times and agitation for Tri-X in Xtol or D76

ymc226

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Hello, joined not too long ago.

I started in the darkroom last year, went crazy in wanting to try all sorts of films and developers (too numerous to list). Now I've settled on Tri-X and either Xtol or D76.

Going on vacation recently, I shot both at the beach/pool and also in more normal lighting situations (shady or hazy outdoors). Exposurewise, I went for one stop over in all of my shots to get the skin tones where I thought they should be.

Using the MDC, of 9 minutes 45 seconds for D76, the skin tones are good. However, the beach/pool scenes with all the brightness and reflections appear to have excessive highlights that I need to print down with lower contrast. The more normal scenes appear to be developed more appropriately but also with some less apparent overblown highlights.

I'd like to know what times and agitation schemes people use for normal and more "bright" contrasty situations. Sorry, I use only film and don't have a scanner so it would be difficult for me to post examples.

I was thinking of decreasing the time by 20% for these more contrasty scenes, (about 8 minutes). Does this sound reasonable? May be about 9 minutes for less contrasty scenes. Do I need to change my agitation as well? (currently the recommended 5 times initially followed by 5 seconds or about 2 cycles every 30 seconds).
 
Everybody has their own formulas, mine is with HC-110, but I don't think the developer matters much. I shoot TriX at 250 and if most of the roll is high contrast I have a formula of slightly more dilution than my normal H dilution and then agitate every 4 minutes, 3 inversion (30 seconds agitation to start). This seem to hold back the highlights but lets the rest go. I, of course, have a different total time for development.

Here is a high contrast scene that I did with this method. I think the highlights are controled: not blow inside the room or outside the house. This was a very sunny day.

3308020430_6fbebe187b.jpg
 
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