How to properly test film/developer combo?

Hi all,

I am thinking of getting my analog process a bit more "under control" instead of doing the regular ol' motions like "sunny f 16" and develop in Rodinal for the Ilford prescribed times. What might be the right process to do so? I often use HP5+ and FP4+, I develop in Rodinal and various Ilford developers but I mostly stick to Rodinal since it's the most economical and easiest to manage.

Is there a good guide for testing film exposure/development time/development dilution? I understand a bit about film curves, base fog, etc. but I can't seem to bring it all into one coherent picture.

Many thanks for any kind of help!

Alexander Starbuck said:

Is there a good guide for testing film exposure/development time/development dilution?

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Yes, there is. I found these two videos very helpful.

Hello Alex, a few comments:
Rodinal is a great developer for FP4+, but it's a poor option for HP5+.
Apart from its speed loss with all films (close to two thirds of a stop compared to MQ developers at 1+1), Rodinal depresses middle tones, offering a tone that's too skewed for constant or exclusive use.
FP4+ is a film that can reach ISO125 in its middle values, that is, at 125 it's a bit pushed... At that speed we don't get the great shadow separation that FP4+ is respected for. We get great shadow contrast at EI80 in D-76, and at EI50 in Rodinal IMO. That makes FP4+ a slow film, good for tripod, for very good light, or for fast lenses, in general.
Try and see how Rodinal behaves at 17 or 18 degrees Celsius with very little and very gentle agitation.
Even more important than all this, if you want to work your processes, is you must know first exactly how to meter light in soft light and in harsh light: believe me tons of photographers make mistakes there every day.
HP5+ is like several possible films inside its box. It can be well used for wet printing from EI160 to EI3200 depending on scene contrast and developer.
If you have not used D-76/ID-11 to calibrate FP4+ and HP5+, you've missed what shows you the most.
Enjoy your journey !

I'd endorse what is said in ~2. Have a look at these 2 videos. The methods work for all films and developers.

pentaxuser

@Alexander Starbuck Important question: do you wet print or do you scan?

If your workflow is entirely analog, chemistry+exposure fuckery is how you try to bend the curve to your linking. So it's a highly subjective thing. My approach is to set up a test scene and quickly expose a couple of rolls of film following the repeating pattern of -2EV, -1EV, 0, +1EV, +2EV (5 exposures). Then cut the roll in a dark bag into four strips, hoping that each of them will contain a full 5-shot sequence. Then you can develop each strip separately: one "by the book", another at +15% time, -15% time, and keep the 4th strip undeveloped.

You'll end up with a 2D matrix of options under/over exposure times under/over development. See what you like more. Use the 4th strip to "dig deeper" into what interests you at this point.

Repeat this for two scenes: high contrast sunny and the one with flat light. You can also repeat this for different film stocks and different developers. The end result will likely be that you'll lose all interest in B&W chemistry or film choice conversations online due to how little difference there is between them

But if you don't print in a darkroom, tinkering with film chemistry time/dilution is mostly a waste of time: just use the instructions on a box, shoot at half the box speed, and you'll get a perfect starting point for scanning where you'll be able to dial in any curve you want.

Alexander Starbuck said:

Hi all,

I am thinking of getting my analog process a bit more "under control" instead of doing the regular ol' motions like "sunny f 16" and develop in Rodinal for the Ilford prescribed times. What might be the right process to do so? I often use HP5+ and FP4+, I develop in Rodinal and various Ilford developers but I mostly stick to Rodinal since it's the most economical and easiest to manage.

Is there a good guide for testing film exposure/development time/development dilution? I understand a bit about film curves, base fog, etc. but I can't seem to bring it all into one coherent picture.

Many thanks for any kind of help!

Click to expand...

If you want to use sensitometric testing, attached is an attempt at a coherent explanation.

I recommend The Zone System for 35mm Photographers by Carson Graves, I use a process similar to his to determine my E.I for a given camera or meter, film and developer combo what I called my personal ISO. I also agree with above, I don't think Rodinal is a good match for high speed film, HP5, Tmax Delta 400 or Trix. I do use Rodinal with slow film like Tmax or Foma 100. Too grainy for my taste with high speed films, although Tmax and Delta do a bit better as T grain films have smaller grain than HP5, TriX or Foma 400. HC110, Xtol, or D76 works best in my judgment. With the caveat with wet prints from an enlarger, might work better with scanned images.

Hello, Alex:
If you cut a roll in several pieces, take into account that for precise conclusions, if you use for 9 frames the amount of developer that's right for 36 frames, you can be off sometimes: if your development is a strong one, like when we use Microphen stock, there's a lot of developer in the solution, so, no matter how many frames we develop, the solution basically doesn't change during development, so it doesn't matter if we test with 9 frames or with the whole roll...
But if we're developing for contrast control, with a higher dilution and/or less developer, a whole roll uses more developer and has more impact over the solution than a few frames.
In general I start tests with less than a roll, and when the case is sun, I prepare my developer proportionally for the number of frames, but as soon as I see those results wet printing, I know what to change to be very close to the final calibration, so then I do a whole roll of real photographs, to be sure I'm not off because of the short strip used instead of a roll.

