trix 12500 isos, rodinal 1+100 stand dev 4h , It works :)

Trius said:
Rodinal seems to be amazing stuff at lower dilutions and longer times with minimal or no agitation.

For night shots where mid-tones and overall tonal scale isn't really as important as just getting the shot, this regimen seems quite promising.

I'm going to do some experimenting at some point; I may even throw in some XTOL just to see what happens.

Cyrille, I do want to know about how you metered. You say careful metering is important, which I can appreciate. Do you pick a middle grey and meter? Do you meter for various brightness levels and average? Or just pick a Zone III, say, and adjust accordingly.

Salut,

Earl
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during day I mesure correctly with incident light, as told on sekonic website. During niht i started on a basis of 400 isos 1/8 f1.7 and converted that to 12500 iso but it is not enought precise
 
The problem with incident metering with EI testing is that you are measuring zone V, not III. Film speed is defined as the retention of shadow detail. So you really need to meter a shadow detail and see what is the fastest speed at which you maintain that shadow detail.

Having said that, note my comment about why I'm including a zone V item in my test.
 
Kaiyen,

are you sure you need a dark towel to get zone III? If you measure refleted
light instead of incident, like all in camera meters do, then even a white
towel will give zone V. Then, closing two stops you will get zone III and
opening three you will get zone VIII.

Looking forward to see your results!

Pau
 
Pau - you're right. it's just easier if I'm working under one set of light conditions and if I want a zone V and VIII-ish in there. I would need a really, really white towel, with a spotlight on it, to get to zone VIII if I used a white towel for zone III 🙂.

Actually, my goal is to put the III and V in natural but diffuse light (open shade?) and then have the VIII in the sun. Possibly slightly diffused, but way brighter to get it up into N-1 kind of development situations. Can compensation do N-1 all by itself? That's the point of including that.
 
huh? a dark towel reflects less light than a light towel.

and incident metering, like I said, does not give you usable EI testing results.
 
kaiyen said:
huh? a dark towel reflects less light than a light towel.

and incident metering, like I said, does not give you usable EI testing results.
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from sekonic web site 😱


Advantages Of Incident Meters

A better alternative to reading the light in many scenes is to use an “incident” meter. Hand-held incident meters read the intensity of light falling on the subject and are usually taken from the subject position. Because they are not affected by variances in subject color or reflectance, incident meters accurately record the amount of light falling onto the subject. In the majority of situations, an incident reading is extremely accurate and records tones, colors and values correctly.
incident_ilst.gif

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In incident metering you don't care about the subject 😉 I you shoot a dark towel, it will look dark because it is dark but the exposure will be the same for a white towel, because you measure the light falling on the subject AND NOT the light reflected by the subject
 
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Trius, the reason I posted my photo was it was a match to the only one that really looks any different than any other night image on this thread or the previous thread. Night images, to me, haven't changed in the fifty plus years I've been looking at them. They are restricted as kaiyen says by the range of the film.

I randomly picked this from Flickr; TMax3200 at night.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelturpo/1636798326/
 
But you _want_ to meter the amount of light reflected by the target! Okay - again, it's great that you want to experiment, but now I consider your EI testing to be of absolutely no value to me since you are lacking even a basic understanding of how to determine it.

Here's the deal. First, it's really not necessary to explain to me what incident metering is, and its benefits. I've heard of it before, and I know how it works.

Second, it _assumes_ your scene is of normal contrast. So if you meter and it says f4 1/25th, then that means it is assuming that all of the tones in your scene will fall within the film's latitude with f4 1/25 as smack dab in the middle. The brightest area will be no brighter than f8 and the darkest no darker than f 1.4 (those are zones VII and III, detailed highlights and detailed shadows, repectively).

But what if the area that you want to be a detailed shadow is darker? It's the equivalent of f...what's below 1.4? Well, let's say 1.4 and 1/15. Well, if you shoot at f4 and 1/25, that area won't be detailed anymore. It'll disappear into blackness.

Or what if the brightest area, in which you wanted detail, is actually f 11? It's _3_ stops brighter? Then if you shoot at f4 1/25, that will blow out to almost pure white.

