retina_restoration
Member
FWIW, John - I tested my first roll of HR-50 last week, paired with an IR filter and developed in FX-39 for Adox's recommended time and the negatives were practically unusable. Too dense in the highlights, compressed high values (lacking detail) and the shadows were empty blackness.I found the said times a little long and I also tried the developer slightly more dilute. I liked the tonal range better when it was diluted more, but not the grain. I suppose I could have played around with it more, but couldn't really see any advantage over my trusty Xtol-R. FX-37 is a good developer, but so are a lot of other developers. I just want FX-39II for Adox HR-50 and maybe some Acros II I have left. Oh, I have two 120 rolls of PanF+ I'd like to run it in also just to see what the combination can do.
I've seen other people's images from HR-50 and they looked decent, so I think my use of an IR filter and (probably) overdeveloping the film made a mess of things. It's very sharp and practically grainless, I will give it that, but I didn't like the tonal rendering whatsoever. Maybe that was the IR filter's fault, I don't know.
This is the only test image from the roll that I actually did anything with. (difficult light, poor choice of subject matter also contributed to an unsatisfactory result)