First Impressions: Tri-X @ 3200 in Rodinal

At a risk of sounding overly sceptical, I'd question the use of Zone System with severely pushed 35mm roll film. What benifit it has there over "ordinary" metering? You're killing the shadows either way, and the separate exposures on the roll would deviate wildly from the optimal.
 
In this case, we're just using Zone system nomenclature as a way to define film speed. We could speak in terms of negative density but it's less intuitive, I feel. I don't use the zone system for shooting and processing, but I do use zone system terminology when I describe how dark or light a gray appears in a scene. I think a lot of us do that. Film speed becomes a meaningless term without some kind of standard to compare negs to.
 
Yar, you only end up with about 3 zones really anyway, and thats enlarging with a 0,5 filter and a LOT of patience ;)
 
I'm trying to develop Tri-x in Rodinal, without pushing, but i get more grainy pictures than you :).
Anyone has times/inversion cycles for developing Tri-X @400 in Rodinal ?

PR
 
Pedro,
What time and agitation are you using? What dilution of rodinal?

Grain is a result of how long the film is in the developer and the temperature of the soup. Well, exposure has to do with it, too, of course. Agitation has little to do with grain (though it has impact on time).

If you decrease the temperature, then you leave it in the developer longer. If you take it out of the developer sooner, then you have to increase the temperature. OR, you can just agitate a lot more, but then you start to lose some of the contrast/tonal control from more intermittent agitation.

Also, are you wet printing or scanning?

allan
 
kaiyen said:
<snip>

Grain is a result of how long the film is in the developer and the temperature of the soup. Well, exposure has to do with it, too, of course. Agitation has little to do with grain (though it has impact on time).

</snip>

allan
Click to expand...


Allan, I was always told that agitation does have an impact on grain - extremely slow moving agitation vs rapid twists and turns apparently produces a "smoother" grain structure over a "blocky" one.

Mind you, I have no "official" (i.e. text based manuals etc.) word on this but just what I've experienced. Can someone point me to some literature that would advise otherwise? Only so that I can go back to agitating like a monkey trying to break open a can of cling peaches.. :D

Cheers
Dave
 
Dave,
I'm pretty sure I've seen it in the FDC. otherwise, here are some threads:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007vcN
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00DFhG

Also of note is that there have been a number of discussions about there being no such thing as too much or too vigorous agitation, at least unto itself. The goal of agitation is to get fresh chemicals moving around the tank. Therefore, even violent agitation is fine. However, this has the one caveat of dealing with 35mm film - the sprocket holes can lead to surge marks. So there is a fine line there, of course. But it is possible to be too gentle, as well as too violent. I tried looking for these threads but no luck. I know Ronald Moravec (sp?) on PN has made that comment a few times.

allan
 
kaiyen said:
Pedro,
What time and agitation are you using? What dilution of rodinal?

Grain is a result of how long the film is in the developer and the temperature of the soup. Well, exposure has to do with it, too, of course. Agitation has little to do with grain (though it has impact on time).

If you decrease the temperature, then you leave it in the developer longer. If you take it out of the developer sooner, then you have to increase the temperature. OR, you can just agitate a lot more, but then you start to lose some of the contrast/tonal control from more intermittent agitation.

Also, are you wet printing or scanning?

allan
Click to expand...

My last try:
Dilution 1:100, 24m@20Cº
3 inversions every 30s
I'm scanning my negatives, in attach an example of this last try.
 
Pedro,
Wow. That is grainy. And quite contrasty.

I think you could get away with less development time, for starters. However, that certainly does not explain all of that grain.

What scanner are you using? I wonder if it's a combination of Rodinal's strong tendency towards grain clumping, TXT's graininess, and grain aliasing.

allan
 
My scanner is an Epson 4180 Photo.
The high contrast is maybe a combination of my poor skills at developing combined with litle ones at photoshop.... :)
 
Pedro,
I'll try and soup some TXT in Rodinal 1+100 this weekend, or early next week. Let me see what results I get with that combination and my Nikon IV. Of cousre, someone else might give you more helpful feedback between now and then.

Definitely consider reducing your time in the developer, though. It shouldn't be that contrasty straight out of the scan, even if you're using the EpsonScan software, which is pretty crummy to begin with, IMHO.

allan
 
kaiyen said:
Pedro,
I'll try and soup some TXT in Rodinal 1+100 this weekend, or early next week. Let me see what results I get with that combination and my Nikon IV. Of cousre, someone else might give you more helpful feedback between now and then.

Definitely consider reducing your time in the developer, though. It shouldn't be that contrasty straight out of the scan, even if you're using the EpsonScan software, which is pretty crummy to begin with, IMHO.

allan
Click to expand...

Ok ... let me know your results.
In attach is the straight out scan, without any color correction or unsharp mask.
Is there any other scan software i can use?
Tks,
PR
 
Well, it isn't going to help you much, but I highly recommend Vuescan. It can be gotten from http://www.hamrick.com/.

You get a lot more control of your scanner using Vuescan than with EpsonScan. Case in point - when scanning medium format on the 3200 at work (where I have to use EpsonScan), even if I set levels to get a nice, full histogram, I still need to make significant adjustments in Photoshop. With Vuescan with my Nikon IV, what I see in Vuescan is what I get in Photoshop.

My thought is that the Epson just isn't well suited to a high grain combination like TXT and rodinal. Add in the inherent issue of scanning 35mm with a flatbed and that might be what you're getting.

What kinds of results are you getting with other film/dev combinations?

allan

allan
 
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