Efke 25 + pyrocat-hd in interesting disaster

I just tried my first roll of Efke 25 (35 mm) with pyrocat-hd tonight and just as I was to pour in the water stop bath, the tank opened and the film dropped out in the zink... Mayby some of the frames survived, I thought, and went on with the fixing anyway. And when I opened up the tank after fixing to look at the film, only one or two frames were affected by the light leak! How could that be? I had my eyes on the film for maybe more than a second in strong indoor lightning and almost nothing happened...

The Efke 25 was exposed at 25 and developed for 16 mins in 21 C. Agitated the first 30 seconds and 10 seconds every third minute. The film looked like nothing else I have seen, though. Very sharp (see enclosed quick scan) and very contrasty but seems to keep detail in shadows and highlights anyway. I have no idea if it will be easy to print though but will find out soon, as the tomato plants move out of the soon to be darkroom and into the garden.

Btw, what do you think about the time in pyrocat for efke @ 25? Was 16 min in 21 C a good starting point?

/matti

Because the film is so slow, and it was already exposed and thru the development process...the light would not have affected it very much.

This is why many photographers use "development by inspection" where you actually turn on the light while developing sheet film in trays to see how it looks!

Glad your film came out, now lets just hope they were good images!

all the best,

Ryan McIntosh

The film only has a reduced ISO in artificial light, it takes a while to develop even a base fog anyway. The aprevious action the developer has dopped the films latec=ncy, so luck was on your side.

The developer makes a huge differance too, I had a tank split in the 70's and lost most of 5 films

Ian

matti said:

I just tried my first roll of Efke 25 (35 mm) with pyrocat-hd tonight and just as I was to pour in the water stop bath, the tank opened and the film dropped out in the zink... Mayby some of the frames survived, I thought, and went on with the fixing anyway. And when I opened up the tank after fixing to look at the film, only one or two frames were affected by the light leak! How could that be? I had my eyes on the film for maybe more than a second in strong indoor lightning and almost nothing happened...

/matti

Click to expand...

Pyro staining developers like Pyrocat-HD desensitize the emulsion as they develop. After five or six minutes in the developer the film has lost a great deal of its sensitivity. This is one of the reasons Pyro developers are very popular with photographers who develop by inspection, i.e Michael Smith and ABC Pyro.

Sandy

"Btw, what do you think about the time in pyrocat for efke @ 25? Was 16 min in 21 C a good starting point?" m

Matti, this is an exceptionally fine image for Efke 25 when you consider the exposure, light and range of values in this scene. You have retained highlights both in the hair in full sun and the skin tones in full shadow. I think that you have done an excellent job for a "guess" at exposure and development. Efke is a difficult film in some lighting conditions, but this is a wonderful image.

The film will need more time in the developer to fog if it is removed and then stopped. You were very lucky to have the film exposed to light at the end of the development process. Another photographer from Stockholm (Francesco Abad) had mentioned in an earlier post that once his film was developed in pyrocat, he was able to work in dim lighting in his home without any bad effects. I think you have proved his point. Good job. tim

noseoil said:

Matti, this is an exceptionally fine image for Efke 25 when you consider the exposure, light and range of values in this scene. You have retained highlights both in the hair in full sun and the skin tones in full shadow. I think that you have done an excellent job for a "guess" at exposure and development. Efke is a difficult film in some lighting conditions, but this is a wonderful image.

Click to expand...

Thanks Tim, it looks like Pyrocat HD is compensating, because this roll includes a lot of difficult pictures both in harsh sun with deep shadows and some lower contrast scenes in the shadows and all seems to have detail in them. I have used efke 25 with semi stand in Calbe R09 before, and in that it is much more difficult to keep detail both in highlight and shadows, even though the midtones are beutiful in that. But the real test would be the printing as I have no idea about how my scanner handles stain compared to my Forte graded paper and Ilford Multicontrast. I suppose the stain will make it more contrasty in prints compared to my filmscanner.

