How would you get the smallest grain with Tri-X in Rodinal/Adonal?

[Bill Clark]

I buy bulk and load. I'm now going to 24 exposure rolls as they are easier to make on a contact 8"x10" sheet. I found that 6 strips of 6 exposures each strip is kind of a pain to get on one sheet.

Don't know if this could help you B&H has bulk film:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/searc...PRICE_2|0&N=4294548524+4130468175&srtclk=sort

Kentmere is good film and from what I've read it is made by the same company that owns Ilford.

Nice to chat with you.

P.S.

Thanks Tom for posting your information. It will help me. Have a great day.

And if you folks celebrate, Happy Easter.

 

[Steve M.]

As Dana said, just use Tri-X w/ D76 or something similar. The developers you want to use are not going to give you comparably tight grain. If anything, they are justly famous for quite the opposite. I use Tri-X w/ Rodinal, but I don't expect it to look smooth and tight. That's the work of other developers. Horses for courses. Those developers you mentioned are what they are. Or, appreciate them for what they are, or switch to something that will give you that tight grain look if that's your goal.

 

[Tom A]

Arista Premium 400 (disguised TriX) in D23 two bath developer. M2 and M-Nokton 50mm f1.5.
This combination gives you pretty nice grain structure. Very smooth tones and, important to me, retains the film speed that I shoot at (around 320 iso - but as it is Sunny f16 - some flexibility as to my guesswork).

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Thanks for posting, Tom! Great information... And so kind of you looking for the example; the image is exactly what I had in mind: great wild Tri-X tonality as with Rodinal, but with a tighter, yet crisp grain... That two bath D23 is a useful thing!
I think it's time for shooting and testing for a few days...
For those interested, I just found interesting information on a 5 years old thread, especially on post #13...
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80104
Thanks everybody!
Cheers,
Juan

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Just developed a first try... For a first experiment, with Rodinal only, I decided to go for prudent, lowish variables everywhere, with three different light scenes shot yesterday: overcast (no filter) and shades on sunny day and direct sun (with yellow filter), and each of those three were shot @400 and @200... Temperature was 16 Celsius (!), controlled with water at 16 surrounding tank, starting after a 3 minutes presoak at 16 too, and development time was 60 minutes, 1+100 dilution, with very gentle agitation for the first 30 seconds, and then just two very gentle inversions at minute 30...
Negatives came out a bit weak, not by much, and I see uneven development on two frames from different scenes... Then: tomorrow I'll shoot the same three light situations, again at 400 & 200 each, but I'll bump all things a little bit... I'll use one more degree: 17 Celsius presoak and development, 60 seconds of initial agitation instead of 30, and a 90 minutes semistand instead of 60, and I'll keep the 1+100 dilution only, but with 3 points of agitation instead of 1: at minutes 20, 40 and 60, with 3 decided inversions for each point, instead of two gentle ones only once... I think the low temperature will allow all this, yet keeping the grain small even for scannig, but reaching darker values on negatives, without uneven development risks because of a richer agitation: tomorrow I'll scan that second try at 4800 dpi, to check grain size and structure, and judging the same images at 400 & 200, I'll fine tune my exposure index...
I thank you all for your contributions!
Cheers,
Juan

 

[ChrisLivsey]

Take care in interpretation. What you see "under the microscope" may not directly relate to observed "print" results.

A respected worker was Barry Thornton, you should try and obtain his "Edge of Darkness" for excellent discussions on tweaking developers.
Finer grain does NOT mean greater sharpness. Resolution increases but unless there is higher acutance (contrast at the edge of small details) perceived sharpness will not increase. The smothness of fine grain leaves the eye looking for edges to see detail, larger grain provides the edges and the brain interprets sharpness.
There are of course limits to this. Enlarging a fast film with grain will leave the grain being intrusive (This assumes you are not looking for a Japanese "Provoke" effect) and detail will suffer because of the lower resolution. Compromise is the name of the game and that is partly why we have so many developers. Each is looking to tilt the balance slightly towards one parameter, it will be at the expense of another but it depends on what you are looking for. In your case you want to tilt to reducing perceived grain, be careful what you loose.
If you want to be precise rather than inspecting visually which is subjective because of all the perceptual problems you should measure granularity. This though needs a microdensitometer with a defined hole usually 0.048mm because the Kodak employee use a drill bit of that diameter (anecdotally). I suspect you will not want to do that. In that case you may want to read the work of someone who has done it for you. Effects of dilution,agitation,temperature, contrast index aimed for,water quality,all considered, more reading:
"Controls in Black and White Photography" must be the second edition, Richard J Henry.

