Taking Tri-X and Diafine to extremes...

[schmoozit]

I've posted some concerning the lattitude of the Diafine and Tri-X combo. I should have followed that up with a couple examples, but haven't; until now, anyway.

The photos are at the very limits of what you can expect to do with Diafine, I think. I don't think you'll have much luck going beyond what's here, and you may experience some frustrations within these "limits" as well, so...

The first photo is at ISO 12. It kept detail, but the negs are so dark that they do not scan well at all. I've still got to experiment and see if I can scan them effectively. I'm sure using an enlarger would work much better.

The second shot is at ISO 6400. On both shots (same roll, by the way), keep in mind that my dog is, no doubt about it, black and white. I have a heck of a time getting detail in both areas of her coat even with careful metering at normal ISO. I have lost some detail in the black area of the head, but this is about as tough as it's gonna get. For most subjects, you'll be alright at 6400.

I should mention that, of course, careful metering is more important at the extremes. These were not metered carefully, however, and so could even have been better.

Edit: Doh! It just hit me that I missed a step in the editing and resizing of these images. The tones, therefore, aren't quite what I have in the original, but they are close and you can still get an idea of the possibilities. Beyond some curves to get these images sorta balanced out, I resized and sharpened. That's it.

 

[T_om]

Goes to show that Diafine is a very versatile developer.

The test would have been MUCH better had you accurately metered. If you are in the "testing" mood again, I hope you will run a well-metered series.

As for me, you are preaching to the choir. 😉 I love Diafine anyway.

Tom

PS: For those that didn't catch it, he said these shots were on THE SAME ROLL. Try THAT with some other developer.

 

[jtzordon]

So they were developed under the same conditions?! How's that for latitude!

 

[Kin Lau]

Interesting... especially the extreme over-exposure. This is where scanners have the greatest difficulty. TriX @ 1250 in Diafine is _very_ easy to scan.

Which scanner is being used for these tests? I think that's an important consideration too.

 

[schmoozit]

Kin: Yeah! Scanner is a Canon FS4000US dedicated 35mm scanner. It does fairly well, but I wouldn't think a flatbed scanner would be workable.

Tom: You're right, of course. I was bored and decided to waste the film that was already in the camera and let the G2 do it's center weighted averaging thing. I suppose it helped the first shot, and made the second shot worse. The meter was biased towards the white coat of my dog, and so underexposed some. I'll play again soon, but more carefully. I don't have a good handheld incident meter. Actually, I don't have any meter (other than in-camera)!

 

[FrankS]

I've had some problems lately with Diafine: Negs have come out too thin and weak. The reason, I've discovered, is the temperature of the developer, which was too cold. I live in a big, old house that's going to suck $ from my wallet to heat over the winter. We have not yet started the furnace and temps inside have dropped at times to 10 Celsius. Now I have to place the chemicals in a hot water bath and have had no further problems.

 

[schmoozit]

Well, Frank, you could have helped yourself out with the heating bills by selling your Rollei for a little more than you did, ya know! Heck, I would have given you $95, give or take some change.