Tri-X at 6400 - what developer and how?

[Charly]

I found myself with only Tri-X (35mm) in pitch dark conditions in Thailand and pushed it to 6400. I now have the can wanting to be developed.....but I don't know how!

What developer would you recommend for such a push? I would like to use something similarly idiot proof as diafine but as I understand, I cannot push with it, it naturally increases the speed to around 1600. There was some rumour about Rodinal and semi stand development but I'm not familiar with either.

Thanks for your help!

Charly

 

[drewbarb]

Tri-X @ 6400: Microphen full strength @ 70 degrees F for 17 minutes. I recommend dividing the development- doing 9 minutes, then dump, add fressh dev and complete the final 8 minutes. Stop, fix, wash as normal.

 

[Trius]

Rodinal 1:100 2 hours stand development.

 

[40oz]

Straight D-76 might work for you. Times will be based on educated guesses, but perhaps 13 1/2 minutes or so at 68F should do it. You might try out a roll at home first to see what you might get, and adjust dev times from there.

In my experience, Tri-X is fine at 3200 in D-76 1+1, so 6400 really ought to be doable. I use D-76, so that's what I can suggest, but I'm sure there are other developers that would work as well. I'm not a real fan of stand development myself, so I'd use straight D-76 to get a more realistic time. But everyone has a preference.

 

[chris91387]

i'd go get a roll of tri-x and shoot it at 6400 (under similar lighting conditions) and do a trial run first.

also consider a snip test


- chris

 

[Travis L.]

I agree with Trius. I've done this with awesome results.

Some time ago I remember seeing a thread on the Photo.net Leica forum, a search over their may do you some good.

Good Luck

 

[WoolenMammoth]

microphen and rodinal will both work easily for tri-x at that speed. If you didnt shoot in total darkness, you might actually be really suprised at how well either works. Both, however, are really picky with agitation on a long push, you would be really foolish to pull some suggested times off the internet and put your film in there, do a few rounds of testing just to figure out how to get the highlights where you want them with your style of agitation. Trix does get really blocky though, rodinal at 1:100 will help that tremendously.

 

[Honus]

Like Trius said, 1:100 Rodinal, shake it real good for about 30 seconds, then let it stand for 2 hours.

 

[Bijesh]

I use HC-110 REPLENISHER(not HC-110 developer) to develop Tri-X at 5000.

To make a solution of this special developer, make a 1:15 solution of
HC-110 Replenisher. Unlike many developers that use a 68-degree F temperature, this formula requires the working solution of HC-110 replenisher
at 75-degree F. The processing time is 5 minutes 50 secs at 75-degree F for old tri-x and 5 minutes 20 secs for the current one, with
agitation for five seconds every thirty second. Very good results. Try it and see for yourselves.

 

[Charly]

Does anyone have any examples of the 2 hr Rodinal method? I like it because of the lack of agitation and the long dev time - it seriously reduces room for errors!

Thanks

 

[lZr]

Bijesh:
I use HC-110 REPLENISHER(not HC-110 developer) to develop Tri-X at 5000.
-
Why not HC-110? What is the idea with the replenisher?

 

[gertf]

I've got some undeveloped Tri-X shot at 6400 that I'm developing next week when my Rodinal arrives. I'll post up some photos then!

 

[venchka]

Here you go

Here you go

Slightly different, but well worth reading. With a few samples.

Tri-X @ 12,800

 

[Trius]

IIRC, the time for the 12800 rating was about one hour in Rodinal 1:50. It never worked for me, so I agree it is simply metering technique/method. That said, the midtones don't do badly. I'm going to be shooting some Tri-X under some more controlled conditions/metering with exposures @ EI 3200 & 6400, then process in Rodinal 1:100 for 2 hours stand and see what happens. Temperature control will be my biggest challenge.

