Pan F+ and HC-110 limited agitation question

This is my first post here. I have read APUG for years (more than suitable for a sane person) and accumulated lot of knowledge but this time I need help. I will be switching my film - for the last time. The film I will be using in the future is Pan F+ 120.

I need some advice on how to make it work. I don't want to go to another carousel of testing. Testing always gives *some* results, but one needs proper starting point suitable for the task at hand. And that starting point I'm not sure about, given that I don't want to develope my film for 'normal' photo representation. I want my images to be more expressive, 'fine art'-like, if you will..

My conditions:

Film developer: HC-110
Subjects: natural subjects (trees, rocks, etc)
Common Subject Brightness Ratio: about 3-4 stops
Paper: Fomaspeed Variant RC
Enlarger: condenser

I have shot 7 frames on a test roll. I could cut the roll and develope first half one way, and second half another way. Just need some hints.
I hope to get a lot of mid-tone contrast from this film (the reason for change). They always say that Pan F+ has pronounces s-curve (ideal for increased mid-tone contrast) but when examining the pdf-document for the film, there's no s-curve to be seen. Example curve is developed in Ilfotec HC and is completely uninteresting. As the HC is supposed to be copy of HC-110 I should expect to get similar curve with my developer.
But I need the S-curve!

Scenario #1
Use limited agitation and hope some sort of s-curve emerges.

Scenario #2
Use normal agitation for very high contrast and force the s-curve in positive process by pre-exposing paper.

What do you think - normal or limited agitation, extremely low contrast subjects.
I'm prepared to dodge and burn and use all the tricks necessary to get juicy mid-tone separation in positive process, question is, what could be done already in the film developing stage of the process?

Right now I would go with this: HC-110 dil. H 15 minutes, agitation interval 3 minutes. That would translate roughly 10 min @ 1min. Should I perhaps think bolder, given that my subjects will be so low in contrast?

Sorry for the long post, but I really need some advanced help on choosing the right strategy, or perhaps some concrete numbers for non-mainstream developing with Pan F+ and HC-110.

The best thing to do is to stop over-thinking what should be a relatively easy process.

Limited agitation is a means to potentially control/ reduce contrast as is pre-flashing paper. If I am reading you correctly, these are the opposite of what you are trying to achieve - they will compress, not expand the mid-tones.

I also suspect that unless you are shooting inside a cloud that your contrast range is somewhat greater than you claim. What method of metering did you use to come up with those numbers?

The big mistake I find people make with Pan-f is insufficient exposure - the second is trying to push the hell out of it. Always process it promptly too.

Given that you said you shot in a low SBR situation, 1+60 for 8 mins would be about where a low 0.6-ish G-bar should land (what Ilford would call 'Normal'), so perhaps add 15% & see where that gets you? Normal 30s initial/ 10s per min agitation. If that's not enough, add another 15%.

Print, see what it looks like, alter things, try again. You may end up deciding to play with register masks & extended techniques like that.

Since this is your first try at this combination you need a control roll. Follow Kodak's recommendation for agitation. You may find the following site useful. For development time I would suggest the time for dilution E which is 50% longer than for dilution B. Four minutes is far too short for reproducible negatives.

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/hc110/

Thank you for your thoughts!
I wanted to use compensating development to force some S-curve to the film (Ilford's pdf show none with HC-110 clone). S-curve would mean that I can crank up more contrast in positive process without blowing highlights - therefore increasing mid-tone contrast. I have done limited agitation tests with fomapan 100 and have mixed feelings about the results. Ordinary agitation would be safer bet surely.
I guess the 10 min with dil. H would be a solid starting point in my case. Is there any reason to use stronger dilutions? Would extended development with normal agitation force some S-shape to the film H-D curve?

drbrain said:

Thank you for your thoughts!
I wanted to use compensating development to force some S-curve to the film (Ilford's pdf show none with HC-110 clone). S-curve would mean that I can crank up more contrast in positive process without blowing highlights - therefore increasing mid-tone contrast. I have done limited agitation tests with fomapan 100 and have mixed feelings about the results. Ordinary agitation would be safer bet surely.
I guess the 10 min with dil. H would be a solid starting point in my case. Is there any reason to use stronger dilutions? Would extended development with normal agitation force some S-shape to the film H-D curve?