Thank you for reporting back.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Thanks, Chris...
Those words "fine grain" so very used everywhere, should really be replaced all around and at once by "dissolved grain"... Yet when I think of fine grain, I think of the sharp grain produced by Rodinal with Plus-X or FP4 or Acros exposed a third of a stop below box speed: that is grain and that is fine, but when most people (or books) say fine grain or fine grain developer, they really mean dissolved grain or no grain... My aim is sharp grain always, in all sizes, as it's inherent to classic film. Apart, I really enjoy crisp grain no matter the subject or image... I have also masked grain totally even with PMK Pyro, but I like clear grain a lot more than semidissolved grain or no grain. With OOF zones in the image, the presence of grain is (to me) a deeply photographic thing, just as selective focus: the peculiar nature of this abstraction we all love called photography.
I am taking lots of care of what I may, as you say, lose while I try to find a more controlled grain size... Because of higher dilution (1:100 instead of my usual 1:50) and because of low temperature (16C instead of my previous room stand, 21-22C) I just found on my first try the whole scheme was a little bit weak... I just developed a second try with a bit more temperature, agitation and development time, as stated on my previous post, and I found negatives are now tonally OK, especially for sunny scenes... Yet I haven't scanned to check grain, but what for, if I already know it just can't be smaller, because for that I would have to reduce contrast and I don't want to reduce it... I feel now I'm really close to the best possible use of Rodinal, and I'd like to find a way to develop just how I'm doing in this second try, but with a little more contrast for soft light scenes, WITHOUT affecting grain size... So I guess this is my last question for all forum members: how can I get a bit more contrast on negatives without making my grain bigger? I want it on negatives because I don't want to abuse post processing, and I want my dull light scenes with a little more punch for wet printing too...
Thanks for all your ideas or comments!!!

 

[Highway 61]

Obviously, what you are after while using Tri-X will be achieved with some two-baths developers, like D23, or Diafine, or Emofin.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

It seems, after checking the negatives with a 22x loupe, low temperature is even better, for small grain, than (close to) no agitation... With this cold 90min. stand, grain is very well controlled, even for scanning: so for wet printing a lot better... And it looks like both EI's of 400 and 200 are kind of lowish... Mmmm... Instead of shortening this stand for box speed use, I am thinking now I might find in the end something I wasn't looking for: a relaxed DOF, ASA800 recipe for street, with the smallest possible Tri-X in Rodinal grain... That would be nice! I'll keep 1+100, 17C and 90min, but I'll agitate a bit more for increased contrast, every 15 minutes, and meter at 800... That's my next and I hope final setting... And for the slower story, I guess I will use Acros, FP4 or Foma100 at box speed, with low temperature stand too, for more detailed shooting and medium format... Now I feel both things are in the places they belong... And perhaps when I order slow film, testing it will be as easy as using these settings and just bracket a few images to quickly decide the best EI... Cool!
Cheers,
Juan

 

[anerjee]

Juan, care to share a few pictures from your experiments with Rodinal and tri-x?

 

[Roger Hicks]

. . . Compromise is the name of the game and that is partly why we have so many developers. Each is looking to tilt the balance slightly towards one parameter, it will be at the expense of another but it depends on what you are looking for. . . .

Dear Chris,

Exactly. And it doesn't help if you are trying to get two (or more) effects that are often mutually exclusive, such as finer grain AND more sharpness. Rodinal is what it is and it gives what it gives: low true ISO speed, big grain, good sharpness, nice tonality. You can introduce variations via dilution, temperature and agitation but you'll get vastly bigger variations by changing developers -- or, of course, by changing film.

Cheers,

R.

 

[ianstamatic]

rodinal and small grain is like chalk and cheese, wrong tool for the job.

i agree with roger and others.
change dev.
i dont know why there is so much rabid support for rodinal on this forum when there are other developers that for many applications are so much better.
compare your best results at these experiments against standard xtol, diafine, accu-fine, beutlers, pyro etc .. not just grain but midtones also ...

