reub2000 said:
Yes, it is very expensive to get this stuff processed.
I should be doing this type of thing in my photography class. And my parents want me to try developing film at school before they will let me setup up half of a dark room in the laundry room.
Also looking at the samples of the Kodak and Illford 3200 films on pbase, they look really grainy!
There are a few ways to get more "speed" out of a film.
Some developers naturally bring out more speed in a film; Ilford DDX, Microphen, Acufine, and a number of others. Using these can give a modest increase in real film speed, perhaps up to a stop faster than the speed on the box. I haven't done a lot of that myself.
D-76 (Ilford ID-11) and other mainstream developers typically give you the rated film speed to a stop less speed than the rated speed. Many fine art photographers and those who want a "sensitometrically correct", full scale negative end up with about 1/2 the speed printed on the box with these developers. E.g. Tri-X often falls in the 160-250 range for normal subjects on grade 2 or 3 paper in developers with D-76 levels of activity.
A second way you can "increase" film speed is what is commonly called pushing. This is often done by underexposing (rating the film at a higher speed) and overdeveloping, or giving the film a longer than normal development time. This causes a loss of shadow detail and might also increase the contrast of the negative beyond "normal". Photojournalists do this a lot to allow them to get shots they'd miss otherwise. It gives you the ability to handhold in lower light, gets a contrastier shot (all else being equal), and the extended development gives you the grainer and contrastier results you've seen on pbase. The reason that I posted the excerpt from the TMAX tech pub is to make it clear that Kodak considers TMZ a nominal 800 speed film in "standard" developers. So you often see what amounts to "pushed" results from TMZ and Delta 3200. (When it first came out, I had serious problems with photographers pushing TMZ faster than an assumed baseline speed of 3200 in normal developers and expecting me to print shadow detail that they'd left far, far behind.)
Another, much less often used method for getting more film speed is to give longer development times with reduced agitation. It became traditional in the later 20th century to give one or two agitation cycles per minute for all film development, and people also started to use constant agitation in rotary processors like Jobos in the last several decades. Reducing that agitation can help "increase" film speed without the attendant increase in highlight density that increases overall contrast. What happens in this case is that the developer sitting on the brighter parts of the image, the highlights, becomes exhausted and becomes less effective, while developer on the thin shadow portions of the image doesn't have as much exposed silver to transform, so it keeps right on working. This allows the shadows to be brought up to decent density while keeping the highlights printable on normal paper grades without "burning" them in during printing. People are starting to use this method again, so look for references to stand, semi-stand, reduced agitation, or minimal agitation development on APUG if you want more information on these methods.
You can use a combination of speed increasing developer and reduced agitation, although I haven't done much of this myself, especially with higher speed films. Look around APUG for more information with the search feature. Look especially at posts by df cardwell for the things you are trying to do.
You are highly unlikely to find a lab willing to do stand or semi-stand processing for you. It's more time consuming and not compatible with many standard lab setups. They may also look at you like you're goofy if you suggest reduced agitation, as it goes against the conventional "wisdom" of the later 20th century. You might also meet some resistance to these methods from a photo teacher, but if you can manage to give it a try in the class labs, you might both learn something.
Hope this helps.
Lee
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