1. Don't stop developing film. Just don't draw conclusions that are based on too little fact.
2. Desired time = something you have to figure out. Manufacturers will tell you a certain development time that works according to how they expose film - in a laboratory, a highly controlled environment.
You are in the real world with a light meter that is different from theirs, a camera that is different from theirs, and lighting conditions that is different from theirs. So it is not likely that your desired development time is the same as theirs. It is meant to be a starting point.
3. It is a fact that if you have too much contrast in your negative, you developed it for too long. Just develop it less time next roll you shoot. This is a mechanism you will learn to judge as you gain more experience.
Don't be discouraged by a failure. Learn from it.
OK, i got it, so for any developer, i have to shoot about 10 films or enough numbers to know about the best developing process with time and/or temp for certain film, then i will have my own list for each developer with different film for the acceptable or better results?
Yes. Exactly.
Cool, tomorrow i will order 2-4 packs of different B&W film and i will use one developer with one film until i master it as you all telling me, then move to another and keep going.
Thanks!
Digital is cheaper
Good to learn, Delta 100 with TMAX dev is not match fine, didn't like the results, so contrasty, and the worse is that i did manipulate digitally and it became wonderful, so now i know that Delta film with TMAX developer don't match as combo for better results.
Thanks again!
Or, a lot of packs of the same film would teach you even more. One film and one developer is how you learn the most.
I willingly put my own failure to learn in public for everyone else to learn from. I failed to learn because I focused too much on the film when I should have been focusing on the pictures.
The good pictures came when I stopped using many films and many developers and reduced it down to just one film and one developer.
Please don't make the same mistake I made.
tareq
if your film is too "contrasty"
there are a a few different things you can do to reduce the contrast.
shorten the development time ( but be careful less than 5 minutes = uneven development )
reduce your agitation ..
how are you agitating your film ?
sometimes if you agitate too much or to vigorously you get contrasty film
if you agitate 5 seconds every 30 seconds or 10 seconds every minute
maybe do 1 or 2 or 3 fewer agitations in the middle.
cool down your developer mix it with water cooled down by ice ...
if you are using some sort of rotary processor sort of thing
you need to REDUCE your development time by quite a bit.
i agree with thomas 1 film and 1 developer you will learn the most
how to make your film do what you want.
good luck
john
Tareq:
Your energy and enthusiasm is admirable.
It may be time, however, to step back a little.
If you are constantly switching films and developers, you probably won't ever be happy about your results.
If I were you, I would do the following things:
1) look at your results so far, and the results that others have shown you, and get a feeling for what you like;
2) among those choices, determine which of the developers and films are most readily available to you and convenient for you to obtain, store and use;
3) from those, come up with one developer and, at most, two films and mention that combination here;
4) most likely, we will tell you that that combination will work fine; and
5) shoot a bunch of photos and develop them, making sure that you keep track of your experiments and the results;
6) most importantly, have fun!
Two points of clarification - you probably cannot choose anything really bad if you choose one of the combinations already mentioned, and T-Max developer isn't only for T-Max film (although it works well with them).
Well, i think i must get a tool to do prints, without that i can never tell if my negs are good enough or not, and it seems scanning here is not a good idea to know about it for you, so can someone send me something to do printing? Or i have to wait i dunno how long until i can get something to print, so i should stop developing film now?
You make your choice and then need to stick with one, at the most two developers, learn how they work with the films you use and hone the combination to give you great results.
Ian
Nice beautiful shot, you did a great job, but nothing can be more tricky than our lights.
In fact i love Ilford B&W films even before i develop anything, but i keep shooting with TMAX film to practice with developing first, then soon i will use Ilford film which i really like over some Kodak B&W films.
Check eBay (or a more local used marketplace, since most eBay sellers are halfway around the world from you) for used enlargers. In the US, at least, used enlargers sell for very small sums. You'll also need a dark room in which to set it up (ideally a dedicated darkroom, but a bathroom or laundry room might serve for temporary as-needed conversion) and a few other odds and ends -- trays, tongs, a print washer, etc.
If you can't manage to buy an enlarger, you can at least jury-rig one. See, for example, this article.
Note also that scans can be perfectly acceptable for judging negative development, but the question really is what the ultimate viewing medium will be. If you intend to view your photos on a computer, or make digital prints via a computer's printer, then you should judge your development by scans. If you intend to ultimately do traditional darkroom prints, then scans are less useful (but not completely useless) for judging negatives.
In my experience, scanners can do a better job at handling development extremes -- badly over- or under-developed negatives. This can also make it hard to judge development, since you might not see such dramatic differences in scans as you would in darkroom prints, when you vary development. OTOH, for negatives that are developed properly for making darkroom prints, I can almost always produce better results in a darkroom than I can with my scanner. This difference can make for some exciting or disappointing discoveries, since I scan before I print, and I use the scans to guide what I print. Sometimes a scan looks promising, but the negative turns out to be improperly exposed and it's hard to get a good print; and other times a scan looks humdrum but turns into a much better print.
Well, thanks a lot!
Actually, before I got into doing this I was initially set on starting out using T-Max film. But, somehow I managed to talk myself into using Delta 100 instead, and I haven't regretted my decision yet. I'm sure I could've even shot that image on T-Max film, and it probably would've turned out really great. I mean, what's really to stop me? But, on the other hand, I have to ask myself -- why would I change something that has been working pretty well for me and has also allowed me to become better and better every time I shoot?
