Shooting Film Follies 2009

This entry is part 17 of 38 in the series Shooting Real Film

A quick update on my commitment to shoot film with my M6 prior to springing for an M9. Well, I finally got the kinks worked out of my development process and tools, so I am ready to go. Remember the first two rolls I sent through? Almost decade old TMZ and TRI-X? I found the answer of what was going wrong – it wasn’t me. The tank I was using had developed a crack that was invisible for the most part but not invisible to the film. I did the latest roll with a larger different tank and no more giant fog and “opened the camera back” look.

I did order a replacement small batch tank and a bunch of fresh film. I ordered some fresh stuff in both medium format and 35mm. I figured if I am going to fire up the wet process there was no reason to just shoot with the M series. I will give my medium format film stuff some exercise as well. This is actually fun. The images included with the post are two frames from the beginning of that last roll that didn’t have any obvious faults. Again 7 or 8 year old TRI-X that I had never processed. There are actually a bunch of frames that have some potential. I wonder why I chucked this roll to the side way back when? Most likely I got busy with commercial stuff and didn’t have a slot for the the film type/developer for it and forgot about it.

For anybody that is remotely curious the developer that I have been using is Pyrocat HD in glycol. I have a bit of experience with it in the past and now that it comes premixed in glycol it should keep extremely well – the glycol doesn’t do anything but preserve the stock solutions better than water but that is important if I am not going to be doing high volume work. The liquid kit cost about $30 and makes 50 liters of working solution. For my uses that is about 100 rolls of film. I could probably double that if I change my process a bit but 500 ml is about the practical limit for a single roll of film in my setup. So I guess the price is about 30Â¢ a roll – not too extravagant.

The fresh films that I ordered are Kodak TRI-X 400 (TX), TRI-X 320 (TXP), TMAX 100 (TMX), TMAX 400 (TMY), and Efke R100. For the uninitiated, the TX and TXP are completely different films – both wonderful – but Kodak should have probably named them something completely different. The only thing they have in common is spectral response. The TMX is one of my go to films, the TMY is the new version that I have never tried so I am going to calibrate it and see what I think – just in case TRI-X goes away or maybe I will be surprised and find that I love it for some reason. The R100 is to see if this is actually the same really old style stuff that gives me results like Veripan – I tried some of it a long time ago and it had a really nice scale so we will see.

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Published:: 10.12.09 / 1pm

Category:: Articles, General Photography

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RB 10.14.09 / 8pm

To those of you that asked – again this is TRI-X. The reproduction size on your screen is probably somewhere between 5×7 1/2 an 6×9. At that size on screen and in prints TRI-X is not a grainy film – hence my previous comments about all grain simulation in filters – even the good ones like Nik Silver EFEX. They are idiotic caricatures of real film, if you use the TRI-X simulation “as is” you will end up with something that has tremendous amounts of grain no matter what the print size.

TRI-X has NEVER been really grainy in enlargements up to 6x after that the grain will start to be visible but not to a HUGE degree unless your processing/exposure/etc. cause it to be huge.

If you are seeing different results I can probably predict the reasons. One of them being way too aggressive sharpening and then a resizing to a smaller size – this will aggravate the look of grain or noise since resizing algorithms try really hard to keep pixels that have a lot of contrast. Resizing down actually tends to increase apparent grain/noise and throw away the smooth pixels – exactly opposite of what happens with optical/analog magnification.

Michael 10.14.09 / 10pm

RB
Why Pyrocat HD?
I have no experience with it, but if it is somehow exceptional I might give it a try.
I’m asking because you may have successfully shamed me into firing up the darkroom.
Many years ago I used a one shot formulation called FR X-22.
It was a compenasting developer for slower films but it produced beautiful results. I think it may have been similar to Rodinal or Neofin Blue but pre-packaged in 1 ounce concentrated vials.
I mention this because If I start again, my output will be sporadic at best. It would be perfect to find a one shot type process that eliminated the need to hold stock solutions etc.
HC-110 can work great as a one shot with a 30cc plastic syringe, but all my experience there is with Tri-X Pan Professional in sheets & roll. Not 35mm.
Any suggestions?

RB 10.14.09 / 10pm

Michael,

Funny you should ask – here is the background and the reasons.

One – I started using pyro based developers for just about everything both commercial (the occasional BW job) and everything from large to 35mm. PMK was okay, ABC (aka Kodak D-1) was fine for large films but had issues with tank processing/agitation on roll films.

I finally tried some Pyrocat (Catechol + phenidone) and it seemed to give me the best of all possible worlds so here it is.

Very very low overall stain and fog – much lower than even PMK. Better edge effects when used with stand development (3 min agitation intervals) than anything I have ever seen – I will show you a scan of the edge effects if you want). Extremely high sharpness with NO infectious development or silver migration. As with most pyro developers if you know what you are looking for/at the amazing ability to separate highlight values like nothing else. Neutral stain color (brown like ABC NOT green) so less weirdness in printing with VC, same printing on graded, extra CI when printing on platinum…….AND the negatives scan very well it seems the silver stays low enough density and the stain adds just enough so that the negatives scan very very well for things that are actually printable on normal silver halide paper.

Oh one more thing – it is a good 1/3 to 2/3 stop faster on every film I use (measured at zone III) than PMK and a whole stop faster maybe 1 and 1/3 than ABC.

If that weren’t enough the fact that it comes packaged in glycol to improve shelf life now is a real bonus.

To use get to syringes one for A one for B

1+1+100 and that is one shot, use 500ml to be safe for each roll or each 8×10 sheet. If it is two slow for you (as in to long a development time you can up the A and or B concentrations until you get whatever development time you like but 1+1+100 is the only one that is going to be appropriate for stand development.

Any other questions?

Oh always use distilled water when mixing the one shot dev solution and if your water is off in any way use distilled for a water stop bath as well, if you water is fine then the stop bath can be tap (NO ACID, JUST WATER) TF 4 fixer is my standard and has no bisulfates so it will not remove the stain – use it.

RB Design

Shooting Film Follies 2009

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