J&C Micro / Imagelink HQ Film

Once Canada Custom's get's off their collective butts and clears my package from J&C, I'll have a box of 4x5 Imagelink HQ film to play with....

I purchased this film with the intent of using it for extreme contrast expansion, mainly to photograph petroglyphs (very little contrast, often less than 1 stop). However, I have no experience with this film, so I'm asking if anyone here has used this film in situations where contrast is extremely low.

I realize that J&C supplies the Spur developer to develop the film 'normally', but that's not what I'm after.

My standard suite of developers include HC110, D76, and XTOL. I've also heard that using Dektol for about 3 minutes (not sure of the dilution) with Techpan resulted in about a 4-5 stop increase in constrast - perhaps that will work with Imagelink film as well.

I've searched Kodak's website but I was unable to find any information on using this film in this way. In fact, I couldn't find much information on developing this film at all...

Ideas/Suggestions?

KenM said:

Once Canada Custom's get's off their collective butts and clears my package from J&C, I'll have a box of 4x5 Imagelink HQ film to play with....

I purchased this film with the intent of using it for extreme contrast expansion, mainly to photograph petroglyphs (very little contrast, often less than 1 stop). However, I have no experience with this film, so I'm asking if anyone here has used this film in situations where contrast is extremely low.

I realize that J&C supplies the Spur developer to develop the film 'normally', but that's not what I'm after.

My standard suite of developers include HC110, D76, and XTOL. I've also heard that using Dektol for about 3 minutes (not sure of the dilution) with Techpan resulted in about a 4-5 stop increase in constrast - perhaps that will work with Imagelink film as well.

I've searched Kodak's website but I was unable to find any information on using this film in this way. In fact, I couldn't find much information on developing this film at all...

Ideas/Suggestions?

Click to expand...

I would suggest extending the development times, since contrast is a function of development for the most part. If you can, I would certainly try some test shots at different dev times before you do anything important.

There are some links on the PN site about this film and HC-110, but nothing in 4x5, only 35mm. I found them by searching with 'Imagelink HQ'.

I would love to see your petroglyph shots when you get them done. I have a number of color images from New Mexico that turned out alright, but they were more contrasty (the petroglyphs themselves) than what you are talking about.

- Randy

I've used Imagelink HQ (16 mm) at normal contrast for everyday subjects in HC-110 -- it requires very dilute developer, low agitation, and a much shorter development time than would be common for conventional films in such dilute soup. For very high contrast, I'd suggest starting with suggested times and soups for Tech Pan as a high contrast film; the two emulsions are similar in a number of ways, seeming to differ mostly in the lack of extended red sensitivity in the case of Imagelink HQ.

The Massive Dev Chart, for Tech Pan, shows "continuous tone, high contrast" and EI 100-250 for a range of four to twelve minutes in Dilution B -- that time range would take Tri-X from EI 250 to 1600, so I'd expect significant contrast control. This figure fits well with extrapolation from my experience with high dilutions, also, as do the EI figures for higher dilutions.

Do test before you photograph important images, but you should be able to get a range from about N-2 to N+4 with that film and a suitable selection of developers, times, and agitation schemes.