HP5 @ 200 in Ilfosol S for 5.5 minutes at 68 degrees looks something like Efke 400 with slightly better shadow detail. These took a bit more PS work to get here than HP5@200 in Tmax. The contrast was higher and the shadows fell apart easier. Hmm, interesting, but perhaps not a winning combination.

Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, Delta 3200 @ 800, Ilfosol S

All forums and other fonts of internet wisdom indicate that this should be a terrible combination. Ifosol S is reportedly not suited for high speed films, but the local art shop had a bottle, and I couldn’t resist. Two rolls is too small a sample size to tell, but I think this looks kind of cool. Grainy, definitely, but there’s a nice gradation in the midtones, contrast is well under control for ISO 800 and shadow detail is not bad. Overall, this was a fun experiment, and a productive enough one that I’ll probably order some more Delta 3200 and maybe some Neopan 1600 with my next film order. Marginal light photography can be interesting as long as you keep your expectations in line. And grain is good for winter.

For all those that have been wondering about the one lens, one film experiment, it’s still under way, although the parameters have changed. The real purpose of the experiment was to learn something more about scanning and post-processing. Once I wrapped my head around a couple of post processing techniques, varying the film seemed like a good idea, and then the enforced asceticism of one lens just started to seem silly when I only use two lenses anyway. In any event, a follow up post will follow, eventually.

Processing Notes: I used the Massive Dev Chart’s suggested time of 8 minutes at 68 degrees. I agitated for 10 seconds every 1 minute. Either my developer was a bit cold, a bit dilute or the suggested time is a bit too short as these negs were a bit on the thin side. 9 minutes might be closer to the correct time.

City Hall, Columbus, IN | Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, HP5@320, Tmax Dev

Last week I wrote that I’m standardizing on one lens, one film, and one process until I learn something. The something to be learned is scanning and post-processing. I’ve always approached scanning like it was that part of the imaging chain represented by a cloud labeled magic. This approached demanded a processing regime geared towards producing low contrast negatives with well controlled highlights. For the most part it works, but I’m looking for improvements. I chose HP5@320 in Tmax Dev at 68F for 6 mins because it’s produced some great photos for me, but it’s also resulted in some scans that were miserable failures. I’m hoping to trying to get the percentage of miserable failures downs and maybe make the great photos even better. Sticking to one lens is just for the sake on wanton asceticism.

With the film stock and process set, that leaves me free to experiment with various scanning and post processing techniques. I’ll be giving VueScan another look, and I’ll be investigating Colin’s work with ColorNeg. I’ll also be looking at improving my Photoshop skills (Did you know that the curves tool can be used to draw something other than an S curve; who’d have guessed?). Lightzone will also get another look, as I’m not sure that I approached it the right way initially. And if my old ScanDual IV happens to die anytime soon, I guess I’ll be looking at other scanners as well.

Garden Walkway, Columbus, IN | Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, HP5@320, Tmax Dev

When I’m done with all this, I might well go back to what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years, but I’m hoping I’ll have learned enough to deal with some of the problematic scans that come up on every roll. Along the way, it’s fairly likely that some of the images may not look quite right. I’m not quite starting over again, but it’s something near to that, so there’s likely to be some false starts. You’ve been warned.

Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, Delta 400 in Diafine

Diafine for the Doldrums

For a few weeks there, I renewed my love affair with Diafine. It didn’t last, but it seems worth writing about, since I long ago promised a review of Diafine. I’ve mentioned before that Diafine was for a long time my only developer, usually in combination with Neopan 1600 or TriX. Those were the available darkness days. Recent experimentation with Delta 3200 got me back to thinking about Diafine, particularly about how carefree it can be; mix once, use for years, no critical temperature or timing worries etc. The typically fat midtones, good shadow detail and well controlled highlights are nice too; makes scanning easier. In a lot of ways, it’s the perfect, low-maintenance choice for your slightly frazzled feeling photographer.

The Basics of Two Bath Developers

B&W developers have two main components, a reducer and an accelerator. There’s a bunch of other junk in there, but it’s all supporting role stuff. The reducer is the actual developer. The accelerator makes the developer work on a time scale of minutes instead of hours. Single bath developers mix all this up in one batch, usually with a preservative to keep the whole thing shelf stable for more than five minutes.

