Looking for a critique of some of my first development attempts

Hi all, I've recently dove in to developing film at home, and I'm worried that I'm overdeveloping my negatives. I've been working with Tri-X 400 in Ilfosol 3 1+14 for 12 minutes, continuous inversions for the first minute and four inversions at the top of every minute.

Mostly happy with my results, but some blown-out highlights are making me think I need to tweak my process. Not confident that my thermometer is accurate or that my transition from developer to stop bath is fast enough.

Welcome to (posting on) APUG.
Are these scans of negatives, or scans of prints?
If they are scans of negatives, it would be more useful if we can see a photo of your negatives themselves - backlit, and with the edge numbers visible as well.
When it comes to analysis of negatives, I find this article helpful, at least with respect to providing a common vocabulary: https://www.ephotozine.com/article/assessing-negatives-4682

Thanks! It was recommended by reddit.com/r/analog to come here with technical questions, as the subreddit is mainly focused on the artistic aspect of photography.

Anyway, these are scans of negatives. I can provide a pictures of the strips when I get home. Getting the impression from that article that I'm overdeveloping though.

Blown out highlights can also be caused by over-exposure and/or poor scanner settings.

Going by what you've said about your development regime, it's much more likely you're seeing your scanner's inability to see through moderately dense highlight values - ie they might need a bit of burning in if you were wet printing, or some tweaking of settings on a high-end scanner, but they're not 'burnt out'. Indeed, with today's films, rendering a truly 'unprintable density' is very challenging.

If you want to bring the contrast down, rate TX at 200 & give it 8.5-9 minutes in Ilfosol 3 at the same dilution/temperature - this'll open the shadows & bring down highlight density.

Welcome to APUG



Just a left-right reversal from the mirror in the first shoot.

It might be helpful if you were to tell us whether you intend to go down the hybrid route of scanning and printing or the darkroom route of producing prints

pentaxuser

@pentaxuser, I'm going to be scanning and printing, don't have the room or money for a true darkroom at this point.

@Lachlan Young, I'm using a Plustek OpticFilm 8100. Is that high end enough that I may be able to tweak the settings? Basically just running with the built-in setting in SilverFast for Tri-X.

ChrisPittsley said:

I'm using a Plustek OpticFilm 8100. Is that high end enough that I may be able to tweak the settings? Basically just running with the built-in setting in SilverFast for Tri-X.

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For the time being, this really falls outside the remit of this forum, however the canned profiles in most scanning software are pretty poor. Have a dig around and see what you can do manually in Silverfast - essentially be sure you are not clipping highlights in the software - the rest is down to how well the scanner can handle highlight densities. The Plustek is consumer grade but might be well be OK for your needs.

Quite a bit of the 'grain' might well be from the scanner too, but if you followed the manufacturer's directions (and you did), those negatives should be fine, especially for a first attempt.

On a couple of other points from the original post: stop bath transition time is not really significant at development times around 10 minutes or so. Depending a bit on the tank, it usually takes about 15 seconds to dump the developer and pour in the stop. The drain time does not really count as the emulsion is saturated at that point. And you will be come consistent with a bit of practice.

If your thermometer is really off, or your tank temperature is very different than the solution temperature, your effective development may not be what you think. It is unusual to have a tank significantly warmer than the solution, and the solution temperature is going to dominate the heat balance. Try to work in a room close to your developing temperature; mix up a bucket of water at the process temperature you need; ideally work to the same process temperature - I usually use 21 deg. C. The benefit of working to the same temperature is that even if your thermometer is not accurate, it should be consistent at a given reading. Make sure you give the thermometer time to settle, and if it is a dial model, be sure to read it from directly overhead. Thermometers, unless carefully calibrated tend to be less accurate the further you get from their calibration point - they are not always linear.

Temperature - like time - need not be accurate, but it has to be consistent. There are enough variables in photography not to lock down those you can.

It may be that you are under exposing and over developing - I know I did when I started out - or it may just be the scanning limits.

I'd be surprised if your processing is causing blown highlights in the negs. Ilford seems to recommend 4 inversion in the first 10 secs rather than a full minute's agitation in the first minute. Your agitation may be over developing slightly bit then again the buildings shot looks OK. The people shots have some overblown highlight on skin on the back of a hand and in the bits of the white hats that are directly in the sun. Some of the person's black hair which is very close to the camera lacks a bit of detail as well.

I'd try reducing agitation to the first 10 secs and if that doesn't work then try the old favourite of reducing the film speed to 320 or even 250 and reducing the dev time by 15%.

This isn't the most scientific way to establish your correct film speed and development time but I think it will improve things for scanning and printing from negs.

If on the other hand you can see detail in the sunny parts of the white hats and in the black hair via a loupe then the detail is there in the neg and its a question of how to get the scanner to reveal it.

However I have no knowledge of scanning so cannot hep in this area

pentaxuser

looks like you are on the right track !
nice work. for skkaans you might want to
under expose your negative a little
or under developer a little to tune/calibrate
to your print system and make more "highlights" in
your "light" areas other than that, looking forward to seeing
more of your work !

welcome to apug
john

Your starting off with a great camera! It's the same model I started off with when I graduated from using my fathers cameras. Can't say much about the photos until we see a scan of the negs. You could read up on setting the white and black set points when scanning to insure you have that part down. Who knows maybe your negs are just fine.

I started the same way you did. At a point I had the same questions and I got the same answers.
It's REALLY hard (impossible?) to assess negatives based on a scan. You can do WONDERS with a hybrid method, it hides a lot of errors.

As the other poster said, looking a the negative under a loupe or magnifying glass is really what counts. If you posted a picture of them that you just took with your phone camera that would help also.

If you think about it, it's difficult to "blow highlights" when shooting negative film. All you are really doing is making the negative denser; a little harder to get light through.

Here is one guide that I've referred to from time to time.
http://www.theonlinedarkroom.com/p/how-to-read-negative.html


PS: I'd say "good job!" but I don't know yet

For me it would be 11 minutes, no stop bath just water, and for the first inversion it would be a gentle 30 seconds all at 20c..............But that's just me.

ChrisPittsley said:

I'm worried that I'm overdeveloping my negatives...

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I agree with MattKing above, the best way for us to give you a better feedback is taking a look at your negatives, something that you can do even better and carefully with a loupe. If I have to bet on something, it would be on the exposure stage.

Welcome to APUG!

p.s. Why 12 minutes?