If you rely entirely on incident metering, if you run into a high contrast situation, you will run out of film latitude, guaranteed. _That_ is something you need to know about incident metering. And to be honest, when metering, you _always_ care about the subject, regardless of whether it's incident or reflective. In camera or handheld. Because that device is measuring light but doing so under certain assumptions (the whole middle grey thing). Are those assumptions right all the time?

If you don't understand this limitation in incident metering (and, for that matter, limitations in metering patterns), then your tests are actually meaningless.

What I will construct in my scene is one where I have identified my detailed shadow but produced a slightly more than normal contrast scene. This is exactly what you'd do when shooting. Expose for shadows - so I locked in a Zone III area - then develop for highlights - I'm hoping compensation alone will bring that Zone VIII back down to VII.

Determining at what point Zone III disappears as a rough EI test is also a goal here, but I can figure out a lot from this one scene and test. If anyone would like to suggest modifications I am more than willing to listen, but if you don't understand the importance of reflective metering and metering patterns, then you need to get that straight first.

allan
 
Sorry Kayen but my test aren't meaningless for, of course I try to meter intelligently, looking wath I want to picture, if there is shadows and highlight . I had the chance to have a quite dim light , sometimes in bordeau it looks like you are living in a light box, quite interesting to shot pictures. I absolutely can't agree with you, if my metering where wrong, I couldn't have a well exposed picture of the bus, statues, dog , like I had. I mean, I don't see why, with a ligthmeter set at 12500 iso, giving me coherent result (I verified I had couples equivalent to what I use tohave at 400 isos in the same conditions, I used before having a lightmeter to use sunny f16 with my kiev 4 , so I can say always if I am correctly metering or if my lightmeter is becoming crazy (wich is not the case) ) I couldn't have coherent result. If I am wrong I don't see why any photographer lose time metering . I am sorry to say that but I know what I meter, I understand light, and even If at 12500 iso I don't have the huge latitude of a trix at 400 iso, it doesn't change anything, my lightmeter will anyway give me the good couple for a well exposed 18% grey
 
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Thanks for starting this thread Pau. And to you Allan for undertaking your test later on today.

Allan,

I don't understand all of these zones, but I know what I get with what my VCII and what my eye tells me to meter off and I've learned to work with that to get negatives I can print (or scan).

If I set it [VCII] at 3200 and get 1/4@f/4 and then compensate by setting 1/15@f/4 instead and carrying on like this for a roll and then checking the roll after Pau's dev' method - is that OK?

Apologies for my stupidity but I'm utterly confused by this sentence

"You can set your ISO dial to 1000000000000 if you wanted to and get great looking negatives, but that doesn't mean that's your EI."

I know I like HP5+ at 1600 in DDX, I've tried it at 3200 as well but I don't like it.
 
I apologize that when I said "meaningless" I forgot to add "to me." You'll note that I said "without value to me" earlier on. I still mean it.

I also apologize if it's a language thing, but I'm going to pick at your sentences a bit here.

There is always shadow and highlight in a scene. The question is how much darker than middle grey is that shadow, and how much lighter is the highlight. If it's more than 2 stops in either direction, then you have to do _something_ to compensate for it. _Period_.

You're saying that because you took some shots at 400 and got negatives that looked a certain way, then shot at 12500 (it should be 12800 by the way - 6400 x 2) and the negatives looked similar, that means it's a coherent result? Is that what you're saying? Well, what part of the negative are you comparing? I sure hope you're comparing the shadows, because that is how just about everyone defines film speed.

Well, let's take a look at some of your images. That bus picture - that's during the day, right? Well...wow - look at that, _no_ shadow detail in the tire wells. The tires should have detail. They don't. And that's more than the 1/3 stop between 12800 and 10000. Same thing with the jacket of the guy with the dog, and the garbage can in the first photo you posted. They are absolute pitch black. That's got to be at least 2 stops, not the 1/3 you're talking about. So maybe you're pulling 3200 true EI out of TXT with 4 hours of stand. That's still amazing. But 3200 ain't 10,000.

And lo and behold, your incident metering did not account for those shadow areas.

