Foma 100 in Foma developers

I've recently bought a lot of Foma 100 in 35mm, and since I had little prior experience with developing the film, I've decided to shoot a test roll and soup it in Foma developers that I had on hand (R09, LQN and Excel). Since I've spent several hours doing that I figured I'd archive my results here, if someone finds this helpful, all the better. This is just a quick and dirty (emphasis on dirty - first negative is the worst offender, my apologies) test, so no tripod was used (framing is incosistent and camera shake was an issue with several frames, but I tried to pick out sharpest of the bunch), temperature was a bit above the recommended 20°C at 23°C, I didn't spot dust and didn't really bother with water spots - I was mainly interested in the overall 'thickness' of the resulting negatives, and retention of shadow detail.

The combinations I've tested (development times pulled from massive dev chart):
R09 1+25 @ 4:00 min
R09 1+25 @ 6:30 (time specified for Rodinal)
R09 1+50 @ 8:00
R09 1+100 @ 10:00
LQN 1+10 @ 7:00
Excel (Xtol clone) stock @ 8:00

The last one I did just out of curiosity, since I've mixed this particular batch exactly a year ago and used it to develop three rolls of Delta 3200. Since I've read everywhere that it doesn't keep for long I wasn't actually expecting anything useable, but anyway I extended the development time from 6 minutes to 8 minutes to compensate for exhaustion (+10% for every film developed). Much to my surprise, it worked! The result was pretty close to what I got from the LQN.

I agitated for 30 seconds and then 10 seconds every whole minute, with the exception of R09 at 1:100, which was agitated for a minut at the start and then 10 seconds every two minutes, which resulted in a slight haloing around contrasty edges - an effect that I don't exactly hate.

Weakest R09 dilutions resulted in (predictably?) thinnest negatives, LQN and Excel were conversely really thick, and string R09 dilution (1+25) was somewhere in the middle. Somewhat unexpectedly, the 2:30 minutes difference in developing times didn't have that much of an impact, althought the shadows seem a bit more blocked up in the second negative. An overview from a light table is attached below.

http://ext.halka.sk/apug/foma100/1 - R09 1+25 @ 4:00.jpg
http://ext.halka.sk/apug/foma100/2 - R09 1+25 @ 6:30.jpg
http://ext.halka.sk/apug/foma100/3 - R09 1+50 @ 8:00.jpg
http://ext.halka.sk/apug/foma100/4 - R09 1+100 @ 10:00.jpg
http://ext.halka.sk/apug/foma100/5 - LQN 1+10 @ 7:00.jpg
http://ext.halka.sk/apug/foma100/6 - Excel (Xtol) stock @ 8:00.jpg

These were all scanned in Vuescan using default settings on the 'Color' tab - with the exception that I pulled the blackpoint to 0. Scans were done on a Minolta 5400 at 2700 DPI.

I'm now kind of on a fence about which combination should I pursue further - I'm planning to test a single developer/dilution combination with time as a variable, but I'm not sure which one yet The scanner can handle all of these without much trouble, but if I'd want to wet print, which of these would be the easiest to handle?

I have been doing Rodinal 1+50 for 7 minutes with good results for years.

Glistening Bonnet by Fogel's Focus, on Flickr

It also looks nice in Microphen, D76, and HC110.

From what I can tell from just the simple scan above is that all of the Rodinal developed negatives, except maybe 1+25 6m30s are way too short, because there is no contrast at all in them. So if you want to continue using that developer you should develop the film longer until you have good contrast in them. Don't take developing times published by others verbatim. They can serve as a starting point, and your experience is a good example of that.

The LQN and Excel look OK, but maybe even a little bit overdeveloped. I would rather fight with that than too low contrast, however. If they print well, and future rolls processed the same way also print well, then change nothing. If you find yourself fighting tonality in the highlights (as in getting tone that isn't paper white), try cutting back development a little, 10% at a time perhaps.

You will get better results if you focus on your one film with one or two developing recipes, and then try to tune that to your liking, rather than doing many different things, like this, where it will be very difficult to learn much from the exercise. But at least it's good practice of the mechanics of film developing.

Thanks for the hints. Yeah, I know that spreading the net wide like this is not considered optimal - I just wanted to reduce my options so I can focus on one or two combinations that look most promising. I'll try reducing the time for LQN and extending 1:25 Rodinal times a bit with my next rolls.

Just one further question - sometimes I come across scans that have this really steep shadow falloff - something like these: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2379829&postcount=1163

I did ask about it in that thread and was told that it's most probably caused by overdevelopment. Could anybody confirm? It just doesn't seem right to me - I'd be prepared to blame underdevelopment (provided the shots are exposed correctly) instead, but I'm probably not qualified enough

Halka said:

Thanks for the hints. Yeah, I know that spreading the net wide like this is not considered optimal - I just wanted to reduce my options so I can focus on one or two combinations that look most promising. I'll try reducing the time for LQN and extending 1:25 Rodinal times a bit with my next rolls.

Just one further question - sometimes I come across scans that have this really steep shadow falloff - something like these: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2379829&postcount=1163

I did ask about it in that thread and was told that it's most probably caused by overdevelopment. Could anybody confirm? It just doesn't seem right to me - I'd be prepared to blame underdevelopment (provided the shots are exposed correctly) instead, but I'm probably not qualified enough

Click to expand...

If you over-develop, you increase the contrast of the negative. That affects the parts of the scene that include light areas and highlights a lot (they end up being more dense) but doesn't have much effect on the parts of the scene that include dark areas and shadows (they stay thin or nearly transparent on the negative).

When you either print or scan the negative, you have to give the entire negative more exposure so as to make (in the print or screen image) the detail in the highlights darker and more visible. At the same time, the additional exposure also makes the shadows and darker areas even more dark - thus hiding many of those details in shadows.