Tri-X @1600 in D76

[vdonovan]

Example of Tri-X at 1600 in D76 stock (lit only be the light on a miner's helmet). Not much shadow detail but none needed!

To push Tri-X to 1600 in D76 stock my time is 11 min, therefore I think that 13 min is too short for 1:1. In my view, as per the other posts, you should not dilute D76 if you want to push. Actually I have always found Kodak's recommended times for Tri-x in D76 to be too short, whether pushed or not.

That's a helluva shot.

 

[Highway 61]

The times are only staring points, people will have to adjust them but be sure you aren't just adding dev time to thin negs and getting pepper grain.

This sounds pretty logical ; yet with Tri-X at 400 and of course very properly exposed, I have been finding, for many years, that in D76 1+1 at 20C the best of the best developing time is 12-13 min.

Doing so I have been keeping getting excellent negatives which print out pretty well in the darkroom, with all the rich greyscale I want, black blacks and white whites, and with no "pepper grain".

And I know what "properly exposing" is, even in quite tricky situations :

Siena, Italy, Rolleiflex 3.5F, Tri-X at 400, D76 1+1 for 13 minutes at 20C

😉

As mentioned in another thread, with D76 1+1 you probably can't expect Tri-X to be an actual iso 400 film, so I suspect the Kodak times to match what Tri-X in D76 1+1 rather is (some iso 250 material). I never tried to pull Tri-X at iso 250 but I know people doing so and thus developing it with the times mentioned in the F-4017 data sheet for iso 400 in D76 1+1. Seems to work pretty well too indeed.

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

Hi,

I would suggest a 2x development time for 2-stop push. So perhaps
a starting time for Tri-x at 1600 in D-76 1+1 could be around 18mins ?

I agree that the time published for Tri-X is a bit short.

raytoei

 

[Photo_Smith]

As mentioned in another thread, with D76 1+1 you probably can't expect Tri-X to be an actual iso 400 film, so I suspect the Kodak times to match what Tri-X in D76 1+1 rather is (some iso 250 material). I never tried to pull Tri-X at iso 250 but I know people doing so and thus developing it with the times mentioned in the F-4017 data sheet for iso 400 in D76 1+1. Seems to work pretty well too indeed.

Of course I never meant to suggest that people don't know how to expose, just that Kodak do quite a bit of testing to come up with their data.


The danger being, what Kodak test as being 1600 EI may with different camera, light source (flash), lens coating, and even how far north you are effect these guidelines.

So some individual testing is needed, with obviously watching exposure as with D76 1:1 Tri-x certainly meets the speed criterion as a 400 ISO film for the ISO standard DLogE 1.3 giving 0.8 density above base fog.
I doubt the thin negs are simply down to dilution and time, increasing time to bring up density will increase contrast there is no way to avoid that with MQ based developers (or most developers).

I would like to see the negatives to be sure.