YouTube Vid - Tri-X in Diafine at 100?!?

NickTrop

NickTrop

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Killing some time while fixing some negs (Tri-X in Diafine at 1000), I found this video where a photographer says he gets great results down rating Tri-X to 100 and developing it in Diafine. Good rotation example. Weird, though. I usually rate it at 1000+. Never heard of anyone rating it two stops "lower" than box speed.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFBa9UDA3wk&NR=1
 
Hmmm, first I heard of this, I usually rate my Tri-x in diafine around 1200-1600 ISO. I thought the whole point of the developer is to increase the speed of the film?
 
While I haven't rated it lower, I found both TriX and PlusX seem to work fine at box speed. With Diafine it appears almost impossible to blow highlights, so can't say I am too surprised.
 
Uncle Bill said:
Hmmm, first I heard of this, I usually rate my Tri-x in diafine around 1200-1600 ISO. I thought the whole point of the developer is to increase the speed of the film?
Click to expand...

I agree, and I never heard of this either. But I'll give this a shot. Author claims beautiful tonality. Worth a roll of Tri-X to play around with it and see if it works.
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I get "beautiful tonality" at 400 with Tri-X. Why shoot it at 100 for that?

I can see it as an exercise or because you only had Tri-X on a sunny day, but it seems absurd to advocate as "how to use diafine and Tri-X." Especially without any samples, much less comparison shots demonstrating the advantages.
 
Samples would have been nice. But I have a 100' roll of Tri-X, so why not play? He might be on to something. He also really soaks in "A" - 13 1/2 minutes! I thought you just gently agitated Diafine to avoid bromide streaking, and that it's 3 minutes in each solution. Dunno...

I use 3 developers. Rodinal, Diafine, and D76. Lately, I'm appreciating D76 more and more.
 
They're not bad. Different. Lower contrast but good shadow detail. You'd have to see the prints to make a better assessment but it's definitely worth a roll of Tri-X to try.
 
I shoot Tri-X at 100 but develop in Rodinal at 1:50 or Xtol 1:1, tonality is very nice but shadows appear almost too open...if that makes sense.

here an example:

dickens_I.jpg
 
NickTrop,

Keep us posted.

Todd.Hanz,

I like that.

I use TriX at 250 in HC-110h and get just a little less shadow opening. Maybe I'll try 100 in HC-110h and see what happens.
 
NickTrop said:
Samples would have been nice. But I have a 100' roll of Tri-X, so why not play? He might be on to something. He also really soaks in "A" - 13 1/2 minutes! I thought you just gently agitated Diafine to avoid bromide streaking, and that it's 3 minutes in each solution. Dunno...

I use 3 developers. Rodinal, Diafine, and D76. Lately, I'm appreciating D76 more and more.
Click to expand...

According to the manufacturer, 3-5 mins in each solution, and once the film's saturated there's no point whatsoever in leaving it in for longer. 13.5 mins is pretty weird.
 
My mum told me never to trust middle aged men with pony tails! :p

Mind you have tri-x and diafine and I'm temptd to give it a try.
 
Eh - play around with the stuff. That's 1/2 the fun. My personal favorite, I think, is D76 1:3. Takes longer, but negligible grain, very good tonality, and sharp enough.

My latest "experiment" a few days ago - rated Tri-X at 800, developed for 1600 using D76 1:3 (instead of the usual Diafine). Didn't see anything on Digital Truth for this combo, so I "guessed" and did for 20 minutes. (Guessing the stuff was pretty well exhausted toward the end...)

Got some weird stuff. Negatives were thin, 1/2 okay, 1/2 overdeveloped. Scanned them in, got the raw DNG files up in Lightwave, futzed with contrast, histogram, etc.

Guess what?

Exposures all corrected, got some real nice prints off my inkject with good contrast, good tonality, and proper exposure.

Wondering how much this development rain dancing and alchemy really matters if you're scanning and printing... You have so much control over exposure and contrast and edge sharpness... My experiment got me thinking it doesn't matter at all anymore.
 
Very interesting.

I did a bit of Flickr searching, and people seem to expose Tri-X any damn way they want when they develop it in Diafine, and they all look fine. What the heck is going on?
 
Morca007 said:
Very interesting.

I did a bit of Flickr searching, and people seem to expose Tri-X any damn way they want when they develop it in Diafine, and they all look fine. What the heck is going on?
Click to expand...

Diafine does a nice job managing the whites... Lots of stuff on the net on how it does this. However - it isn't a "be all/end all". I find that - depending on the lighting, it can give you kinda "blah" results lacking punch and contrast. I use Tri-X/Diafine as a my "high speed" combo. Rodinal is for low speed stuff and D76 for everything else.

I was gonna stick with just Diafine and Rodinal due to their longevity but I got to missing D76. It's just so versatile and consistent.
 
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