Piano Man

Beautiful portrait, sly...!

The portret works for me, I think the highlights fits perfect in your exposuretime. (Even it's more a harmonica man) Good job!

- Bert

Wonderful portrait & beautiful print. Looks like it all worked out.

Excellent

Maybe you've come up with a new working exposure and development plan. The print looks superb. I wonder if you had to depart from your usual contrast mix, since I assuming this is a palladium print. I'm sure the pyro helped too. All in all, great shot, great tonal range!

artonpaper - thank you so much. I admire your work immensely.
The negative was quite contrasty - which meant I was able to use much less Na2 than usual.
I'm still working at finding the right film/exposure/developer/time combination for 8x10. The combo I'd worked out for 4x5 doesn't apply - the film's not available in 8x10. (It's not available in 4x5 anymore either, but I stocked up.)

Looking back on this, it makes makes me want to try pyro again. There was a time I was getting OK results with PMK and Tri-X 320, before it was reformulated some years ago. My problem, I can't look at the negative and make any judgments about it. I can't read pyro negs the way I can conventionally developed film. I suppose one can learn to. Do you find it consistent from session to session and batch to batch?

And Rollo in a tray? Hmmm . . .

I'm not the right person to ask. I've just started using Pyro recently. I wasn't getting 8x10 negatives I was happy with in d-76, DDX, Rodinal or other developers I tried. They were fine for silver, but not for alt prints. Many folks doing alt stuff using pyro, so I thought I'd try it.
I'm using Rollo in a tray by default. I called B&S, asking about Pyro developers. They told me Rollo was the easiest to use, and sent it off. It wasn't until it arrived that I realized it was supposed to be used in a rotary processor - which I don't have. Having paid shipping, taxes, and customs duty on it, I wasn't going to send it back. I found a couple of threads on here that mentioned Rollo in a tray, so.....