 

[Trius]

A 1º spot meter is exactly what I will use. The caveat is that the meter has not been professionally calibrated. If Richard Ritter would answer my email I might send it to him, otherwise it will probably go to Quality Light Metric.

I'll use a Kodak grey card for metering, plus I'll likely have a grey scale and/or other surfaces to check value placement.

 

[WoolenMammoth]

first of all, when you do dev tests, you should be shooting a grey card and checking the density of the neg. Your "real" speed is just about where you cant see through the neg if you are looking at text through your negative. Now that takes any debate about metering absolutely out of the question.

secondly, describing a push that resulted in images that were grainy and contrasty, as if to suggest that as a criticism seems a little odd to me. I mean, what could you really expect...

First you have to establish your speed based upon your development method. Bracket a grey card in flat light. real excting stuff. I have some trix at 3200 that I did a semi stand in rodinal that I cant tell very much different from trix at 400 in rodinal, however it was shot in bright daylight where I could have rated the film at 50. The mistake most people make when drawing opinions of pushes like this is when they use a push to develop an image that was shot in the dark. Good luck with that, no matter what you do. If your work is sufficiently lit and you are using the push for effect, not to save a mistake, you might be pleasantly suprised by how well trix can hold together. Not many people run around shooting trix at 3200 at high noon in nevada though...

Like anything else that is ever going to matter, you have to try it yourself. This is the internet afterall and since when has that ever served as anything more than a guide...

 

[Trius]

Oh Extinct One: Yes. I use Fred Picker's Zone VI Workshop method to establish personal EI/film speed. (Meter for Zone I, find the frame that is barely different than film base + fog, etc.) BUT ... in this case we are not talking about "real" film speed, but low light shooting when nothing else put push development will do.

1600, Rodinal 1:50

 

[rogue_designer]

Like Trius said, 1:100 Rodinal, shake it real good for about 30 seconds, then let it stand for 2 hours.

That's what I use, but HC110 instead of rodinal. 1:100 - invert three times every 1/2 hour. I'll see if I can find any examples in what I have scanned to post later.

 

[Trius]

Trius, tell me what the exposure was on the man's face at right in the foreground of your photo. Is that where you metered? Just curious?

You make a good point. If you are pushing, you are just trying to get any kind of image.

For that shot I think (hard to recall) I just used the OM-1n meter without any adjustment, pointing to a particular area, etc. IOW, centre-weighted average as you see the scene. The OM-1n ASA setting only goes to 1600. I had had not-so-good results with higher ASA/ISO/EI in the past in this room during standard time, so this evening, as we were still on DST, I used 1600. My idea was to get to an EI that I was pretty sure would give me useable results, get the development down, and then work upwards later.

I'll re-visit this location and jam session this month too; it's held the last Sunday of every month.

 

[WoolenMammoth]

I think if I expected a)moderate grain or b)moderate contrast by pushing ANY film ahem, FIVE stops, I would likely regard the results as unusable myself. It doesnt seem logical to push film unless that was entirely the effect you were trying to achieve in the first place. Puzzling reaction there. For me, the entire point of pushing TX was to get the blacks to block up yet of course you always hear this as the first negative point that people bring up. Everyone has their own program going on. The bottom line is if you bracket around a flatly lit grey card and do a five stop push on tri-x you can more than definitely overcome base fog. Wether or not this translates as something "usable" is up to everyone's own interpretation.

I would also go so far to suggest that if you are pushing, you are trying to get a TYPE of image, suggesting *any* kind of image is slightly pedestrian. I havent ran a roll of TX at less than 1000 in a very very very long time, and thats coming off of sets lit with a few 2k's. Its a look...

Im obviously a guy that has work a push into a working style for both black and white and color work and am always slightly baffled by the crowd that so easily frowns on pushing, considering it only a last ditch effort. If you have a lot of experience shooting chromes, you'll do well shooting trix around three ish stops under, you are dealing with about the same latitude. But since its not the normal latitude for the film, everyone thinks its a big problem, odd.