Advice on push developer (maintaining contrast + reducing grain size)

Hello,

I have been using Rodinal for quite some time because I wanted to stick with a developer in order to see how it works with different films. The more black and white I shot, the more I enjoyed the contrasty look of pushed black and white film. As a result, I found myself pushing more and more black and white film.

Rodinal is a great developer but I can confirm that it isn't a great developer for pushing film because you lose a bit of speed and generally get lots of big grain.

Is there a developer out there that will help me:

1. Retain that "contrasty" look of pushed film
2. Maintain speed
3. Keep grain under control

I have used Microphen with good results but it's a little on the expensive side. I've heard Diafine and Xtol are good for pushing but would like some additional input.

Thanks!

Not answering your question exactly, but related - you could consider some things:
When you "push" film, you are basically under exposing it (hence the higher shooting speed), which looses detail in the shadows (the development part of "pushing" is basically overdevelopment, although some developers do this better than others). This is what yields the high contrast, as it is difficult for developers to increase density in shadows which are basically dropped out from under exposure.
Another way to get high contrast is to expose and develop more normally and print high contrast. This way, you retain the detail in your negs in case your sensibilities change over time and you find yourself wishing you had more information in the negs.
Grain is, in some ways, a different thing - not over developing will get you smoother grain, along with other good practices, like maintaining very consistent temperatures all the way through the process, including wash and final rinse (photo flo, if you use it). Rodinal is a wonderful developer, and I might try these things before changing to something else, just my 2 cents.
I started this post a half hour ago and got interupted, hope I'm not being redundant.

Tmax Developer is the best I have used for pushing. It is especially good for Delta 3200 and Tmax 400.

Well I vote for Microphen , going to rate some film at 800 for a weekend party and run in Microphen.

You don't have to change the speed you shoot the film at when you adjust development.

If you're just trying to keep contrast snappy and don't really need a faster shutter speed, then don't change the film's EI, just use box speed, this should give you much better shadow detail, may even improve apparent grain in the print.

I've used Microphen in the past which worked pretty well, I might just stick to that. But the more I read about Xtol, the more I'm thinking of giving that a try. Plus it's pretty inexpensive (with a 1+1 mix it should last quite some time).

I understand that pushing will increase grain and that's fine. It would just be nice to keep the grain a LITTLE tighter than this example which was developed using a 1+50 concentration of Rodinal at 20C for 15 minutes.

You'll get as many answers here as there are developers, but I have two recommendations:

- if you want the speed and smooth fine grain, use Xtol. If you push with it, you will get the high-contrast look. TMY2 at 800 to 1600 in Xtol 1+1 is epic IMHO and prints practically grain-free at 7x enlargement (16x20" from 6x7).
- if you just want the contrast and don't care for speed, use a slow/fine film in the Rodinal that you understand. Pan-F at EI50 to EI80 is pretty awesome in Rodinal 1+50 if you like contrasty photos.

Another thing to consider is that there's a certain fixed level of grain from each film/dev/EI combination. If you shoot scenes with more high-frequency high-magnitude dramatic detail, it will tend to hide the grain whereas scenes with large areas of subtle gradients will tend to emphasise the grain.

chriscrawfordphoto said:

Tmax Developer is the best I have used for pushing. It is especially good for Delta 3200 and Tmax 400.

Click to expand...

+1

Xtol works well. As Michael R said, Diafine is an excellent developer, especially with Tri-X, but it does not give the 'pushed' look. Standard solvent developers like D-76 work well if used as stock; I've not tried them 1:1 or 1:3. I use D-23 and just did a roll of Tri-X at 1600 with stock solution and it worked very well.