In the beginning, I thought that the film/developer combo I'd be using would be a big deal. Now, I'm seeing that it hardly matters at all once you get the hang of your process and learn to bend that process towards your needs. Now, I just think of film like an ordinary blank canvas. The canvas itself doesn't dictate whether or not the art is beautiful. Every canvas has strengths and limitations, and that's about as perfect as this gets.
This is reminding me of some of the things Ansel Adams preached about. He said that the negative is like the "musical score" and that the print is like the "musical performance." He said that the negative (like the score) just contains the information. The negative is just a starting point, and it took me a while to experience what he meant by that.
Ansel in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWhQGU2RYuM
The Tmax developer has been designed for modern type emulsions. But the developer works fast (Delta 100 Tmax 1+4 6:00 min. 20C ) and contrastly which means in higher temperatures maybe too fast and contrastly. The developer times are pretty short with Tmax developer so when developing under 4-5 minutes it's going to be a problem.
Further the exposure of Tmax films must be accurate. Classical cubical emulsions have more margin and especially with the very hard and contrastly light in your country you will have to make a choice in the iso 100 range films.
When the contrast in light is over 6 F stops you have to overexpose your film (e.g. 1 F stop) and 10-15% shorten your developing times to make it possible to fit everything in the film curve.
About your results so far: You can send me some negatives and I can measure the density back on my densitometer and give you information back. A print I can also make for you so that you have an idea what you're doing so far.
I can only agree with the advise to stick with less film and a type of developer more suitable for higher developing temperatures.
Best regards,
Robert
Honestly speaking, all what i need is time to practice and experiment with patience, in my country it is not possible i can master film at its best or it is cheap, here it is very expensive to do film and at the end i can't get most what i need of film here, i use online orders which can be awful all the time for money wasting on shipping and waiting long time and not sure if some film will be fine all the time waiting moving from one place to another under different temps, so i will try to shoot whatever film i can afford and see, all the TMAX i did shoot came out not as developing [not sure with printing], and all the scans were not bad, but i didn't like most of the results because of 1 reason, "OOF", i think even with printing i will never fix this problem, so i think before i have a problem with developing or printing i have to solve the problem of focussing, this is the only thing that making me not liking most of my negs, i even printed 2 shots in the darkroom during a workshop and both were bad bad prints whatever i try to do, even the instructor said i love it as it is blurred or OOF, I believe that all films and all developers can do the job if i really know how to work with each as i drive a car, each car needs time to learn how to drive it then you can drive even blindly, so i think you all taking your time on each develop or film to know how they work at best you can get out of them, i really wish if i can spend years as you did, but i will see as i just started for how long i can stay with film coming from digital.
Haha, well, I haven't exactly spent years on this. I'm actually sharing my experiences with you because I'm still a newbie unlike many people here (who are more experienced than us but who are basically giving you the same advice I am giving you). Like you, I've practically just started, I'm still in the testing phase, and I also started with digital. I'm giving you my perspective as someone who has probably only developed about 10 batches of film at the most. It's just that the little experience I do have has gone a really long way for me.
As you know by now, most the sentiment on this forum will usually be about establishing a pretty consistent developing process/system. Of course many of us will run into availability issues, temperature issues, and many other issues that are largely out of our control. But, we can't expect everything to be in our favor, and some things just have to be accepted as imperfect. Yet, there are usually ways around most problems. If I sense an availability issue coming up, then I do my best to save up a bunch of money and purchase what I need in bulk (e.g., suddendly discontinued film). It's very much about anticipation, preemption, and staying ahead of the ball. To keep my water bath from overheating (past 20C/68F), I keep ice cubes nearby that I can drop in and keep the temperature cool and consistent. If it cools down too much, then I can add warm water to bring the temperature back up. Some people might not prefer that way of doing things, but it works quite well for me.
...
As far as developing is concerned, I honestly wouldn't worry so much about the out-of-focus issue. It's just an external issue. If your images are out of focus, then it's probably not because you're not developing them correctly. Once you get to the point where your shadows, your highlights, and your midtones are right where you want them to be, you'll feel more confident about developing. Developing is more about exposure and contrast so that's what I'd pay more attention to.
Like you, I've ran into a lot of external (but frustrating) issues ever since I started developing. For starters: A) I learned that my camera naturally jams every so often, B) I discovered that there was a piece of tape that had got stuck in the window of one of my film backs which showed up in several rolls of film before I finally discovered it, C) I learned that a part of the shutter in one of my cameras was broken, and D) I just learned that a piece of wiring on one of my steel reels is scratching frame #3 on my negatives, and so on and so on. That doesn't even include the list of mistakes I've made while practicing the development process itself. I doubt very many people have had a perfect time with this, even the most successful photographers.
It was just last week when I was sitting there debating whether or not I had the sanity to continue developing my own film. Eventually, I decided that A) I still had a lot to learn and that I was just going to have to suck it up and put in the work to iron out all of the bugs, B) I can be very happy that I have already learned a whole lot with very little experience in this short period of time (in spite of my frustration), and C) once all of the bugs get ironed out, then the end result will probably be well worth all of this effort.
Dear Tareq;
I admire you for your desire to learn this fascinating craft of film photography,in all its aspects, from photographing to processing and printing and will tell you that most of us started the same way and experimenting with different developers and films was part of the joy of learning. We, in the West, where photography was born, have been fortunate because the supply of materials has been so readily available for more than a century. You may find, that because of the difficulties and expense of procuring the materials of film photography, that you will work more carefully and learn more quickly, from pure necessity and I wish you the best on this journey into learning.
Denise Libby
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