Single bath developers have a couple of weaknesses. Foremost, those preservatives are not entirely effective, particularly if you don’t control exposure to air. Hence the proliferation of those burp bottles that supposedly prevent your developer from oxidizing. They don’t.

Besides having the longevity of pepperoni pizza in an IT shop, single bath developers also require complicated contrast controls. Think Zone System. Single bath developers force us into “shoot for shadows, develop for the highlights” because highlights develop fast and shadows develop slow. Long before the density is built up in the shadows, those greedy highlights have stuffed themselves, become blocked up and impossible to scan (or print). You can get some measure of control over this by using really dilute developer and minimal agitation. Without agitation to bring in fresh developer, the highlights will quit developing, while the slower feeding shadows will continue. Taken to extremes, this gives us stand development routines with rodinal diluted to 1+250 and times around an hour. Stand development is tricky though. Do it wrong and you get uneven development. Do it right, and you are still developing for an hour.

Dual bath systems are really targeted at this second problem, although along the way they often end up solving the first problem as well. They do this by separating the reducer and the accelerator into two solutions, part A and part B. The reducer goes in part A. The accelerator in part B. Part A saturates the film with developer, but because reducer sans accelerator is slow acting, very little development takes place until part B is introduced. In part B, the accelerator goes to work on the reducer already saturated into the film. Since there is no more reducer available in part B, the highlights use up the reducer available to them quite quickly, while the shadows can take their sweet time. That’s the theory.

Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, Delta 100 @ 50 in Diafine

Diafine

In the US, at least, when you say two bath developer, you probably mean Diafine. It’s by no means the only option, but it is the most widely available two bath developer. Pretty much any internet photoshop will have it, although there are some interesting restrictions involving shipping it. Outside of large format circles, where it is sometimes used with very slow films, Diafine is primarily known as a speed enhancing developer for already fast films. With TriX you get a two stop bump, with many other films a one stop bump and with some slow films and T grain films a no stop bump. Many a forum has gone down in flames arguing about whether the Diafine speed bump is legitimate. The speed increase seems to come mostly as an increase in midtone density. Shadows get a slight boost, but usually not by much. Argumentative types with densitometers will argue - and probably argue rightfully - that this speed boost isn’t real because it just changes the shape of the curve. That said, it looks real enough to the eye in most situations.

Apart from being a speed enhancing developer, Diafine also has a reputation for ease of use. This reputation is mostly legitimate with a few exceptions to be discussed later. It is essentially insensitive to changes in time and temperature. Keep it between 70 and 85 degrees and leave the film in each bath for at least 3 minutes, and you should be fine. There’s not much to mess up. You don’t even choose your own film speed, as the Diafine box has a table that lists most commonly available film types and how to rate them.

That’s the theory. The practice is a bit different. Time and temp are really pretty much irrelevant, but agitation is not, and, it turns out, film speed isn’t quite as straightforward as the table on the box would lead you to believe. As to agitation, many rolls of film have been ruined by following the box recommendation for “gentle” agitation. Agitation during the first bath just makes sure that developer has evenly soaked into the film. In the second bath, since we aren’t worried about bringing fresh developer to the film, agitation shouldn’t much matter. It turns out, agitation during the second bath isn’t so much a matter of bringing in fresh chemistry as it is a matter of disposing of waste. Agitate too little during that second soak and you will end up with bromide stains. I think.

Are those vertical streaks in the sky bromide drag, or just old-fashioned, uneven development?
Hexar RF, 50 Hex, Delta 100 @ 50 in Diafine

As with many things that everyone already knows, it’s next to impossible to find out anything concrete on the internet about bromide drag. It’s just taken for granted that we all know what bromide drag is, and that it happens to all those naughty people that try to use Diafine to increase film speed. From the little I’ve been able to piece together, it seems that bromide is a natural by product of development. If you don’t agitate enough, it runs down the film, causing stains. I’ll buy it, particularly since upping the agitation seems to fix the problem. The shot above I only agitated - and very gently at that -for five seconds every minute. Upping the agitation to a more vigorous ten seconds every minute seemed to solve the issue, although the increased agitation was with different film type, Delta 400.

