Neopan 1600 pushed to 3400: Any Thoughts?

Neopan1600 pushed to 6400:

Background:
I was at a family wedding the weekend as a guest and normally never bother taking pictures inside but I had consumed some classic Black Photographic Developer during the evening. This of course is marketed as Guinness to the unsuspecting public and when mixed with a photographer tends to develop results that are irritating to relatives and lead to great high tension shots on peoples faces as they spot you looming towards them in the low light of the dance floor. Shutter speeds above 1/250 are recommended to negate the effect of sway when shooting. Overdoses can lead the individual to believe they are HCB or other great photographers whom they admire when sober.

Anyhow it has left me with a wee predicament I cranked the iso to 6400 as the lights were very low and went merrily through a roll. I want to of course see the results. They are not critical; there were professional photographers present so I am not terrified of loosing them.

Question:

Has anyone any experience of using “Rodinal Special” (Studional) on Fuji Neopan 1600 film to push it two stops? Any idea of times and agitation?

Here is my logic, I would normally dilute to 1:30 and double the recommended times agfa give for 1:15 dilution. It also seems like a minute a stop is average add on.

Fuji Neopan 1600 + Studional 1:15 @ 1600 = 3 mins
Fuji Neopan 1600 + Studional 1:30 @ 1600 = 6 mins
Plus to push two stops: Add 2 minutes and reduce agitation to gentle 5’’/min to keep grain down in size.

My research so far shows Neopan 1600 is an 800 film in reality and Xtol or Microphen are probably the best for pushing it. I have neither to hand. I have a 5L sachet of Xtol but don’t really want to mix it up for a single film.

Any thoughts appreciated.

shoot another roll @ 6400. cut in thirds. Develop one and judge from there.

I sometimes use Neopan 1600 with x-tol. Lately I forgot to dilute the x-tol and developed with full strenght instead of half. This, according to "the massive development chart", equals 6400. The pictures came out with large grain, but some, especially some concert pictures in very low light, came out just fine.

I seriously suggest you use XTOL. Do not use Rodinal, Studinal, etc. Mix up the XTOL and begin using it regularly.

Nikon F3HP + Nikkor 35mm f/2.0 AIS, Fujifilm Neopan 1600@3200, Kodak XTOL 1+1

Nikon F3HP + Nikkor 35mm f/2.0 AIS, Fujifilm Neopan 1600@3200, Kodak XTOL 1+1

X-tol vote here also. I use quite a bit of Neopan at gigs developed in xtol 1+1. It's a superb film at 800ISO. At 2 stops under exposed it would have to be a mighty special shot to agonise under the enlarger to get a decent print. But what the hell, double the development time with Xtol and see what happens! You might just get some crazy dancing rim-light masterpiece!

What else do you have on hand for a developer?

I only ask because I am not familiar with Agfa developers.

...however, I can say that your "minute a stop" thing should not be used. That is more of a color approach to overdevelopment, where all varieties of film are designed to run in the same process for the same time. If anything, a percentage is better as a rule of thumb. For instance, 140% for +1 and 200% for +2.

You must also realize that you underexposed your film by two stops, and that pushing only seriously affects your mids and highs.

Additionally, while Fuji's Website lists it as an "ISO" 1600 film, nowhere on the data sheet for the film does it state "ISO" 1600. It calls the film "EI" 1600. This means, that they keep you in the dark as to what the true ISO is (unlike Ilford and Kodak, who plainly state that their magic films are actually ISO 1000 films). Since they only list development times up to 3200, my guesses are 1. Fuji is being conservative, and only lists a one stop push over the ISO in order to prevent unrealistic expectations. 2. The film is actually an ISO 800 film, and possibly lower. 3. In either of these cases, perhaps Fuji refuses to either test for or publish times for extreme underexposure, as do Ilford and Kodak. Ilford lists a lot of times for higher EIs. 6400 is on their chart in several developers, and even 12,500 on there in a few developers, I believe. Kodak even has info on exposing the film at 25,000.

If the latter is the case, your film is actually three stops under or more. You had better hope that your reflected metering was actually telling you to overexpose your shots in this case, as reflected meters can easily do in the dark. Or you can hope that you get some shots that will work well being very dark and without a lot of detail...which may very well be the case. I love a lot of shots like that, and many of my own are made that way on purpose; even exaggerated toward that in printing at times.

You should also realize that sometimes an underexposed negative is actually easier to print if it is not overdeveloped. In a contrasty situation especially, this is the case.

2f: I believe people have "tested" it and an often quoted figure is ~640. I will say this about 1600PR, it can easily handle EI 1600. 3200 is also honestly not super difficult to do with it - but I wouldn't shoot a wedding or be the go-to man with that combination. On a similar side, people have been pushing 400TX left and right for years and have had quite decent results (with the usual caveats of pushing).

If you study the published Fujifilm characteristic curves for Neopan 400 and 1600, you will see that, for shadow detail, the "1600" film is 2/3 of one stop faster than Neopan 400. So if you're happy to call Neopan400 a 400 film, the 1600 film is actually ISO 640. It does push reasonably well to 1600 give or take a bit depending on how optimistic your metering is. Beyond that you're getting a lot of contrast, but you will get a picture. Xtol is pretty good with this film. Microphen is also good.