First Roll Developed in 25+ Years

[dazedgonebye]

Ok, ended up in Tucson for the weekend. First stop was a pub called "The Dubliner." Nice place. Looks fairly good for a place only a few years old in the American Southwest.
Anyway...I popped a roll of Tri-X in the Hexar AF (only fast bw on hand). Today I developed it in Ilsofol 3. I very much like the results from the low light shots. The next day though, I finished the roll outdoors. Every shot outdoors is very, very high contrast. Not pleasing at all.

No adjustment at all on these shots. A couple could be improved in PS, but I wanted to show the raw results here.

The overall good news is...this is the first roll of film I've developed in over 25 years and it worked! Yay.

Any thoughts on the outdoors shots? Should I just be underexposing a bit in the bright light?

 

[literiter]

Don't stop!

 

[JeffGreene]

Keep at it! It's addictive and you've made a great start.

 

[Doug]

Some nice shots! Looks like a bit of extra development, whether warm soup, more time, or vigorous agitation. Highlights look real strong....

 

[dazedgonebye]

Some nice shots! Looks like a bit of extra development, whether warm soup, more time, or vigorous agitation. Highlights look real strong....

10 minutes developing.
About 19C for a temp (I had to make an ice water bath to get the temp down. Tap water is about 28C in Arizona...wait till summer).
I agitated with about 3 inversions every minute. Perhaps too much?

 

[charjohncarter]

Great, keep them coming.

 

[Foto-factotum]

I like the night shots very much.
Is the day pictures not harsh because of the harsh sunlight? (And therefore a true reflection of what the light conditions were?) Or was the camera's limited shutterspeed of 250th not blame for the overexposure of the day pitures?
Nevertheless I will enjoy to see more! Thank you for sharing.

 

[Keith]

Great pics and I don't mind the contrast in the day shots at all ... and a few months ago I developed my first roll of film in fifty five years! 😛

Agitation ... I apply the same rule to all the films I use now;

Initial agitation continuous for one minute ... (usually one inversion every ten seconds) ... then two inversions every minute on the minute for the rest of the time! 🙂

 

[jayjee]

i'm all about contrast, nice!

 

[Doug]

Is the day pictures not harsh because of the harsh sunlight? (And therefore a true reflection of what the light conditions were?) Or was the camera's limited shutterspeed of 250th not blame for the overexposure of the day pitures?

A very good point indeed!

 

[dazedgonebye]

The Hexar says it'll do 1/500th. Could be running slow though. I did look down at the camera for one of the shots and it was indicating f16, so stopped down all the way.
Maybe next time I'll just put a 4x ND filter on when shooting 400 iso outside with that camera. Still plenty of light around here. Really we're more sunny 22 than sunny 16.

 

[JoeV]

Steve, your indoor and night shots look fine for contrast. Your film/developer/agitation method is fine for scenes such as these.

We must be reminded that the Zone System was invented for problems such as what you've described with your outdoor images, where the scene's brightness range is simply too great for normal film processing methods. Many of the images created by the system's main advocate - Ansel Adams - were created in the western US, in light very much like what you discovered in Arizona.

The solution, of course, is to alter your development time, after first determining the film's true speed. But that's a bit hard to do with rollfilm unless the entire roll is outdoor scenic in harsh light. Which is why there's still a place for large format cameras using sheet film that can be individually developed.

Back to your post, I really like these indoor candid shots; well done and keep souping that film.

~Joe

 

[dazedgonebye]

Steve, your indoor and night shots look fine for contrast. Your film/developer/agitation method is fine for scenes such as these.

We must be reminded that the Zone System was invented for problems such as what you've described with your outdoor images, where the scene's brightness range is simply too great for normal film processing methods. Many of the images created by the system's main advocate - Ansel Adams - were created in the western US, in light very much like what you discovered in Arizona.

The solution, of course, is to alter your development time, after first determining the film's true speed. But that's a bit hard to do with rollfilm unless the entire roll is outdoor scenic in harsh light. Which is why there's still a place for large format cameras using sheet film that can be individually developed.

Back to your post, I really like these indoor candid shots; well done and keep souping that film.

~Joe

I'm not ready to start shooting sheet film to get around the issue. I do think I might try a two bath developing method though and see how that works.

 

[charjohncarter]

I found 'sunny f22' when I was in Phoenix especially for the 5.5 hours surrounding noon. We have some of that in California too. I have been using HC-110h and rating TriX and PlusX down about 2/3s of a stop. I had this same problem in South America when I lived there. That was 35 years ago and I solved it this way then. This is TriX at 250 in San Francisco on a sunny day (not f22) and developed in HC-110h:

I wouldn't tell somebody to change developers, but maybe you can find a compromise by changing dilutions of your developer to get both acceptable bright sun and available light images. And/or changing your EI rating combined with a change in development time.