I don’t recall ever having this problem when using Diafine with TriX or Neopan 1600, but in those days I used a stainless steel tank. The variable might be the film or the difference between rotational - plastic tank - or inversion - stainless steel tank - agitation. Given the varied results I’ve seen with my plastic tanks, I suspect a little of both might be at play. I’ve done four batches of film in Diafine in recent weeks. One batch of Delta 3200, one batch of Delta 100 and two of Delta 400. The Delta 3200 showed a bit of streaking on a few frames at the end of one roll. The Delta 100 showed streaking on most frames of both rolls. The first batch of Delta 400 showed streaking on the last ten frames of each roll, but on the second batch of Delta 400, where I doubled the agitation, I got no streaking. It will be interesting to see if increased agitation resolves the problems with Delta 100. I suspect that increased agitation is necessary with the plastic tank, and that some films require more agitations than other - the couple of rolls of HP5 I souped in Diafine early this summer showed no streaking.

When Diafine gives you bromide drag, make wide format lanscapes.
Hexar RF, 50 Hex, Delta 100 @ 50 in Diafine

Apart from this streaking issue, the only other question with Diafine is film speed. Do you shoot your film’s native speed or what the Diafine box suggests? What if the box suggests nothing? Native film speed will almost always work, although you will end up with flat negatives and, in some cases, really dense midtones. This ends up looking kind of strange on the negative, but it usually scans ok. Keep in mind that the highlights should still be controlled because the developer exhausts itself in the highlights first. The film speeds suggested on the Diafine box are a good bet for really contrasty light. At the suggested speed, in contrasty light, Diafine often gives you negs that appear to have normal contrast. This is why available light shooters so often go for Diafine; you can get high film speed without nearly as much contrast as you would normally get from pushing. You can also gain a level of contrast control by changing film speed. Contrasty light? Shoot at Diafine speed. Flat light? Shoot at native speed. All without the need to change development. Pretty tricky, eh?

Diafine and the Deltas

You will often hear that Diafine and Tgrain films don’t mix. A very short experiment with Tmax and Diafine a few years back did not yield great results for me, but I wasn’t very patient with it. I have vague memories of Fuji Acros in Diafine working well, but I can’t be bothered to find the negs in archives. While it is certainly true that you don’t get much of a speed boost from the Diafine/Tgrain combo, you do get fine tonality, ease of use, and a long lasting developer, at least with the Deltas. Initial results are, well, inconclusive. Sometimes this combo seems to work great, other times you get nasty, muddy midtones. I’m not sure what’s up with that, and at the moment, I’m not inclined to take the experiment any further. My love for Diafine has slipped away. Controlling time and temperature just aren’t that hard, and the results of this experiment have been a little too unpredictable.

Examples

All else aside, I’m pretty happy with a lot of these photos, regardless of the developer used.

Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, Delta 3200 @ 1600 in Diafine

B&W Notes: Delta 3200

For a friend’s recent wedding, knowing that I would have to deal with low light levels and not wanting to bother with more than one film stock, I shot nothing but Delta 3200 sometimes with 4x ND on the Biogon. I shot four rolls at 1600, souped 2 in Diafine and 2 in Tmax. I think the Diafine rolls - some of the results of which you can see above - turned out better. I hesitate to use the term ’shadow detail’ in reference to these shots, but they’ve got more of something like shadow detail than the rolls souped in Tmax have. Diafine has the added benefit of being easier to use as well.

Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, Delta 3200 @ 1600 in Tmax

The Tmax shots - above - are fine too, but I think I prefer Delta 3200 in Diafine. It might be worth trying Delta 3200 @ 800 in Tmax; I’d be curious to see if you could hold onto that beautiful grainy structure, but extend the shadow detail a bit. A lower activity developer might be a better choice for something like this.

The Happy Couple, Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, Delta 3200 @ 1600 in Tmax

BTW, it was a nice wedding, one of the nicest I’ve been to, in a beautiful church with a lot of family who appeared to be sincerely happy. Congrats Andy and Laura.