The first question should be, do I really need to change anything? Is there something in particular that I'm trying to achieve?

I'd start by buying a good light meter, as it seems you're estimating by sunny 16. A meter will give you better exposures, negs and prints. Which brings up another question. Are you printing in a darkroom? If so, you'll want to sorta tailor your negs to match up w/ the prints.

A lot of us fuss and fret over things like grain, tonality, etc, when the focus should be on the photo itself. Is it powerful? Is it composed properly? What does it make you think, or feel? That's more important, even though the fundamentals are what all of us need to know.

Any process that yields beautiful prints is "proper."

This method is based on a panel of observers picking the best print.

In the fewest words: Expose uniform target 4-stops under so processed image acts as 1/3 stop ND filter placed over exposure meter. With those settings, expose 3 stops over. Processes that so when it is projected at the least exposure for a black border, a coin placed on the paper shows a visible shadow.

Steve B's paper above has good insight, but if one has access to papers of various grades, trial and error with test prints can be used to navigate through many scene brightness levels to make a great print.

momus said:

The first question should be, do I really need to change anything? Is there something in particular that I'm trying to achieve?

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+1

ic-racer said:

Any process that yields beautiful prints is "proper."

This method is based on a panel of observers picking the best print.

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+1

Fully agree with both of these.

Issue not discussed enough is also how many rolls or sheets of film one needs to use per day or per month to keep proficiency and use the results of more rigorous tests in any meaningful way.
Shooting few rolls a month hardly brings enough working knowledge and proficiency. If not used often enough proficiency is lost. Remembering

momus said:

I'd start by buying a good light meter, as it seems you're estimating by sunny 16. A meter will give you better exposures, negs and prints. Which brings up another question. Are you printing in a darkroom? If so, you'll want to sorta tailor your negs to match up w/ the prints.

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+1 on this with the same caveat as above. Getting proficient with light meter is equally important as it won't give results any different to in camera metering. Results can be possibly inferior.
My personal tests of different light meters revealed that they all agree somewhere but can differ significantly in different light levels or different metering methods.

Matrix metering on newer film Nikons was perfected for film. It's extremely hard to beat it with hand held light meter if you only get a chance to use it once in a month or few months.
There are few other cameras that are similar but I don't have enough experience with them.

Zone system requires rigorous testing and rigorous implementation. Occasional use won't bring much improvement. Would likely be detrimental.

Getting some ND, grad and contrast filters and learning how to use them will bring much more improvement (metering won't work well through most filters). Anything under 5-10 rolls per month doesn't give enough proficiency to be considered more than occasional. If you can keep record of every shot with exposure data, analyze it, this becomes moot. Results of analysis still have to be remember to be useable.

Another fact is, just as an example, no matter if the meter shows x exposure for a scene, then for another scene same settings but closing a stop (a scene with twice the light), and for a third more luminous scene, closing one more stop again, the case with black and white film may well be that the optimal exposure is not the metered light: not because of a fooled meter, but because film needs to be metered differently depending on scene contrast.
What film needs is photographers understanding film, and not photographers doing what every metering says.

Hi all!

Thanks for the insightful responses, I really appreciate the time and effort it takes to write on such a finicky and complex subject. I forgot to mention a couple of things:

• I do own a light meter (and my cameras have built in light meters);
• I do ... ehm, hybrid process, at least for now but was somewhat hesitant to write so (instructions for this sub-forum explicitely say so);
• I intend to make a proper dark room as soon as I arrange the space;

Ater reading all of your responses, I do feel a bit overwhelmed . It seems that I need to first get my metering in check, for various lighting conditions, then particular film stock peculiarities, then chemistry, then print.

Alexander Starbuck said:

Ater reading all of your responses, I do feel a bit overwhelmed . It seems that I need to first get my metering in check, for various lighting conditions, then particular film stock peculiarities, then chemistry, then print.

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It isn't as bad as it may seem .
My sense is that you are seeking a combined set of steps that will provide you with a single answer. And that is fine, but probably unnecessary. The reason that it is unnecessary is that there already exists a very usable starting point - the ISO speed of the film, and manufacturers' recommendations.
Assuming you aren't working with faulty metering or exposing equipment, if you start with the ISO speed of the film, and manufacturers' recommendations, you will achieve usable results. You can then use some of the testing suggestions here and elsewhere to refine those results, well all the while creating photographs along the way.
One of the most important parts of the refining process comes from the end steps - making the prints, or preparing the final results. You learn what changes you need to make earlier in the process, from the efforts you make at the end of the process to create the end result. It is an iterative process, with the lessons learned at the end being applied near the beginning.
I learn the most about exposure and development when I print the negatives I create with that exposure and development. As an example, if I find that the shadow areas of my negatives are too "thin" when I print them, I know I need to increase the exposure. And if I find that when I'm printing that I'm struggling to retain details in my highlights when the rest of the image is good and contrasty, I know that I need to reduce the development.

If we're talking about Ilford and Kodak films, all we have to do is exposing film at box speed, and developing our negative in a gentle way to avoid whites under direct sunlight being burnt. It's very easy. But development times, dilutions, and agitation schemes recommended by manufacturers, are too much -for sun control- most of the times.