Tri-X @ ISO 8000 in Rodinal 1:50

[mgilbuena]

Check out these great photos:
http://hasselrad.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/alexisonfire/

Shot on a Leica IIIf / Summaron @ f/3.5 at 1/60th. According to the site (I've posed this question to him as well, but have not yet heard back) these photos were developed in 60 minutes with Rodinal 1:50 to achieve ~ISO 8000 push. Beautiful.

What do you guys think was the agitation?

Based on another post on his site, it may seem that he is using the following method:
http://hasselrad.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/push-times-for-tri-x-35mm-in-rodinal-150/

Rodinal 1:50 for TX400 – push
ISO 800 – 20 minutes
ISO 1600 – 30 minutes
ISO 3200 – 40 minutes
ISO 6400 – 55 minutes​

Agitation: 5 inversions every 5 minutes
​

What do you guys think? How would you develop this in Rodinal?

 

[kdemas]

Personally I'd try a 1 hour stand, Rodinal 1:100 for 60 mins. 1 min initial agitation, no touching after that.

 

[mgilbuena]

I've, literally, have had spotty success with stand development. I'm not sure if bubbles formed or if I unsuccessful in dislodging all the air bubbles from the film. I also experienced more dense exposure around the sprockets and edge of the film.

I haven't tried it again since my initial experiment with stand development.

 

[kdemas]

Interesting. I've had terrific luck. There can be sone strange development around the sprockets on occasion but I haven't had any intrusion into the images themselves. I prefer my Patterson one roll tank, many insist you need metal reels though my Patterson works well. Sprocket issue was with my Jobo plastic reels.

Maybe give it another shot on a test roll and remember to give it a nice "bang" on the counter to make those air bubbles disappear (hopefully).

 

[Bob Michaels]

I suspect that many of the "extraordinarily high iso" photos shown are significantly influenced by:

1) the way one meters. Pointing a reflected meter at a stage with some very bright lights in the scene will throw you way off the true reading

2) just how many steps of shadow detail are missing. You can set your meter at iso 3200 and shoot TriX normally. You will just have no shadow detail in the 3 lower zones. Are you really shooting at 3200 or just underexposing your film by 3 stops? Is there really a difference?

I think this whole iso thing implies a level of precision that does not exist with almost all photographers. Now it can be precisely measured but we are not doing it.

 

[kdemas]

Bob,

I agree, metering can be tricky. I have shot TX at 3200 a fair amount with pretty nice results though. Stage and performance work is not my thing and those high intensity lights would be tricky with a built in meter I think. I'm sure experience in that environment would be a major plus.

Kent

 

[cnphoto]

i metered these shots with a hanheld meter in a mix of the brightest light with a Sekonic L308S, it was very dim here - all red and blue light. incredibly dark. i was getting 1/4s readings at ISO 3200 on the Sekonic.

i gave up on the meter and just shot these at 1/30th-1/60th at F3.5 on Tri-X and developed in Rodinal 1:50 for 60 minutes (it may have actually been closer to 65mins). 5ish initial agitations (it may have been as many as 15 though?) then 5 agitations every 5 minutes then once the 60+ minutes was up, dump and wash/fix.

i tended to find, when i was shooting film, that for gigs F2.0-F3.5 at 1/250th-1/125th for bright light in Rodinal 1:50 for 45min worked pretty well. drop it to 1/60th for dimmer light and then sit at 1/60th and just push the hell out of it in Rodinal at 1:50 for 60 minutes (or more) and you'll generally get "usable" images. lots of fun though 🙂

the ISO rating I gave on the blog is probably just a bit of creative gesticulation on my behalf, but again probably not that far off what a refelcted average metered reading may have been for the scenario.