50 and 1:100 on a variety of B+W films, using mostly standard recipes and little agitation.

Also, do check the negatives. Are they sharper than the scans ? If yes, some adjustment during scan (or of the scanner) is needed. Or maybe back-focus on the portraits above ?

Roland.

 

[DRabbit]

I use the Plustek 7300 and have had no complaints, especially for the money. The only thing is that I hate the software it came with, so I downloaded VueScan and use that instead.

You can see results here:

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85837

and here's another one

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

Guys, thanks for your comments here.

a. I tried Agfa APX 400 in Dev #3 exactly using the same process as Development #4, but found it too grainy. I may experiment with Fuji Acros 100 as I read comments that it is very favorable to Rodinal.

b. I am going to continue to use the XP-2 until my small stash runs out. I like the flexibility of XP-2 and I am hoping that I can find a good process to develop this in Rodinal.

In the mean time, I am going to take the suggestions and continue to experiment. My current observation is that I am still fiddling with brightness and contrast even though I am at ISO 200, so logically, I am going to try a more diluted approach, in #1 it was 1:100, in #2 it was 1:105, in #3 & 4 it was 1:120. I am going to try 600ml of water and perhaps 4ml of Rodinal (1:150). I am undecided whether to let it stand longer than usual.

I am taking the negatives in #4 to the printers. Hopefully it is a scanner issue not my development making the images soft.

raytoei

 

[kuzano]

I wonder about your concerns for sharpness....

I wonder about your concerns for sharpness....

I've tried to read all the posts, but am still not clear if you have satisfied yourself on the issues that you call sharpness. I wonder if you are really suffering from lack of focus on the capture, which takes the sharpness out of the realm of development (where I don't think it resides in any event).

I'd be more inclined to say that your soft images are either lens or focus problems. Have you considered, at least during this testing, using a tripod and more care on focus?

Just a thought about running down other parts of the process that may be more likely than thinking that the film development is the entire source of your concerns.

 

[Keith]

Like others here I'm a little mystified at your persistence with XP2 (made for c41 development) and Rodinal ... even if as you said you do have a small stash you are trying to use.

You should have used normal black and white film with appropriate chemistry from the get go IMO ... I think it's counter productive to start off the way you have.

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

just a quick followup on my progress:

In Dev 5 & 6, I developed 2 XP-2 rolls in 1 paterson tank, the dilution for the whole tank was 1:150, 4ml of rodinal to 600 ml of water.

3 gentle agitation was done at 30min intervals for a total of 120 minutes.

The pictures were captured under EV of 4 and under without a flash, with lots of flat image quality due to underexposure and hand shake.

The first picture below is one of the better ones:

I also found that my 8800f was scanning sub-optimally, I did a comparison of the same scanner and the store demo set, it was obvious that the store demo was sharper. The shop allowed me to take the demo unit. This solved part of my sharpness issue.

In Dev 7 & 8, again I used the same formula for 2 rolls in one tank. This time, XP-2 and Tmax 400 was used. While the XP-2 was very smooth, the Tmax generated quite a bit of grain.Can you guess which is which below:

In Dev 9, I reverted to single roll development using Tmax 400, the same process as Dev 7,8 but for 60 mins and no midpoint agitation.

The results were grainy and worst of all, some of them had a streak in the pictures, consistent with the findings of the Rodinal article that I posted earlier, I think TMAX is grainy than APX 400 from Agfa. It is okay to be grainly but I think it isn't flattering for Portrait shots to have too much grain.

Next steps:

* I ran out of XP-2 already, and will be experimenting with other films in the mean time with Rodinal. I hope I can find a film that is as smooth as XP-2 at ISO 400.

* I have also ordered a 20 pack legacy pro 400, and understand that this is a Neopan 400. If I can't find a true B&W replacement for XP-2, I will be probably purchase the Private label XP-2 from Ultrafineonline.

raytoei