Newbie somewhat silly question about ISO settings vs development

I have a question for a friend.

He shot delta ISO 100 at 400 speed (oops!)

I looked on digital truth's development chart but there is no listings for this.. we use sprint chemicals.

Does anyone know how long he'd develop for? (We use 1+9 sprint developer)

Thank you in advance.

hi there

sprint film developer has a pretty good chart on their new website. depending on the film your friend used s/he would find the corresponding letter on the chart, and then process their film as suggested by adjustment code lower down on the page ...

the developement times also change depending on the lighting conditions, cold liight head and other cool stuff.

you might also want to expose a test roll at the same asa just to see if the time s/he picks gives the results s/he are looking for ...

good luck!

-john

That may not be too much of an issue.

I certainly agree with running a test roll; this'll let you see the effect of different development times. I'd reccomend shoting a whole roll at EI 400, and clipping it in half. Develop the first half with one time, so you can see If / how you need to adjust it.

I've not used the Sprint chemicals, but I've found that with the D-76 that i use, about doubling the development time is about right.

It's hard to tell across different films and developer though. Try it and see.

Expect the results to lack some shadow detail and be rather high contrast though.

Try a developer like Microphen or DDX and it should help a little. One issue with trying to push film that far is fog. Even if you develop longer you wont bring out shadow detail that was never there.

Film responds much better to over exposure than under.

Of course I have shot Velvia at (yes, velvia, I have shot color before. [somewhere I hear Robert T and Rich laughing]) 400 ASA and had the lab push it. Very soft cool looking results, but that is another story.

That chart on their website is interesting. If I read it right, underexpose by two stops means an adjustment of +12 and Ilford Delta 100 is letter N so N +12 = Z and Z @75 degrees is 30 minutes!
Normal dev@75 degrees is 5.5' That is quite a difference. I would think N (normal development) plus 2 stops would be somewhere around 8.5 to 10.5 minutes depending on film and a developer like D-76/HC-110. But that is, of course, assuming that the film was exposed to get shadow detail which you may not have. So, I think they may be trying to tell you something about pushing underexposed film with this developer, and what they are trying to tell you is "don't." Now, maybe I'm reading that chart wrong which makes this all moot, but that looks risky to me.

I'm sure there are some more informed (i.e. smarter) people who can chime in here, but it looks to me like you may want to use a different developer. There is a trick in Les McClean's book, but I can't remember it offhand. He describes it as an old photojournalists trick for exactly this situation. I'll post it if I get a chance tonight. (I might be remembering it wrong too)


Good luck,

Will

Will

I'm pretty certain that the "+12" is a typo on the site. It should be +2, so in this case letter N becomes letter P, which for Delta 100 means a development time of 11:30 at 68. Testing first is always a good idea.

And in the spirit of full disclosure, I provide tech support for Sprint customers, and I have done much of the recent film testing for the company. I will ask our web person to fix the typo -- sorry for any confusion!

Best,

Erik

The basic rule of thumb for a push is to add 50% for each push. For example if you were pushing Plus X to 400 in D76 1 to 1 the box time for 125 is 7 mints. The first push to 250 is 7mint + 50% or 101/2 mints the second push to 500 is 10 1/2 + 50% or 15 mints 15 seconds. You can use Dinafine at the rated box speed of 400 as well as well.