About developement by inspection I have read that it is very difficult and you need a very subdued light. This was nothing like that, so it wouldn't be difficult to actually do look at the film at the end of development, in a lower light than I did, of course.

/matti

Matti, the DBI crowd is usually working with sheet film sizes, so 4x5 or 8x10 and bigger makes it a bit easier to do. I have found that keeping track of exposure and development, along with the scene contrast ranges, gives a pretty good idea of development time in general. Once your numbers are working, there is no reason not to be able to use these times to break down development into as small as 1/3 of a stop in the print, if necessary. Again, easier to do with sheet film and each shot than with a roll of film with differing values in each scene. I haven't used the Calbe R09 with Efke 25, but pyrocat or PMK pyro both work very well. I generally use PMK for smaller films, but the shadow values with pyrocat which you have in the scan look very good. PMK can look muddy in the shadows at times.

I think you will find that the print from this film is pretty good. Give it a try and then post one or two into this thread if you would, so we can see how this "test roll" is doing on paper. Again, great job at shooting and guessing. tim

matti said:

Thanks Tim, it looks like Pyrocat HD is compensating, because this roll includes a lot of difficult pictures both in harsh sun with deep shadows and some lower contrast scenes in the shadows and all seems to have detail in them. I have used efke 25 with semi stand in Calbe R09 before, and in that it is much more difficult to keep detail both in highlight and shadows, even though the midtones are beutiful in that. But the real test would be the printing as I have no idea about how my scanner handles stain compared to my Forte graded paper and Ilford Multicontrast. I suppose the stain will make it more contrasty in prints compared to my filmscanner.

About developement by inspection I have read that it is very difficult and you need a very subdued light. This was nothing like that, so it wouldn't be difficult to actually do look at the film at the end of development, in a lower light than I did, of course.

/matti

Click to expand...

Matt,

developing by inspection is done only under green light and with a 7 1/2 watt bulb no closer than 4 feet for only a second or two at a time. When you get the densities you want then it goes into the stop bath.

Oh, I didn't actually plan to start having peeks on my 35 mm films with the bathroom lights on like this I was just surprised that it didn't seem so difficult as it sounded in "The Negative".

/matti

FWIW, yesterday I developed my first roll of Efke KB25 in over a year. I shot my first two rolls in D-76 a year or more ago, when I was just starting out in B&W processing, so I've got a better eye for things now. In any event, I used XTOL 1+1 and developed for 8:00 (an extrapolation based on the Massive Dev Chart time of 6:00 in undiluted XTOL). The results were very contrasty negatives, but they scanned well using a Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 scanner and VueScan software. It seems that Efke KB25 retains and unusual amount of detail in shadows and in highlights even when the negative looks very contrasty to the naked eye, and a scanner (or at least my scanner) can extract that detail. Unfortunately, printing paper is less forgiving. I did some 4x6-inch prints on Adorama RC paper, which I believe is rebadged Ilford, and I had to use extreme "filtration" (green light only on my tri-color Philips PCS130/150 enlarger) to get good prints. Even then, I often lost shadow and/or hightlight detail. I'll try some 8x10-inch prints on Agfa MCP 310 RC paper sometime in the next couple of days, but I expect similar results with it. I'll be adjusting my film development for the next roll.

There is an effective film speed to be had by pre- or post exposing film to an overall dim light. David Vestal has written a good bit about it. He uses the post exposure. The light is very dim and the film is exposed to it for several minutes. The process seems to work quite well. I started to make a sort of..what would you call it?..thing that would be in the form of a large single groove developing tank with a variable green LED in the center. This device would allow postexposure without tying up the darkroom. I never finished it. Most of it is in a closet somewhere.

Anyway, there are times as you may have discovered by this escapade when such postexposure can be beneficial. Many old timers have uncoated lenses they prize for their character, which is partly due to fogging.