Look - I mean no offense here. I truly do not. You are doing some fun stuff, and here I am raining on your parade. I apologize for that. But someone is going to read this thread and they have to read this side of it, too. But I will leave this thread alone for the most part, as I don't want to get into an argument with you. I just don't agree with your methods, plain and simple. And I will put money down that your conclusion is just wrong.

allan
 
kaiyen said:
I apologize that when I said "meaningless" I forgot to add "to me." You'll note that I said "without value to me" earlier on. I still mean it.

I also apologize if it's a language thing, but I'm going to pick at your sentences a bit here.

There is always shadow and highlight in a scene. The question is how much darker than middle grey is that shadow, and how much lighter is the highlight. If it's more than 2 stops in either direction, then you have to do _something_ to compensate for it. _Period_.

You're saying that because you took some shots at 400 and got negatives that looked a certain way, then shot at 12500 (it should be 12800 by the way - 6400 x 2) and the negatives looked similar, that means it's a coherent result? Is that what you're saying? Well, what part of the negative are you comparing? I sure hope you're comparing the shadows, because that is how just about everyone defines film speed.

Well, let's take a look at some of your images. That bus picture - that's during the day, right? Well...wow - look at that, _no_ shadow detail in the tire wells. The tires should have detail. They don't. And that's more than the 1/3 stop between 12800 and 10000. Same thing with the jacket of the guy with the dog, and the garbage can in the first photo you posted. They are absolute pitch black. That's got to be at least 2 stops, not the 1/3 you're talking about. So maybe you're pulling 3200 true EI out of TXT with 4 hours of stand. That's still amazing. But 3200 ain't 10,000.

And lo and behold, your incident metering did not account for those shadow areas.

Look - I mean no offense here. I truly do not. You are doing some fun stuff, and here I am raining on your parade. I apologize for that. But someone is going to read this thread and they have to read this side of it, too. But I will leave this thread alone for the most part, as I don't want to get into an argument with you. I just don't agree with your methods, plain and simple. And I will put money down that your conclusion is just wrong.

allan
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sorry If I appeaered a bit rude, but, as I don't speak well eglish I cannot be always diplomatic 😀


Well you told me to look at the shadows, of course, shadows are not detaillled, but one as also to look at the hight light and things that should appear grey. I consider a negative well exposed according to "le bachelier Noir et blanc"
(http://www.photosapiens.com/IMG/artoff1156.jpg) considered as a reference in B&W photography. It is not only the look of shadows but also the general aspect of the negative, it's density etc. If one look only for the shadow, something grey 18% on the scene could become white on the photo, and the photo could be considered as good. This is not the case. Well exposing is giving a 18% grey object (or similar) a 18% rey on the picture, no more. As it is better to overexpose a bit in order to enlarge easily, it is told that if you are not sure of your metering, it is better to over expose a bit than under expose, that's all. But one cannot say it is well exposed only looking at shadows. Loss of detail can be explained by : loss of latitude at hight sensitivity (the shot looks more like a digital than a film @ 400 iso with great
lattitude ) and loss of acutance . If I had exposed only to have detailled shadows, then I would have completely burned white with absolutely no details in hight lighs. The trouble is that as the sensitivity increase, lattitude of the film decrease and you are compled to lose details in shadows and hight lights
 
I don't think le vrai rdu has ever claimed that the true EI (true) of Tri-X is 125000 - throughout this thread he has only stated that it is possible to push it such a high ISO and still have a usable negative. Le vrai rdu has acknowledged the blown hi-lights, obscurred shadow detail and loss of latitude.

No one is claiming the ideal or true speed of Tri-X to be anything other than 400 (some may claim 320) - this whole experiment has been about pushing the film's limits, while mainting a printable/scannable negative.

Is there something I've missed?

Sitemistic and Kaiyen seem to be talking true film speed, and Le vrai rdu is talking about pushing the iso limits.
Apples to oranges?
 
sitemistic said:
charjohncarter's photo actually looks like a pushed night photo on Tri-X Le vrai, that's the point I've been trying to make. The blown highlights and blocked shadows are what happens when you push film.
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It is what I am saying too, there is nothing to do about that (maybe improve a bit with another develloper but nothing miraculous). I hope I am understood 😉
 
dpetrzelka said:
I don't think le vrai rdu has ever claimed that the true EI (true) of Tri-X is 125000 - throughout this thread he has only stated that it is possible to push it such a high ISO and still have a usable negative. Le vrai rdu has acknowledged the blown hi-lights, obscurred shadow detail and loss of latitude.

