1600 ISO 4x5 B&W film, does it exist?

Marco B said:

Any suggestions, besides TMax 100? Are there films in 4x5 that will do even better than TMax 100?

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no. tmax 100 and acros are the "fastest" films when working with reciprocity. and you can only find 4x5 acros in 20 sheet boxes (and maybe ready loads) . i think it is a bit faster than tmax100.

eddie

OK, thanks Eddie. I think I will try to get TMax100, as this is more easily had here in the Netherlands than Acros100 I think.

Pondering the reciprocity issue: I think it might be down to the size of the silver halogen particles: Fast film has large particles that probably can capture light / fotons more easily at "normal" light levels, however may have trouble developing primary silver grains when at extreme low light levels, where as the small silver halogen particles may actually be able to develop the primary silver grains with only an absolute minimal amount of fotons collected, and can thus capture extreme low light levels more easily... any comments by experts here on APUG???

eddie gunks said:

let me know your meter ISO, f stop and shutter speeds you decide your scene needs and i will tell you what i would do with tmax100.

eddie

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Eddie, one of the scenes with a well illuminated building I tried to capture measured an EV of about 7-7.5 for zone V at ISO 400. So that would be EV 5-5.5 for ISO 100.

My pinhole dial shows an exposure of 8 min for F138 for that EV value of about 5 WITHOUT taking reciprocity into account. However, since it is an ultrawide pinhole with considerable light fall off to the corners, I usually at another 1-1.5 stop extra to allow for some density at the corners of the 4x5 neg, so 15 min at F138 would be a more realistic number.

Now looking at the reciprocity table for TMax 100 from Ralph's website, it shows 40 min... does that sound any good? What would you do?

marco,

please keep me posted on how this works out for you. i am interested.

another idea for you is to shoot your night scene as you would. then close the shutter and wait till morning. then open the shutter again in daylight and try and get some of the foreground and all to show up nicely. i tried this one year shooting the full moon.

here is my first attempt at shooting the moon with a pinhole:

http://www.f295.org/Pinholeforum/forum/Blah.pl?m-1140189374/s-0/highlight-moon/#num0

here it is the next month when i shot the moon, closed the shutter amnd then in the morning exposed for the shadows again. it came out much better. it still need s work but the full moon is only every month and it moves out of the tard at other times of the year so it make sit tough. you should be able to dial it right in for your street shots. (note that the exposure times were for a 75mm pinhole f216 so yours will be shorter)

http://www.f295.org/Pinholeforum/forum/Blah.pl?m-1142871822/s-0/highlight-moon/#num0


here is one shot at 1 hour of a full moon:

http://www.f295.org/Pinholeforum/forum/Blah.pl?m-1194362543/s-0/highlight-moon/#num0

sounds good

Marco B said:

Eddie, one of the scenes with a well illuminated building I tried to capture measured an EV of about 7-7.5 for zone V at ISO 400. So that would be EV 5-5.5 for ISO 100.

My pinhole dial shows an exposure of 8 min for F138 for that EV value of about 5 WITHOUT taking reciprocity into account. However, since it is an ultrawide pinhole with considerable light fall off to the corners, I usually at another 1-1.5 stop extra to allow for some density at the corners of the 4x5 neg, so 15 min at F138 would be a more realistic number.

Now looking at the reciprocity table for TMax 100 from Ralph's website, it shows 40 min... does that sound any good? What would you do?

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yup! i am getting 43 min including reciprocity! from my trusty pinhole designer. now you know pinholes.....more is always good. i would shoot one at 43 min and one at 90 min.

i will need to check my notes when i get home from work but i use this for my development

foma100 dil G (119:1) at 20C for 18 min with 1 min initial agitation and agitation every 3rd min after that.

for tmax100 i think i am using 14 min at dil H so if you want to try Dil G (119:1) to pick up some film speed i would do it as the same for above but develop it for 28 min. i have not done much dil G lately.....i got lazy! but it works nicely.

i hope this helps.

eddie

The hydrogen peroxide treatment was illustrated for b&w neg and color transparency boost in Photo Techniques ( I think). the mag has undergone some name changes but still hangs on.
I may be mistaken and it appeared in the long dead Darkroom Techniques.
The HP is placed in the bottom of the tank, reels placed on top of 35mm canisters filled with hot water into the tank so that HP is heated to drive out the hydrogen ( I gather ) without letting the liquid HP touch the film. This was combined with chemical push, but I forget the order. The results as printed looked great, with real highlights and actual shadow detail.

Marco B said:

Thanks all for the suggestions!

The reason I was looking for something like ISO 1600 is a kind of madmen's project: shooting night time pinholes of illuminated buildings with an ultrawide 4x5 pinhole camera...

I have had some preliminary results with about 40 min exposure that showed some promise, but the negs are thin. I did not really push develop though, and did not pre-flash the film. I will give it a try with HP5 and see what I can come up with... and possibly see if I can buy some of that Rollei stuff with the High Speed developer.

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Perhaps you need more light instead of longer light. With very long exposures you could use a single lamp or strobe to illuminate different parts of the scene, and have it even out on film.

You could use a strobe, or one of those million candlepower spotlights. You could also use a chemical flashbulb. They give off buckets of candlepower rather cheaply, and are often used for difficult lighting situations like the inside of caves and the exterior of buildings.

..there is no better B&W large-format film for this use than HP5, negs or positives. to 1600 iso comfortably.

hp5 @ 1000 (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

regards
dw

Marco B said:

I already took reciprocity into account to some extent, but clearly not enough. For HP5, it would probably require something like 2-4 hours exposure (more likely 4 considering the negs). Although I am a patient guy (at least when I want to ), that stretches my patience to the limit (hence the question for 1600 ISO).