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

I won't scan in a few weeks (a couple of days ago I tried to walk before I should have, and I should stay in bed for one month), but I found grain is beautiful and smaller the way I'm developing now... I was relaxing too much during the last months, and was doing stand at room temperature (21-22C) and the grain was a bit big... Here's what I'm doing, so you can try it:
1. Presoak, a few minutes, with water at 16C.
2. 90 minutes, Rodinal 1+100, 4ml in my case, 17C, with two thirds of the 2 reel tank inside a bowl of water at 17C. I develop one roll at a time. Every few minutes I put a small ice inside the bowl to keep its water at 17C. 1 minute of initial decided agitation. 10 decided inversions every 15 minutes. Not even washing with water because of high dilution, just dropping developer. Fixer at room temperature. Washing, wetting, washing.
Grain is much smaller than at 21-22C. Another thing: a scene shot three times at N-1, N and N+1, changes almost nothing on negative, so it's like not pushing, in terms of contrast, as if I were shooting at 200, but of course metering at 800. Last one: my incident/reflected Sekonic meter gives me in general a reading of one more f-stop of light for reflected light on a Kodak gray card if compared to an incident reading (perfect for slide film), and my Bessas and Nikons give me the same reflected metering the Sekonic gives with the spot reflected light metering, so in case of using an incident meter, I recommend opening 1 f-stop. Both soft light and sunny scenes are well recorded and there's latitude left on film at both sides, requiring adjusts at both extremes after scanning, so the scenes are being well captured no matter the contrast.

Cheers,
Juan

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Before I was told two days ago to really stay in bed for a month and stop acting as if nothing happened 🙂 I had time to check optimal exposure for direct sun and for shades on that sunny day, so this might help a bit more:
Direct sun: 1/2000 f8 with yellow filter.
Shade on same sunny day: 1/250 f8 without filter.
That makes hazy sun 1/1000 f8, bright overcast 1/500 f8, normal overcast 1/250 f8, and below that you can keep doing scale focus/prefocus shooting with great DOF and safe shutter speeds.
Optimal exposure was checked after bracketing scenes at ½ stop increments, scanning those negatives that included a card with middle gray, pure white, pure black, and several grades of light grays and dark grays... After scanning, I made digital prints to check good guide points on how much contrast correction in both ways was needed in Photoshop (adjust/levels), and all gray levels and pure white/black were perfectly reproduced when the left slider (blacks) was given +40 and the right one (whites) -10.
Hope this helps.
YMMVBJATLB (Your mileage may vary, but just a tiny little bit) 🙂
Cheers,
Juan

 

[Tom A]

i did try the MCM 1000 some years ago - very fine grain with TriX - but significant speed loss (at least 1 stop). The developer is not available anymore - I mixed my own at the time. Have to try to dig up the samples from it. There is also FX 10 which used one of Kodak's colour coupler as an ingredient - works reasonably well, but everything is covered in "black tar" from the CD-2. Miserable to remove. Grain is fine though,
For the ultimate fine grain you would have to go to Odell's Physical developer, Finicky and contains a lot of strange ingredients! Speed loss is massive - about 4-5 stops!!!!!

 

[Roger Hicks]

. . . For the ultimate fine grain you would have to go to Odell's Physical developer, Finicky and contains a lot of strange ingredients! Speed loss is massive - about 4-5 stops!!!!!

Dear Tom,

Have you ever actually tried it? I admit I never have. But I'd not say that it had many ingredients, nor that they were strange. Potasssium iodide; sodium sulphite; silver nitrate; hypo; amidol. That's the "Revised formula" from the 1939 BJP so maybe earlier ones were weirder. The Focal Encyclopaedia doesn't use Odell's formula but the only real difference is hydroquinone/hydroxide as the dev.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

. . . i dont know why there is so much rabid support for rodinal on this forum when there are other developers that for many applications are so much better. ...

Nor I. Tonality, I guess. Well, that and it's long-lasting and cheap.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Jani_from_Finland]

Perhaps not the smallest, but damn one really nice with Rodinal + HC110 mixture, i remember 30ml + 15ml to 2L water was the recipe, very nice negs, but the times need to be tested 10' +/-
Rangefinderfreak Jukka knows this, its very much his recipe of use and has a long lifetime, so very cheap in use.

 

[Tom A]

Dear Tom,

Have you ever actually tried it? I admit I never have. But I'd not say that it had many ingredients, nor that they were strange. Potasssium iodide; sodium sulphite; silver nitrate; hypo; amidol. That's the "Revised formula" from the 1939 BJP so maybe earlier ones were weirder. The Focal Encyclopaedia doesn't use Odell's formula but the only real difference is hydroquinone/hydroxide as the dev.

Cheers,

R.

Roger, may years ago I tried it - I had access to a lab with all the beakers and glass rods etc. I did it with TriX - and yes the grain is virtually invisible - even under a microscope - but 400 iso TriX barely gave me 12 iso. It is an interesting process though - for all practical purposes - the "grain" in the film is replaced by silver molecules. Not worth the effort though - and the contrast is way off.
These days potassium iodide and and silver nitrate is getting expensive and difficult to source. It would be an interesting "soup" for Minox or some other subminiature though.

 

[Tom A]

Arista Premium 400, FX 10 developer, Nikon F3, Macro Nikkor 105mm f4.0.