My first B&W at home (no pics yet)

[sf]

I have just finished processing my first roll of HP5 at home, using the Ilford chemicals - Ilfosol as the developer.

7.5 minutes at 70 degrees F in the developer, 15 second in the stop bath, then about 5 minutes in the fixer. All by the book, carefully.

Why, then, are my negatives rather flat in tone and very curly? and I mean curling not from end to end, but rather that it is working on becoming a 120 length tube of celluloid.

The Ilfosol I bought from Glazer's was sucked it (the container was shrinking in). Does that mean it was past its prime?

The negs look sharp, though, and I just have to find 2 things now :

a squeegee and some way of keeping dust off the negs while they dry. I do notice some small quantity of little pinhead sized bumps here and there. Like little bubbles or grains of something.

 

[Socke]

I have very heavy clamps to hang my negs to dry, they keep them relative straight. After the film dried, I cut and sleeve and put them under a book to get them even flatter.

As for dust, I dry my film in the bathroom which I try to get as dustfree as possible befor and some 5 minutes befor I hang my film to dry I turn on the shower steaming hot which settles most of the remaining dust. Drying time is a extended but usualy I dry my film over night.
Something like shower, develope, brush teeth, go to sleep 🙂

 

[sf]

here is a pic from the roll now I only wish I could chane the title of this thread

 

[lido]

It looks pretty good to me. You have full tonality in this scan, from whitest white to full black. I can see a little dust, but you can take care of it in Photoshop, I know I spend a lot of time doing it.
As for curling, I use lead weight on my bottom clamp, so that there is tension on the film while it dries, cut it up and sleave it. In a day or two the film is pretty flat, so that it slides into a negative scanner easily.
But I do 35mm only, no medium format.

Best of luck and keep trying.

 

[kaiyen]

Yeah, it looks alright to me, tonally. That particular shot has very flat lighting. Perhaps that's why? Don't try to read the negative itself too much until you have seen how they scan first.

Otherwise, contrast is a result of exposure and development. If you truly feel that your shadows are too light, you need to decrease exposure. If you truly feel that your highlights are too dark, then you need to increase development. This is assuming you are metering correctly, by the way.

Film usually curls when it's dried in too dry of an environment. If you run your shower for a few minutes with hot, steaming water before drying, that'll not only get the dust out of the air but also put some humidity in the room. Then hang something - even just a clothespin, off the bottom and you'll be fine.

allan

 

[sf]

The image looks really grainy. Why? Is that because I processed it at too high a temperature or something? I was only about 1.5 degrees above the 68 degrees required. Of course, you can't see the grain in the image that well, but it is really grainy - which adds a bit to the sharpness, but is hard to deal with at high magnification.

 

[Dracotype]

The image looks really grainy. Why? Is that because I processed it at too high a temperature or something? I was only about 1.5 degrees above the 68 degrees required. Of course, you can't see the grain in the image that well, but it is really grainy - which adds a bit to the sharpness, but is hard to deal with at high magnification.

I remember when I was using FG7 that HP5+ turned out that grainy. I am not sure if Ilfosol is very near FG7 or not, but I have not particularly satified with HP5+ and FG7. I shall have to try it again. But I think the main problem the first time was that I wasn't very careful in my composition, exposure or thought process. :bang:

I think most black and white chemistry is fairly forgiving. I have been within 1 or 2 degrees of what is recommended and still gotten good negs.

The only film I really liked with Ilfosol was FP4+. I gave the most lovely negatives. It gave a nice little boost to the contrast, which gave it that nice bite. Plus I think Ilfosol gave FP4+ near true box speed.

But please beware! Ilfosol has a tendancy to die suddenly, so test each time before you use if you use liquid. I don't know how to test developer, but I am sure someone here knows how. Come to think of it, I'd like to know how too. 😀

Hope this helps,

Drew

 

[jano]

The example here looks okay grainwise, but I'm guessing the original is fairly grainy looking -- try scanning as a positive and inverting + contrast/curves in your favorite editing program.

I hesitate to respond to this regarding HP5, because I haven't had much experience or luck with it. I've shot three rolls so far, developed in Xtol, and all have the same, somewhat washed out appearance. Yours has much nicer tones, however, and mine were somewhat more flat. *shrug*

 

[tetrisattack]

You know, almost all of the bottles of chemicals at Glazer's are sucking inward. I've always assumed that it's a stockperson squeezing out the extra air, but it could be the way it's shipped. At any rate, I've never had problems with various paper and film developers and fixer from there, so you can probably rule that out.

 

[kaiyen]

Assuming you adjusted your dev time down to compensate for the increased temperature, grain should not be higher than normal. Grain is the result of exposure, time and temp in dev. so assuming you didn't overexpose, and you adjusted your time for temp, you're basically breaking even.

allan