I have been using Ralph Lambrecht's pinhole dial (Dead Link Removed under "Library") in combination with a conventional film reciprocity table to come up with some sort of estimate. However, it may indeed be better to resort to modern TMax emulsion, as that same table Ralph supplied also shows TMax doing much better in this respect.

Can someone confirm that TMax really is that much better at long exposure times? (e.g. indicated / measured 4 min. translates to 14 min. for TMax 400 and 30 min for conventional according to Ralph's reciprocity table)

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dr5chrome said:

..there is no better B&W large-format film for this use than HP5, negs or positives. to 1600 iso comfortably.

hp5 @ 1000 (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

regards
dw

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DW, are you talking of the "pushing" behaviour of HP5 or the "reciprocity failure" response? It seems the first, however, as some others pointed out in the last post, reciprocity failure may be a more important issue and TMax or Acros might be a better option...

you are right marco. i love HP5 and FP4 but they are painfully slow when used with a pinhole camera.

while bobby's suggestion for a flash is a good one, using a flash with a pinhole camera is difficult. you need lots of flashes. i have tried it it works in some situations but you really need many multiple flashes.

dw, great portrait!

eddie

eddie gunks said:

dw, great portrait!
eddie

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Yes, I second that... powerful shot, and nothing wrong with the push processing at ISO 1000.

Ok guys, due to the limited availability of TMax 100 and Neopan Acros 100 here in the Netherlands, I finally settled on a box of TMax 400. Actually, looking at a reciprocity table, I also think it just beats TMax 100, even though having more failure, it's two stop more speed is not entirely lost compared to TMax 100 with exposures up to about 40 minutes. Probably Neopan will beat TMax 400, since it has even lower failure. You can now see the results in my APUG gallery and the Standard Gallery.

Marco B said:

TMax 400. Actually, looking at a reciprocity table, I also think it just beats TMax 100, even though having more failure, it's two stop more speed is not entirely lost compared to TMax 100 with exposures up to about 40 minutes.

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are you sure? i could swear 100 was way faster.

nice shots none the less. send me your address and i will send you some tmax 100 just to try and see!

eddie

Eddie, my remark is solely based on the reciprocity table I found on Ralph W. Lambrecht's website (http://www.darkroommagic.com under "Library"). Up to now, that table has proven pretty reliable for TMax 400 and HP5 (the latter using the "conventional" column).

As I don't have TMax 100 available, I can't check it, but looking at that table, let's just make some assumption:

- E.g. if I measured EV6 for zone 5 for 400 ISO, the measured time for an F128 pinhole is 4 minutes. Including reciprocity failure according to Ralph's table's for TMax 400 and 100, this would translate in 14 minutes real exposure for TMax 400.

- However, the same measured EV6 translates in EV4 for 100 ISO, meaning I have a measured time of 15 minutes for TMax 100. So already without taking into account reciprocity failure, TMax 400 is due to it's two stops faster speed still slightly faster (by 1 minute). The rate of failing is just not that much bigger that the two stop speed gain of the 400 ISO film is lost compared to the 100 ISO film.

- If I include reciprocity as well, the 15 minutes of TMax 100 translates to 40 minutes! So even 26 minutes slower than TMax 400 (40 - 14 = 26).

Anyway, it would still be interesting to try out the TMax 100 and Neopan Acros 100 in a real world situation.

Marco

Fuji Acros may be available in your area. Its lack of reciprocity departure makes it at least as fast as 1600 in very low light situations.

i am sending some tmax 100 your way. keep us posted.

eddie

Marco, I think I may have mentioned this to you before, but anyway, I've used the fuji fp3000b45 instant film for pinhole and I think it's perfect. You would likely contact print your pinhole shots anyway....

The true speed of the fp3000b45 really is 3000, and the reciprocity isn't half bad (though I've only tested it out to a few seconds).

I've also pushed hp5+ ~1.5 stops and had no issues with it; again, you're probably just going to be contact printing or enlarging just a little bit. So, go ahead and go nuts and push if you need to.

You know what pushes surprisingly well? Provia 400x. There are some examples of that in smaller format at RFF. I don't know if that will become available in 4x5 though.

keithwms said:

You would likely contact print your pinhole shots anyway....

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Thanks Keith for the response, I am sure I will start trying out these Fuji (instant) products some time in the near future.

However, I think you underestimate the quality of pinhole camera's. The Zero Image 4x5 delivers an astonishing image quality. I have successfully made enlargements up to 12x16 inch, and I think I could go even considerably bigger than that.

The amount of detail captured is truly remarkable, due to a very good pinhole. Of course, there IS a "soft filter" effect, but it is not disturbing, actually, I like it.

I am pretty sure many unexperienced people would NEVER even guess it's pinhole, and assume an ordinary camera.

keithwms said:

You know what pushes surprisingly well? Provia 400x. There are some examples of that in smaller format at RFF. I don't know if that will become available in 4x5 though.

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Personally based on what I have seen and read up to now, I think "pushing" is ONLY of use if you are still in the NON-reciprocity failure arena (that is, for most films, below 1s measured exposure time.

So yes, you CAN push 400 to 800 ISO and make 1/25th of a second to 1/50th of a second gain so that you are able to shoot out of the hand instead of using a tripod.

However, when we are in the ballpark of reciprocity failure, things may be different. If the exposure is so low that almost nothing is recorded at all (these night time pinholes have completely clear skies in the negs!), than there is also NOTHING to PUSH develop. Underexposure to beat reciprocity failure may just not be the right thing for these pinhole issues. No primary silver particles, nothing to push develop...

So I stay with Eddie's advices and up to now the TMax 400 hasn't disappointed compared to old-style emulsion like HP5. 40 minutes exposure maximum is something I can ride out.

Marco