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What you perceive as an 'S-curve' is probably more defined by the behaviour of some films with longer toes where it is more obvious when plotted. This is a plot of two curves for Pan-F in ID-11 - not Pan-F+ - from what Ilford have said, it is essentially the same product. What it does illustrate is the effect of increased development time on the curve shape & the gentle shouldering that starts to kick in on the G-bar 0.70 curve. Furthermore, it makes clear the 'short-toe' nature of Pan-F.

I'd like to re-iterate what I said earlier - for what you are trying to do, reduced agitation/ compensating development will have the opposite effect to what you are aiming to achieve.

You'll have a hard time genuinely blowing highlights - I've never encountered a highlight density on BW neg that could not be printed by one means or another. However you may end up with very dense/ contrasty highlights that require the use of masking to even out contrast & separation so that they will print normally.

I'd never go beyond 5 minutes between agitation cycles, & that's only under specific circumstances that I very rarely encounter. I find that normal agitation is vastly more useful, as is understanding time/ contrast/ curve relationships.

The short answer is that the sort of curve you want can be achieved quite simply by increasing development time & requires no fiddling about with agitation cycles.

Lachlan Young said:

The best thing to do is to stop over-thinking...

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of course it's overthinking - look a the avatar!!!

I fully agree, limited agitation (and lots of other things) really was overthinking. And I'm glad to be on the right track again.
Still, how long to develope the Pan F+ in HC-110 dil. H normal agitation for G-bar of 0,7-0,8? Mhmmm.. No time/G-bar curves to be found. Guess I'll have to stare at the stars and come up with a number for the developing time. I'm sure it's between 10-15 minutes. I hope I have the guts to try the 15 min. Or am I overdoing it? Or am I overthinking the overdoing part?

i use hc110 routinely develop for 10+ minutes/72 deg... pushing to 15 minutes would be tolerable given my process... go for it!

jvo

drbrain said:

I fully agree, limited agitation (and lots of other things) really was overthinking. And I'm glad to be on the right track again.
Still, how long to develope the Pan F+ in HC-110 dil. H normal agitation for G-bar of 0,7-0,8? Mhmmm.. No time/G-bar curves to be found. Guess I'll have to stare at the stars and come up with a number for the developing time. I'm sure it's between 10-15 minutes. I hope I have the guts to try the 15 min. Or am I overdoing it? Or am I overthinking the overdoing part?

Click to expand...

Did you read the Covington site? There is enough information there to at least get a ballpark figure.

drbrain said:

I fully agree, limited agitation (and lots of other things) really was overthinking. And I'm glad to be on the right track again.
Still, how long to develope the Pan F+ in HC-110 dil. H normal agitation for G-bar of 0,7-0,8? Mhmmm.. No time/G-bar curves to be found. Guess I'll have to stare at the stars and come up with a number for the developing time. I'm sure it's between 10-15 minutes. I hope I have the guts to try the 15 min. Or am I overdoing it? Or am I overthinking the overdoing part?

Click to expand...

10 minutes might be a good starting point. Possibly 11 - try it and see.

Thanks for all the good suggestions! I'll report back when/if I manage to finish a test roll and print something from it. Meanwhile, I found some interesting info (got links from this forum but can't remember the thread's name)

http://www.chrisjohnsonphotographer.com/funfilm.shtml
http://www.chrisjohnsonphotographer.com/charts.shtml

A quote from the first one:

"As just one example of the difference between manufacturers recommendations and our “real world” results, Ilford’s development times for PanF+ in every single developer we used were, consistently much shorter than the film needed."

Other link has times for Pan F that, in concert with the quote, are much longer than Iflord's times. Even if it cannot be so authoritative source as Ilford, what is presented there is at least something to consider.

All this talking and not doing...the OC needs to get off the computer and do his own tests
I can always figure new film testing etc in a matter of one or two exposure developing cylces...never used pan f and it seems redundant to use a film like that in a limited sbr sifuation...oh so many choices and so many electrons over wasted...
You know you could do me a favor by ACTUALLY DOING THE TESTS AND REPORTING BACK TO US.. maybe one day I'd like to use that film too....get my point?
Have a nice day!

drbrain said:

Thanks for all the good suggestions! I'll report back when/if I manage to finish a test roll and print something from it. Meanwhile, I found some interesting info (got links from this forum but can't remember the thread's name)

Click to expand...

All I can say is that there is no usefully comparable data offered in that link - lots of subjective opinion, but nothing else. For example, there is no indication of the subject brightness range of the scene used, nor of measured contrast indices after processing.

