Help with pull processing Kodak 400 TMY

Today I shot models in daylight in front of murals with fill flash. Film is Kodak 400 TMY. Format is 645. I ended up setting the camera to 400 ASA but because of lighting conditions shot overexposing 2 and 3 stops. I am looking for suggestions for developing this film. I have never pull processed before. I have HC110, Rodinol and D76 developers to work with. Suggestions please. Thank You.

How contrast was the lighting setup?

EDIT: That should be "contrasty"

I have overexposed Kodak T-MAX 400 film in 4x5 format and the negatives were very good. In the galleries, Bear Creek and Beneath Squaw Lake were shot with the film rated at EI 64.

I developed the film normally in D-76 1:1.

You may not need to compensate for the overexposure at all in development. There is a risk of graininess, since Rodinol has a reputation to give grainy results - you might avoid that developer. There may also be a risk to sharpness, but I don't think it will be much.

When printing you may find that your negatives are more dense than expected.

I think you will get great results. But if you are disappointed, keep in mind next time you shoot at rated speed your results should be sharper and exhibit less grain than what you get from this shoot.

p.s. I work for Kodak but not in film. The opinions and positions I take are my own not necessarily those of EKC.

I would say it would be fairly contrasty. Between the models wearing white and black and the murals with bright and dark colors.

MattKing said:

How contrast was the lighting setup?

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Yeah I agree about the rodinal. I think I will leave that developer on the shelf this time. I know film is generally slower than box speed so your right I may get away without any changes in development.


I am now developing some Fuji Acros 100 that I shot at its rated speed during the same shoot. I am using Rodinol 1:50 for that. Its in the wash now. Interested to see how that come out.

Bill Burk said:

I have overexposed Kodak T-MAX 400 film in 4x5 format and the negatives were very good. In the galleries, Bear Creek and Beneath Squaw Lake were shot with the film rated at EI 64.

I developed the film normally in D-76 1:1.

You may not need to compensate for the overexposure at all in development. There is a risk of graininess, since Rodinol has a reputation to give grainy results - you might avoid that developer. There may also be a risk to sharpness, but I don't think it will be much.

When printing you may find that your negatives are more dense than expected.

I think you will get great results. But if you are disappointed, keep in mind next time you shoot at rated speed your results should be sharper and exhibit less grain than what you get from this shoot.

p.s. I work for Kodak but not in film. The opinions and positions I take are my own not necessarily those of EKC.

Click to expand...

ke6igz said:

I would say it would be fairly contrasty. Between the models wearing white and black and the murals with bright and dark colors.

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I think what you are telling me gives me more information about the range of tones in your scene than it does about the nature of the light.

To be more detailed in my original question ...

What was the nature of the light source(s)? Direct sun, high overcast sun, sun diffused by a scrim, open sky, daylight assisted by a reflector - either brought to the scene or built in to the location (like an adjacent wall)?

Was it diffused fill flash, direct fill flash, bounced fill flash?

Was the daylight mid-day or early morning/late afternoon?

I ask this type of questions because the nature of the light will determine how contrasty the film image is. Pull processing has its greatest effect on contrast. You would only want to use it if your lighting was quite contrasty. When over-exposed TMY-2 itself is capable of retaining the wide range of highlight details.

Its was in sourthern California. The time was between 4pm and 6pm. It was outside. The murals and the models were in the shade, not in direct sun. I used a speed light (vivitar 285) with a white plastic diffuser snapped on the front. The flash was a few stops down from the ambient light exposure. Flash mounted on a stroboframe bracket just off camera. Flash was pointed directly at the scene.

MattKing said:

I think what you are telling me gives me more information about the range of tones in your scene than it does about the nature of the light.

To be more detailed in my original question ...

What was the nature of the light source(s)? Direct sun, high overcast sun, sun diffused by a scrim, open sky, daylight assisted by a reflector - either brought to the scene or built in to the location (like an adjacent wall)?

Was it diffused fill flash, direct fill flash, bounced fill flash?

