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

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?

Being a compensating developer it's hard to overdevelop any area of the negative (i.e. blowing out the highlights). If you expose it at a lower ISO you'll likely get a more compressed range of tones, but usable negs.
 
There is a lot of crap all over the net about Diafine. I don't think there is any magic in this developer, even though it is very flexible. Here's what works best for me:

- expose the film at nominal sensitivity. Using the film at 2x or 4x its sensitivity always leads to poorer results (although somewhat usable).

- stick to 3 min. in solution A + 3 min. in B if you want repeatable results.

- don't use the developer for more than a few weeks, or at most a few months if you don't develop a lot. I have seen people using the same developer for years -- you know, this stuff never expires... The developer looked like mud and, needless to say, the negatives were all scattered with small white dots.

- no stop bath, only a short rinse after solution B.

I use Diafine for "field development" here in Asia because it can be used at high temperatures without affecting too much the contrast and without leading to unmanageably short developing times. When I can work in the comfort of AC, I prefer D76 though...

Cheers!

Abbazz
 
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One interesting point, This guy that has a squirrel tail on his shirt uses only 'Sunny 16' and only goes to a meter at sunset and sundown (or I guess very early morning and on overcast days, but there are very few of them in Fremont, CA [overcast days]). Well, at least we know how he exposes his shots.

Query, is there a difference between Stand Development and Compensating Devlopment other than the name that is given a certain developer? I don't mean how much time is involved, but is the end result different? No Bromide Streaking reponses please.
 
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