Peter Schrager said:

All this talking and not doing...the OC needs to get off the computer and do his own tests
I can always figure new film testing etc in a matter of one or two exposure developing cylces...never used pan f and it seems redundant to use a film like that in a limited sbr sifuation...oh so many choices and so many electrons over wasted...
You know you could do me a favor by ACTUALLY DOING THE TESTS AND REPORTING BACK TO US.. maybe one day I'd like to use that film too....get my point?
Have a nice day!

Click to expand...

The nature of a short toe film like Pan-F makes it quite useful in a lower contrast situation.

Either way, the tests are not difficult to do & the longer you leave that roll of Pan-F after exposure & before processing, the less useful they'll be.

Good luck with anyone thinking they can tame Pan F in a high contrast situation and retain good tonal gradation all the way from the shadows into
sparkly highlights. It has just about the shortest, worst S-curve of any current film I can think of. It can work utter magic in slightly subdued lighting. The only silver bullet out there is to use some kind of staining pyro formula that will allow a step more highlight control, so you can expose the
shadows equivalently more.

I'll add a thought - when you get tested-out for this level, try some tests at different dilutions. The amount of "compensation", in my experience, has a fairly dramatic impact on shadow and low-mids detail. Same highlights, but maybe a "moodier" look to the shadows. It comes from reduced shadow detail, but with Rodinal at least, there's something kind of cool to the look. I'm at the point where I can somewhat instinctively decide on a dilution - 1+30 and 1+40 being happy compromises for me.

This "I'll do whatever I can to hold highlights in printing" - that kinda scares me. It's a risky attitude. Having negs that print as you want them to, without a lot of fighting - I feel you get the most out of the paper's tonality that way, not to mention time and frustration.

Want to learn a film in a day? Shoot a bracket, advance one frame, set the shutter to B, take off the lens, open the shutter (locking release recommended) and stick a square of scotch tape right on the film. Shoot another bracket, rinse and repeat. In the darkroom, you can feel the tape and cut the roll in those places, reel up a strip and save the rest. You can try 6-10 dilutions, times, agitation schemes, with just one roll. You should be able to get your negs right where you want them, as long as the film and dev combo is capable of it.

But judge those negs by printing, even 4x5 or 5x7 paper, see how they're working, and run another strip with your best (now educated) guess.

The straight line portion of the H&D curve for this film is extremely short. If you look at the cited document you will see that the film is already entering the shoulder portion before the log exposure reaches 2.0. Not a great choice for midtone representation.

http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/2006216115811391.pdf

Where Pan F really sings for me is under a blanket of our soft coastal fog, or in falling rain or snow in the mountains. For Zone System afficianados,
it's basically a Zone III through VII product. Or the way I have always thought about it, is if the lighting ratio of the scene was appropriate for a color
chrome shot, Pan F would work nicely too.

drbrain said:

Sorry for the long post, but I really need some advanced help on choosing the right strategy, or perhaps some concrete numbers for non-mainstream developing with Pan F+ and HC-110.

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"The Right Strategy"... The film you are starting with is working against what you want to accomplish as an end result.

If you are sticking with the Ilford family, move up the ladder in speed. Work with FP4, rate it at 64 ISO, you will have a lot more information in your negative to work with.
Use a more dilute strategy for HC-110 like Dilution E.

I'm not familiar with the capabilities of the paper you are using, but if you want more contrast? Experiment with more paper grade contrast with the VC paper you to get the contrast where you want it.

Ok, it's been a while. I wanted to show my test results but it's not going to happen. Our office scanner just can't manage to show enough detail on my test prints and I don't have scanner at home.
I exposed a whole roll of a single scene in a sequence of -1/2; EI 50; +1/2. I used incident meter. Exposed film was kept for six days in 40 C degrees to force some latent image degradation.
I then cut the roll in darkroom to four pieces. One piece was developed in HC-110, 1+58 for 15 minutes (normal agitation), other one for 10 minutes, also normally. Other two pieces of film are in freezer but have no use for me now.
What surprised me was how low fog there was on the frames. There was also little deep-shadow (but still perfectly printable) details. My printing times were about 100% less than for Fomapan 100. And, of course, there was lot of contrast. Frames looked almost like slides.
For 15-min negatives I used paper flashing, else the highlights were clipped at the paper. Flash (post-flash) time was 0.8 of paper fogging time. 0.5 * fogging time looked quite similar. Flashing light was green.
10-minute frames were printed without paper flashing. All printing was done using white light of my enlarger (cool white led light-source).
I did several small prints from all developed frames. It my be of some interest that best prints chosen from both 10-minute and 15-minute frames, happened to be exposed at EI 50.
Best 15-minute frame print (paper flashing used) and 10-minute frame print (without flash) looked almost identical in highlights but 15-minute frame had much more snappy lower mid-tones.
I also tried to increase printing contrast for a 10-minute frame, but the results were sub-par compared to the 15-minute frame - image went kind of harsh instead of snappy so I quit experiment with added printing contrast.
What contrast did I get? Well, in overcast day both described developing/printing combinations will barely manage highlight details if something dark grey and and whitish are together in a frame, given that paper is Fomaspeed Variant 312 RC and print developer is Ilford Multigrade. I will be using Moerch ECO 4812 as soon as the Multigrade developer runs out. Longer scale of ECO developer should match my contrasty negatives just fine.

