Best developer to achieve highest ISO with Tri-X

Gerald C Koch said:

POTA was designed to capture scenes like atomic bomb blasts where there is a very wide range of illumination. In order to do this it produces a very low contrast negative. Not really something you would want to use generally. It has found some use in taming the contrast of microfilms and Kodak Technical Pan 2415 film.

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And separating spectral lines in star astronomy for the same reason.
If you want night shots with lights in scene then POTA will capture most data, printing may be more difficult there by.
Mixing a different technique may leave the worst combination rather than a better one.
There are some variants of POTA in addition to the APUG specials linked to in above post.

David Allen said:

One of my students has a project where he needs to get maximum ISO out of Tri-X whilst retaining at least some shadow detail.

For all of his other work we have identified that Tri-X exposed in his Nikon FM + 50mm lens and developed in Barry Thornton's Two-Bath developer has an effective EI of 200. This gives him great tonality, full detail in the shadows and easy to print negatives. Alas, for this one particular project, an EI of 200 is at least 2 stops to slow.

My first thought was to mix up Crawley's FX-11 developer for him. Although Tri-X and FX-11 worked great back in the day when I sometimes had to photograph nightime football games, I haven't actually used this developer in at least 20 years (probably more). Back then, I tested FX-11, Microphen and HC110 with FX-11 giving the best ratio between effective speed, retaining some shadow detail and 'normal looking' tonality.

So to my question: Is Crawley's FX-11 still the best developer for getting the most out of Tri-X (and yes it has to be Tri-X as he has hundreds of rolls in his fridge) or is there a better choice these days?

Thanks for your help.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de

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Regardless of the developer, a hard push and pre-flash will get far more out of it.

Superia 800 @ 12800 example, I based it on an article about pre-flashing for Tri-X.

no preflash + push

Superia 800 @ 12800 no preflash by Daniel Lee, on Flickr

preflash + push

Superia 800 @ 12800 Zone 3 preflash by Daniel Lee, on Flickr









In regards to POTA, a long push in it might work very well, will stay thin low contrast, but bleaching and re-developing in a colour developer with colour coupler many times over is supposed to gain more stops of speed normally unattainable. Probably out of the realm of practicality for your student though. Pre-flash remains practical.

David Allen said:

Hi Mike,

at the moment the two front runners for testing are Acufine (at stock) and SPUR Push-Master in combination with SPUR SLD developer. The Acufine available here has a data sheet that states that it should be replenished but there is no replenisher available. The data sheet also says that you can process up to 16 rolls with an increased development time of +2% per additional film. What was your memory Mike? - and was it one of those developers that improved with age/use?


www.dsallen.de

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Thinking about it, it did have a replenisher, so we would have topped it up. As I remember, (and this is 30 years ago!), it lasted a while in the small deep tank. It looked disgusting with loads of crap floating about but seemed to work fine.

Very impressive results Daniel.

I used to sometimes use a pre-flash when I did large format landscape photography (for contrast control) - but that was some 30+ years ago.

I would appreciate it if you outline your pre-flash technique - would be very interesting and helpful.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de

David since you and your student are in Germany Foto Riegler/Fotofachversand in Amstetten/Austria has the replenisher in stock http://www.fotofachversand.com/Acufine

Thanks for the information re: replenisher.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de

David Allen said:

Very impressive results Daniel.

I used to sometimes use a pre-flash when I did large format landscape photography (for contrast control) - but that was some 30+ years ago.

I would appreciate it if you outline your pre-flash technique - would be very interesting and helpful.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de

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The difference in shadow detail is mild at best (even if pictorial exposure is under exposed) in normal processing times but very significant with a very hard push.

I used an AE-1, which meters through the lens, the film used was Superia XTRA 800, I did pre-flash via double exposure. So I had a double tissue folded and held over the lens and exposure, pushed the rewind button and held the rewind spool firm while gently advancing the film advance lever so I could go to next shot without advancing the film.

Pre-flash that worked was 6 stops under box speed (so metered at 800, counted 6 stops less exposure) the average 18% grey reading through the diffusing material (the meter would take into account anything over the lens since it's TTL metering). Anything less than that had no effect. - Doing it like this via double exposure lets you use and compare different pre-flash amounts and no pre-flash easily too.

First roll you may need a test roll, but its probably in the same vicinity, you could shoot Tri-X at 6400 with a lot more shadow detail this way.


Read it about Tri-X here, then applied to Superia 800, so should apply to Tri-X no worries.
http://www.strobist.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/how-we-got-here-analog-photoshop.html

Thanks for that information - I shall certainly include in our tests.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de