Calibrating HP5+ and ID-11

Hi everybody,
I am trying to calibrate my system according to Ansel's The Negative: find the right film speed to use by finding the speed at which Zone II produces a density of about 0.10 and then find the right developing time by testing where the density of Zone VIII is 1.25 to 1.35 (diffusion enlarger).
My film speed is closest to 400, which is of course the rated speed of the film.
My development times seem however to be way to long. To test this I did the following:
I shot three rolls (120) of film of a grey card, exposing from Zone 0 to Zone X on each roll. I then developed one roll for 13' (Ilford's recommended development time), one for 15' and one for 20' at exactly 20° in fresh (made several hours earlier) ID-11 diluted 1:1 with distilled water. I agitated the tanks for 10 seconds at the beginning of each minute. The graph shows my results. Not even at 20' do I get a density of near 1.3 for Zone VIII, although Ansel's recommended Zone V density of 0.65 - 0.75 for diffusion enlargers is met at 20'.
I measured the density with my Heiland Splitgrade system, zeroing on film base + fog (unexposed) on each roll and then measuring each exposure.
These results more or less match my experience that my negatives are often too flat, so I often need to print at grade 4 or higher. The tests are all from a batch of film I've had for a while, expiry date January 2006 but kept in my refrigerator.
Has anyone else gotten similar results? Is my film no good anymore? Are my methods faulty?

try exposing at EI 200 and see if that gives you what you want.

hal9000 said:

Please note that I am too stupid to get the X axis right in Excel: the values should read 0 to 10 (the exposure zones) instead of 1 to 11!

Click to expand...

On the graph in Excel, try putting in numerical values for 0 through 10 in a corresponding row or column, then choose an x-y line graph and plot the row/column for density against the corresponding Zone numbers on the y axis.

In the case of the data in your attachment, renumber the cells in the first row as 0 through 10 and then plot the first row as the x-axis value against rows 2 through 4 in an X-Y graph.

Lee

Several points.
1. You should use a Zone I density of .08-.11 for your EI.
2. My students usually have a range of 250-400, with 320 being most common,
3. The lack of HL density may wellbe a result of your tap water being acidic, tey mixing developer with distilled water to find out.
4. The most common cause of low density HL is lack of agitation. Try rotating the tank around an axiz runing through the middle of the cylinder 3 quick rotations each 30 seconds.
5. I am not familiar with the device you are using to measure density. Have you checked it with a step wedge? Even an uncalibrated one will give you an idea of its accuraacy as each step wil vary by aproximately .15.

Hope this helps.
Jim

Hallo,

how much developer did you use, I had a similar problem with HP5 in D76, in my case I simply did not use enough developer, which resulted in under development. With ID11 it needs at least 100ml stock solution per film roll, with D76 it takes ~250ml per roll.

Regards
Heinrich

Hi Jim,
thanks for the tips. Why do use this density for Zone I when Adams recommends it for Zone II? Is this based on your own experience?
I used only distilled water in the developer, so the acidity of my tap water is a mute point.
I agitate by inverting the tank (a 500 ml Kindermann) 5-7 times over the course of the first 10 seconds each minute. Is this not enough? I haven't calibrated the measuring device but it does match with my experience with this film (low contrast, flat negatives) so I think the Heiland Splitgrade is ok.

Hal

Hi Heinrich,
I used a 1:1 dilution so that's 225 ml of stock solution per film roll, should be plenty!
Hal

Interesting, I use a CPE2 and for 1 120 film it uses just 170ml of solution (D76 1+1), so that is only 85ml per film.... Not had any problems though. Who says that you need 250ml stock per roll? Not seen that one before.

I have been using HP5+ at 250 with ID-11 for 12 at 68 and have been very happy with the negatives and contrast.

Well, it looks like I found my problem - I have been filling my Kindermann tank too much. I actually had been filling it almost to the brim, so inversion did not agitate very much I guess. I now measured the minimum amount of liquid necessary to cover the spiral (375 ml instead of 450 ml) and got much better results. So agitation was the problem - thanks Jim for suggesting that!