good dev + film combos for pushing

J

jojoman2

Guest
Hey guys. I'm shooting mostly medium format now so I need to stretch out that 400 iso film. I've been pushing Ilford delta 3200 to 1600 from it's true speed that I rate somewhere from 800-1200. I'm relatively new to pushing film, so what are your tried and true recipes?

I've had passable success with Hc-110 dilution B around 12 minutes for delta 3200 with agitation every 30 seconds.

I use a lot of tri-x. What do you veterans out there think of the new tri-x formula that kodak puts out and how do you like to push it? Is there other film I should get to know?
 
Also, I'm interested in understanding what pushing does in photoshop terms. Visually how does it affect the histogram and/or curves functions.
 
Pushing doesn't actually increase exposure, it simply stretches the information captured further across the characteristic curve. Crush your blacks heavily in Photoshop and increase contrast in mid tones and highlights and lower shadow contrast for a rough approximation. I really like T-Max 400 in Ilfotec DD-X for pushing to 3,200.
 
Delta 3200 is the best film for speeds higher than 400. Develop it in Kodak Tmax Developer, its the best developer for Delta 3200 and the best I've used for pushing other films, too.
 
I never push intentionally, but recently instead of f8 I shot f32. I knew it after but had to develop normally. But with an editing program and digital scanning you can almost do anything. This negative was so thin I wasn't going to scan:

Arista EDU ultra 400 HC-110h by John Carter, on Flickr

So if this doesn't upset you let your editing program and scanner do the work. I shoot this film and develop for 200 EI, that comes out to be EI 3200: 4 stops.
 
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