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APX400 in ilfotec

Richard Harris

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I shot and developed a roll of APX400 last night and hope somebody can advise me. I bought a load of APX400 on ebay (late stuff with green on box) then read how badly this film is rated on APUG and the other site??
Ilford advise 12mins at 20C and 10mins at 24C for Ilfotec dd-x. I gave it 10m 30secs at 20.7C which is a very little under but not much and I didn't want grain. What I got were rather thin negatives, that will need grade 4 to print and grain that wouldn't look bad on FP4 let alone HP5. Unless I have advice to the contrary I will expose the next roll at 320asa and give it a full 12 mins at 21C
Any suggestions?
Ilfotec looks as though it will control the grain issue with APX400 much discussed on threads but I dont think it could push this film even 1 stop.
I am not a lover of grain but would like to be able to push the film a bit and I don't think I am getting box speed with dd-x
 

DaveOttawa

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I have a little experience with Silvertone 400 film (=APX400) in D76 1+1, also found grain was not objectionable, a little bit more prominent than with HP5 but sharp. Your approach to dealing with the thin negs (increase exposure) makes sense, just not sure why you are increasing dev time? My only suggestion would be change one thing at a time, get shadow densities where you want them with exposure then adjust dev time for contrast if necessary.
 
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Richard Harris

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Thanks Dave,
The development increase would be to increase contrast. Getting grade 4 with a colour head is pushing I prefer my negs to print grade 2. The shadow detail is well held even with the apparent underexposure and under development. But a little more exposure would help and increase the mid tones a bit.
The grain with dd-x is much smaller than HP5 with dd-x but more development may change this but I would be surprised if it increased that much.
 

pentaxuser

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My experience with all Ilford devs tried so far(ID11, Perceptol, Ilfosol,DDX) is that a little more than Ilford recommends is more likely to produce the results I want than trying less.

At the risk of appearing to be a champion of the Roger and Frances website by my references to it, it may be worth a look. Their experience of Ilford devs also seem to indicate that about 10% more dev is advisable. DDX is one of their main developers and if I recall correctly they believe DDX does have some speed increasing qualities. As an example when talking about medium/high speed film and very fine grain devs such as Perceptol they talk of FP4+ in DDX at EI 200 giving less grain because of the film than say HP5+ at EI 200/250 in Perceptol.

Best of luck

pentaxuser
 
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Richard Harris

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pentaxuser,
thanks, yes I agree I think. I use Ilford's times by and large but do not reduce for rotary agitation. This seems to give me good negs for HP5 although I commonly run FP4 and Hp5 in the same tank and I use the longer HP5 time. FP4 always seems thin if using the Ilford time, even with rotary.
Richard Harris.
 

Ole

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I tend to follow Ilford's suggested times, but increase the temperature from 20 to 22 or even 24C. That usually gives me the contrast I like.
 
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