Was the daylight mid-day or early morning/late afternoon?

I ask this type of questions because the nature of the light will determine how contrasty the film image is. Pull processing has its greatest effect on contrast. You would only want to use it if your lighting was quite contrasty. When over-exposed TMY-2 itself is capable of retaining the wide range of highlight details.

Click to expand...

MattKing knows this better than me, but this sounds like a fairly low-contrast scene (open shade) made even less contrasty with the additional fill-flash. So normal development still sounds to me like the right thing to do.

p.s. This logic is easy to do from the comfort of the computer chair... I can't do this kind of thinking on my feet with a live scene in front of me... I could easily have made an exposure mistake if I were in your shoes.

ke6igz said:

Its was in sourthern California. The time was between 4pm and 6pm. It was outside. The murals and the models were in the shade, not in direct sun. I used a speed light (vivitar 285) with a white plastic diffuser snapped on the front. The flash was a few stops down from the ambient light exposure. Flash mounted on a stroboframe bracket just off camera. Flash was pointed directly at the scene.

Click to expand...

Thanks, this really helps.

I agree with Bill - this sounds like a scene where the local contrast would be moderate, so most likely you wouldn't want to decrease it further with a pull process procedure.

Rodinal would probably give you the least "natural" speed but might give you more grain than you want (or at least more visible grain).

D-76 would be most likely give you full speed, which in this case would be a disadvantage.

If HC-110 is something you use regularly, that is what I would recommend.

If you wanted to experiment with other developers, I would recommend one of the "fine grain" options like Kodak's discontinued Microdol-X or the Ilford comparable.

And by the way, I also agree with Bill about how easy it is for all of us to make an exposure mistake in the field. You should feel heartened though - if all your exposure mistakes involve over-exposing TMY by a stop or two, you have great instincts and pick just about the best film to do it with.

I agree that it sounds low contrast, so I would not be inclined to pull the film because that would reduce contrast. Just do normal development on a single roll and see how you go; you'll have very dense negs but they'll probably print OK. Two stops over is nothing really and three isn't very different from that. I did some testing with Portra recently from -1 to +3 and while the +3 looks subtly different (more shadow separation) from the +0 exposure, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it and I would expect you to get results nearly as good with TMY2.

The use of Rodinal or HC-110 to drop the speed is a good suggestion. Rodinal with continuous agitation is the best option I know of for achieving good contrast with minimum speed. With TMY2 it'll look great.

The only additional suggestion I have is that you should absolutely strictly follow the "minimum developer quantity" guidelines, perhaps with some extra for safety. Your negs will be dense and will therefore exhaust the developer more than usual; if you don't have enough in there then you will end up with flat, dead highlights. For example, I'd be tempted to use 500mL of Rodinal 1+25 per roll, i.e. 20mL of concentrate per roll vs the 10mL minimum specified.

I always tell people to make the same error on a fresh roll and use it for practice.

I use D76, but most developers are -20% for one stop over.

TMY has about the longest scale of any film you can buy, way longer than any paper you'll ever print on. Unlike HP5+, which has a relatively abrupt shoulder, TMY's characteristic curve is straight as a die out to a density of way over 2.0. Overexposure will just slide the tonal range up the straight line portion of the curve without clipping. When using roll film and an incident meter I rate my TMY at 100. You should be fine.

Thanks for all the advice. I ended up using HC-110 with dilution B. 5.5 min at 20 c. (Normal Processing). The negatives look a little dense but seem to scan well.

Replying to an old thread, but I did the exact same thing: shot 400TMY at EI 100.

Reduced development time by 15% and the density got really good, IMO.

Since it's summer down here and my darkroom ambient temperature is close to 27 degrees (Celsius), I used an ice bath to get the developer down to 19 degrees. It gets up to 20 degrees when poured in the tank.

Fixed for 10 minutes in Kodak F5.

Cheers,
Flavio

Edit: here's one of the negatives, captured with the phone camera on a light box.