In the previous post on this subject, I mentioned that scanning B&W negatives as positives could be a useful technique for high contrast negatives. Take a look at this example scanned as negative:

Yuck. Nasty, too bright highlights. I could work with it in PS, but I’d be struggling to bring those highlights down in any way that would look natural. Scanning as a negative positive gives me this, which at first glance, is worse:

A quick dose of levels and some wide radius USM, gives me this:

The highlights have been taken down from the painful range, but there’s still some detail in the skin tones. Looks better to me.

Colin has recently been writing a lot about scanning. His post on RAW scanning reminded me of scanning negatives as positives, a technique I long ago abandoned, perhaps unfairly, after I got started down the path of tweaking the chemical process to suit the scanner. Back in ye olden days when people used to scan film, you would hear a lot about the benefits of scanning your B&W negatives as positives and then inverting the file in Photoshop using any one of a variety of techniques. By doing this you supposedly avoided the crappy algorithms and default curves of your scanning software. Generally, the technique results in a bright but flat scan, much like this:

Compare that, to a scan done as negative, with the scanner doing the inversion and curves:

As you can see, in scan done as a negative, the scanner software has pulled the data apart to give a full tonal range. In this case, it worked well. The negative was fairly flat, with a lot of detail in the shadows and highlights that were well within the scanner’s range. For a fairly neutral contrast photo like this, I’m not sure if there is any value in scanning as positive, but with a higher contrast image, scanning as a positive might give you a bit more headroom to work with. A bit like RAW scanning - or like shooting RAW in general - but without the need to buy vuescan or something similar. It’s a trick worth remembering.

the final version, from the scan done as a negative

BTW, HP5 @ 200 developed in Tmax 1+5 for 5 minutes at 68 degrees seems a promising combo.

Over on Stills, we’ve been discussing how bright skin tones can go. I’m not in disagreement with the general statement that sometimes my skin-tones are too bright, but I wondering what to do about it. Colin, introduced the idea that it isn’t necessarily the absolute tonal value, but where it lands and how much of it there is. That sounds like a promising line of investigation. On that note, what do we think of these? Originals on top, modified versions on bottom.

Better now?

Thoughts on this appreciated.

This photo, the previous photo, and this one were all shot on HP5 rated at 800 and souped in Diafine. For a long time, Diafine was the only developer I used, often with TriX or Neopan 1600 (an oft overlooked combo). HP5 in Diafine looks a lot like TriX in Diafine but with one stop less speed. It’s an interesting look, and it’s dead simple to manage in processing and later on in scanning. With Diafine, highlights just don’t block up in the normal way, while shadows manage to retain some detail.

After the essay on choosing a B&W film, I decided that I had perhaps been unfair towards slow films, and that I should give them another shot. Working from the premise that more - in this case more slow- is always better, I decided to try Delta 100 pulled back to 50. I’ve not been disappointed.

Finding a time and temp for Delta 100 @ 50 in Tmax Developer was fairly simple; the instructions were right on the Delta box. Working with my normal extra diluted Tmax solution (1+5), I developed for 5.5 minutes at 68 degrees, with 10 seconds agitation for every minute. Halfway through I’ve been giving the film a couple of inversions in an attempt to combat what appears to be occasional uneven development. Five and half minutes turned out to be just right, yielding good shadow detail and easily handled highlights.

The overall look for this combo is a little more Tgrainy than Delta 400. There’s something about the shadows that reminds me of Tmax or Fuji Acros. Both are fine films, so that’s no bad thing. There’s also a hint of that slow film shot through Rolleiflex look, whatever that means. Although there isn’t much more detail than Delta 400, the tonality seems a lot smoother, much more like medium format. I’m intrigued by this. Shooting such a slow film has many of the same limitations as shooting medium format, so perhaps shooting some will be a good way for me to get into the medium format frame of mind without investing too much capital.

I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with different films lately, but Delta 100 @ 50 is the only experiment that seems to offer something definitively new for me. Because of the limitations of such a slow film, I’m finding that I’m choosing my shots more carefully, and I’m consequently looking at different things. For what it’s worth, I’ve already ordered more.