No one is claiming the ideal or true speed of Tri-X to be anything other than 400 (some may claim 320) - this whole experiment has been about pushing the film's limits, while mainting a printable/scannable negative.

Is there something I've missed?

Sitemistic and Kaiyen seem to be talking true film speed, and Le vrai rdu is talking about pushing the iso limits.
Apples to oranges?
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Yes I am talking about pushing it to it's limits , I claim to have something between iso 10000 and iso 12500

but I know that the best speed for trix is around 320 400 isos, but I need sometimes very hight speeds so I want to try befoore using it
 
kully said:
Thanks for starting this thread Pau. And to you Allan for undertaking your test later on today.
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I would like to again applaud Pau's enthusiasm for experimentation. I fear that I'm going to seem more argumentative than I am. In a denotative sense, I am arguing. But connotatively, that is a negative thing. I am debating the topic with him and have now come to a conclusion. It's the opposite of his, but I am just debating the topic based on what I know. I am not Bill Troop or anything. I know that.

Allan,

I don't understand all of these zones, but I know what I get with what my VCII and what my eye tells me to meter off and I've learned to work with that to get negatives I can print (or scan).

If I set it [VCII] at 3200 and get 1/4@f/4 and then compensate by setting 1/15@f/4 instead and carrying on like this for a roll and then checking the roll after Pau's dev' method - is that OK?
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First, sorry that I am using some much zone terminology. It's the only real way for me to do it without writing even longer posts, but I should have apologized that I was going to dip this thread into zonie-land.

You're doing a pretty good method, yes. What you're doing, logically, is "okay, my meter says that 1/4 f4 is middle grey. I'm willing to just bank on the shadows being 2 stops darker so I'll decrease exposure by 2 stops." That's fine. It's true that shadows may be even darker, but it's still a good method to use.

I just realized that we don't even know if Pau adjusted from his incident readings. If not, then he's overexposing his shadows by 2 stops as it is, even if it's a normal contrast scene. So now we're down to...EI 800 from his results. Hm.

And yes, evaluating by negatives is always fine. Sometimes you'll get one that isn't what you wanted and you can see it right away. But you live with the ones you miss, and cherish the ones you get, right? FWIW, I am not a big test guy. I have done a few (I did a big Delta 100 in 3 different developers test a while back, which I can repost if people are interested), but I generally do as you do, except I do spot meter the shadows specifically. But the whole roll isn't at the same contrast level, usually, so I end up with a few frames that are over developed, a few that are under, etc. So it goes.

Apologies for my stupidity but I'm utterly confused by this sentence
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Please don't apologize. If I don't confuse at least 1 person per thread with what I write then I must have taken some magic "suddenly write good" potion. I am often too verbose. My fault.

"You can set your ISO dial to 1000000000000 if you wanted to and get great looking negatives, but that doesn't mean that's your EI."
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Film - all film - needs a certain amount of light to get any kind of reaction at all with the silver and the developer. Certain films need more than others. And those films in certain developers need even more or less than others. This is the foundation of how some developers increase speed while others decrease it. Rodinal, used normally, requires more light to have hit the silver to even begin to react and build density than, say, Microphen. Since those low density areas are shadows, and shadows are how we define film speed, we say Rodinal is a speed-decreasing developer, and that Microphen is a speed-increasing one.

I'm going to get a bit deeper her before I get into the basic example. My apologies. There are common references to film "curves." These curves, known as H&D curves, have "toes" and "shoulders." If you were to draw a graph of density vs. exposure, it would not be a straight line. In other words, if you give it amount of light X and it yields density Y (and density means detail for the most part), giving it 2X doesn't necessarily mean 2Y. This actually only applies at the toe, at the bottom, and the shoulder, at the top. The curve is like a really lazy S. So there is a flat area where as you increase exposure from 0 to whatever (still in a very low range of light) there is almost _no_ change in density. The film will still be blank in that area. But then suddenly you hit this threshold, and the curve becomes linear. 3x>3y, 4x>4y, etc. Then all of a sudden at the top as you give it more and more it flat lines again. That's the shoulder. That makes sense - you can't give more than 100% silver to an area 🙂.

