B/W Reversal: What happened to the Speed Increase?

[3Dfan]

After looking into the b/w reversal documentation on Apug & Ilford, as well as the docs for the old T-Max kit, it seems that almost all of these suggest rating the film at or below box speed. Most films on the DR5 film review are the same with a few notable exceptions. Yet I can find 2 authorities which state a speed increase can be had.

"Low Light and Night Photography" by Roger Hicks states, "For real eccentrics, reversal processing of Tri-X and HP5 is possible with speed ratings of up to EI 3200 without loss of shadow detail; because it is a reversal process, it also tends to be finer grained than neg/pos printing."

"The Darkroom Handbook" by Langford & Knopf says, "you can reversal process black and white negative film, but rate it at three times its stated speed."

Who is right?

 

[holmburgers]

I've read similar things, and would love to know the answer myself.

 

[Sankt.Ahlomow]

Kodak recommends to do so. But my own experiences are use the film at normal speed (TMax 100@100ASA and increase first dev time. It gives more contrast. When using Tri-X or HP5 you cannot increase first dev time to "infinity" without emulsion damage in Kodak reversal kit. You have to test what is max dev time. If DR5 can do push development it is because of their special process (which is not public). If you need push deveopment try DR5. If you want to process yourself look here:

Dead Link Removed

It works well with stunning results with HP5@400 ASA.

Regards,
Thomas

 

[holmburgers]

For what it's worth, here are my goes at reversal processing 2 films and at different 2 speeds each. In each case, speed was lost.

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

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

There are a couple big threads on here, one is (there was a url link here which no longer exists) and the other is (there was a url link here which no longer exists). In either case, I don't know if pushing is covered satisfactorily.

HP5 at 400 certainly sounds nice.

 

[johnielvis]

well--there's no way to increase speed--and you can shoot at higher ei's when reversing the film--the shadow detail is there and you can reveal it by bleaching--you will end up with a loss of dmax though--get a washed out transparency---exactly the same as regular development--you'll get a thin negative---if you push, you'll get a nasty contrasty negative that has detail that you can't print.....see--when you push at reversal, you get detail that you cant see (except with a flashlight through the negative when looking at it)--when you push a negative, you get detail you can't print. You can reveal it by bleaching/intensifying or scanning and doing the electronic equivalent.

if you want a nice looking reversal, you have to expose at the film's "reversal speed".....the reason the reversal speed is different from the "negative speed" is that you're working on a different portion of the film curve--with the negative, you get best quality by exposing lowest on the curve---for reversal, you're exposing further up the curve--so the "reversal speed" seems to be less HOWEVER--if you look in the shadows that you cant see by projection, you WILL see detail there. You can see the detail with a light box--but your eye must get used to that section of the positive---there is a great range of values in the reversals.