Help needed

Bobman · Sep 24, 2005

I was at my friend's party yesterday. I was shooting Tmax 400 @ 400. Half way through the light suddenly went dimmer and I got to set my ISO at 1600. So how am I going to develop my film? Or had I screw up the process?

Nicole · Sep 24, 2005

Oops, a slight hiccup, Bob! You can't change ISO settings midway through a roll of film.

Here are some options:
1) Develop the roll for 400 - lose the shots you took at 1600
2) Develop the roll for 1600 - lose the shots you took at 400
3) If you remember at what frame you changed your settings, in the dark cut the film where you think the change occured and develop each half accordingly.

Good luck.
Kind regards, Nicole

Bobman said:
I was at my friend's party yesterday. I was shooting Tmax 400 @ 400. Half way through the light suddenly went dimmer and I got to set my ISO at 1600. So how am I going to develop my film? Or had I screw up the process?

David A. Goldfarb · Sep 24, 2005

You can't push half a roll of film unless you cut it in half. If you can guess where the change was (maybe reload the film in the camera and advance to the frame where you changed), you can cut it and process the two halves separately and hope you don't lose anything important.

Otherwise, I'd process the whole roll in a developer like Acufine or Microphen, which will give you about a stop of real speed increase without excessive contrast. T-Max films generally have enough latitude to tolerate a stop of underexposure, so that plus the high speed developer might give you reasonable results for the shots at 1600.

photobackpacker · Sep 24, 2005

There are two approaches you can take - each one with its own tradeoffs

1. Take an educated guess as the where in the roll (which frame) the shift occurred. cut the roll at that point and develop the two strips separately. Obviously, the chance of doing this without ruining a frame are pretty slim.

2. Push process the entire roll by one stop. You will probably find that this preserves the batch you shot at 400 very well as I think that film testing will reveal a correct EI to be 320 or even 250 with your equipment. The frames you shot at 1600 will suffer in the shadow regions but there is no method of development that will change that. After you pull the film from your processing, you have the option of using selenium intensification on selected frames or even the entire batch to obtain further density increases. The beauty of selenium intensification is that it increases densities without increasing grain.

Bobman · Sep 24, 2005

Hmmm, I guess I have to decide which half is important. Thanks guys.

c6h6o3 · Sep 24, 2005

outofoptions said:
You could try developing by inspection.

Be sure to use a red safelight to attempt DBI of TMY. The magenta sensitization dye soaks up a green safelight to the extent that I just can't see anything with it.

glbeas · Sep 24, 2005

You can use a compensating developer like D-23 so the highlights aren't blown in the EI 400 half and still have decent results on the rest of the roll. Or use something like Rodinal 1:200 and stand developing to get everything. You'll know better next time, that ain't a digital camera you're playing with!

gainer · Sep 24, 2005

The next time this happens, don't reset your meter. Or rather DO set your meter for 2 stops higher speed, as you did, but take your exposure readings in the shadows, Zone III if you are of the religion. Often the exposure times will be hand holdable, and normal development will do. There is a chance that in a party, when the lights go down, the scene brightness range also goes down, so the the averave reading even at 4X rated will give a printable negative with normal development. Now would be a good time to experiment with another roll of film to see what would happen with normal or a tad more contrasty development.

Donald Qualls · Sep 24, 2005

What I'd do in this situation is a gentle extension of what I ususally do. HC-110, Dilution E or G (E for 35 mm, G for 120, because of the different liquid levels required), low agitation, and just extend the time a little. I can produce negatives at EI 800 that look just like EI 400, and the ones at 1600 would look acceptable with that process.

For TMY, in Dilution E (35 mm), I'd give continuous agitation the first minute, then 5 inversions in 10-15 seconds every third minute, total time at 68F/20C of 28 minutes. Long wait, but the negatives are worth it.

fschifano · Sep 24, 2005

c6h6o3 said:
Be sure to use a red safelight to attempt DBI of TMY. The magenta sensitization dye soaks up a green safelight to the extent that I just can't see anything with it.

First, I've personally never had any luck at all with development by inspection unless I was using a red blind film with an extremely dim safelight. It's so dim that I needed about 10 minutes for my eyes to be able to see anything at all, let alone subtle details on a negative. IMO, it's not a very useful technique. I also think that a red safelight would be disastrous with anything other than a red blind film. IIRC, there is not mention of being able to do this safely with any safelight in Kodak's documentation for this film.

waynecrider · Sep 24, 2005

You might want to get some Diafine from Calumet. Two part seperate A and B immersion at standard indoor temps that will develop the roll without cutting it. The rated portion will come out perfect and the pushed section will probably be much better then what you could expect otherwise. I've used it on films that I can't remember now and have seen results at +2 stops that were unbeliveably good. Do a search first for Tmax results using it.

c6h6o3 · Sep 25, 2005

fschifano said:
IMO, it's not a very useful technique.

IMO, it's an indispensable technique. However, I can't do it with TMax because of the sensitization dye. You might check the Azo forum. Contributors there report good results with red safelights and IR goggles.

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