Okay. So that's why shooting TXT at 12800 has to be done carefully, since at that speed, at night, you're shadows are _so_ dark that the chance of you getting out of the toe is really low. BTW, just past the toe would be detailed shadows, or Zone III. Roughly.

So, the practical example. Let's say I have my camera set at ISO 12800 (I think that's the highest any of my SLR's go to). I can go outside, in open shade (ie - even light), in the middle of the day, and take a shot. Now, it'll be like f22 and 1/4000, but I did it. And the negative will look good, because there was a lot of light there. And it was an evenly lit scene so the shadows weren't crazy dark. So I got EI 12800, right?

Well, maybe. Actually, almost certainly no. This is like when people do noise tests with digital SLRS in the middle of the day. Look, no noise! Well, when there is a lot of light around then of course the noise is low. The problem is when you shoot in situations that, even with proper exposure, it's still at least really dim. There isn't a lot of light around in general to hit the sensor. Then what does the noise look like? In the case of film, if it's overall dim, and now you're shooting at 1/15th at f2, are you out of the toe? What if that was your incident meter and now you go to 1/4 at f2? It's about the quality of light, even though they are equivalent exposures.

Really low contrast, even light, lots of light bouncing around - you can get great results with your ISO dial cranked all over the place. But if there is even just normal contrast and it's dark to begin with, and you want shadow...well, it's hard to get out of the toe. Oh, and at night, spot metering will tell you that it's not a normal contrast scene. Detailed shadows will be...5 stops darker than your meter reading. Something like that.

Does that make sense? I had trouble writing it so perhaps I just made it worse 🙂.

I know I like HP5+ at 1600 in DDX, I've tried it at 3200 as well but I don't like it.
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What you're probably finding there is just the contrast issue with pushing. You've decreased overall exposure to the film, which means the shadows vanish into the toe (I'm having fun using the word "toe" as a region). You then overdevelop (which is the 2nd part that makes up "pushing" film - it's both underexposure and overdevelopment, not just 1 or the other) to bring your midtones up into a usuable area, but then your highlights go up, too, and they blow out. Voila, super high contrast. Not always a good look.

But you'll note something - you've lost those shadows, right? If speed is based on shadows...then clearly HP5 in DDX is not a 1600 or 3200 speed film. Maybe at 1600 the negatives look acceptable to you - that's great! I mean it. If you're happy, that's what matters. But from a film speed perspective is it _not_ a 1600 speed film just because you are happy with the results.

dang, I write a lot. sorry.

allan
 
Well, I am sorry to say it this way but , I sure of my metering, take a incident light meter, meter well and shoot outside, at the end of the afternoon and soup as I did.
 
hi kaiyen,
Please do your test. I really hope no one was offended by your words... you just put them straight.
I'd add why did you decide to shorten dev time? I understand your arguments that Rodinal will be exhausted, but just let try that. You may change the solution after 2 hours pouring in the new portion of 1+100 Rodinal. Beside, Rodinal is a very strong dev as showed my tests of exhausting development, much stronger than I thought. Actually, with 1+200, I thought I cannot overdevelop my film letting it sit in dev for additional 15 mins after 1.5 hours, I was wrong.
Cheers,
Eduard
 
Well, then there is a HUGE language issue here, then (and I don't mean non-native english kind of language issue).

When someone says: "I Think I am near iso 10000 rather than 12500" that means, to me, that they feel they have attained an EI of 10000 with TXT. Not just _used_ an EI of 10000. But attained it. Using it is to just put the dial there. Attaining it means getting usuable shadow detail with the dial there. Now, I know as well as anyone that EI can be anything - it's whatever you set your dial to. But that wasn't my interpretation.

If the point is that "hey, I set my dial here and I got something!" then fine. But if the argument is that the something that was gotten is similar in some way to what EI _400_ looks like...then, as sitemistic says, there is likely an issue with metering or something else in the method.

I would not be shocked if I got out to close to 1600 with usable shadows in stand development. I would be quite surprised. I expect to get to about 1000 at the high end.

I think I might have a greyscale strip I can put into the scene, too. So we can examine tonal scale somewhat...
by the way, I'm doing this over the weekend. I will be busy with work and school the rest of this week.

allan
 
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