PS Film rebate marking was strange - most of the markings (frame numbers and text) looked like non-optical printing. Some of the text had smeared look, like you would get with ink. There was one four-digit number that was done optically, and that was quite weak.

I just can't leave my last post hanging here like the half-truth it turned out to be.
Right now it sounds like a declamation of good suggestion, but in reality it turned out to be a bad recipe. Thing is, I have experimented with Pan F+ some more. I could get away with 15-minute developing time only because (and I quote myself): "There was also little deep-shadow (but still perfectly printable) details. My printing times were about 100% less than for Fomapan 100."
That was the problem with my Pan F test. With my equipment it really seemed it was a stop slower than Fomapan 100: Fomapan 100 is 100 with my eq, but Pan F seems to be about 25. So when I exposed it at EI 50 for my test, I underexposed it. That's why I could get away with 15-minute developing time: if you underexpose the film, there's not much to develope. 15 minute, 30 minute, whatever, not much will happen if you already effectively develope to completion.
With another test film full of different images I had a problem. Some frames were about right density but the contrast was modest to low (film was developed for 15 minutes!). Other frames were quite dense and had very high contrast. Only conclusion I could make from this was that some frames were slightly underexposed and thus came out slightly flat, and other frames got accidentally more light due to metering mistakes (they came out very contrasty).
Well, I have never had inconsistency with my incident metering before but with Pan F I seem to be unable to manage good exposures: there's just not room for exposure mistakes with Pan F+ and I'm losing hope that i could make this film work for me. For another test film I exposed frames at EI 25 and EI 12 and developed for 7 minutes. EI 12 frames were much contrastier than EI 25 ones and are very dense to the point of being unusable, especially if scene had more light tones. If the scene had mostly lower tones EI 12 frames were quite usable and had expressive contrast and tonality. Point is, with Pan F one can't even get away with single film speed setting (at least with incident metering) and there is need to correct the EI to be suitable for the tonality of the scene. That kind of kills the convenience of incident metering.
I'm really not comfortable with the prospect that exposures must be accurate within half a stop or the frames will be flat, or contrasty and dense. Maybe I could make the Pan F work with Perceptol or Xtol but HC-110 is what I have and I just don't want to give up absolute reliability of that developer.
I really wanted to like the Pan F but it's time to try the FP4, I guess.

I'd suggest that your choice of a condenser enlarger (it potentially adds up to 1 grade of contrast) is not helping matters - to get Pan-F under control in the circumstances you describe above, you'd be looking at under 6 mins at 1+60, possibly 5 mins, and at that point you'll be struggling for consistency in development times from film to film. An excessive development time ( for contrasty light) is a probable explanation of why your shots in flat light came out looking OK - after all, Pan-F is a short toe film, which combined with a generous development (for your enlarger light source) will further steepen that toe and shoulder the highlights, leading to the negatives you described above. As a rule of thumb, taking 15-30% off Ilford's times will probably get you in range for a condenser light source, depending on what sort of negative you want.

What are you basing your incident readings off - shadows, highlights, or some indeterminate point in between?

I think you might have an easier time with Delta 100, Acros or TMAX 100 - higher than or equal resolution to Pan-F, and I think they'll teach you far more than obsessing over needing an 'S-curve' - getting a good, fully detailed negative & learning how to print expressively using the full contrast range of multigrade paper will be much less troublesome.

Lachlan Young said:

...
What are you basing your incident readings off - shadows, highlights, or some indeterminate point in between?

I think you might have an easier time with Delta 100, Acros or TMAX 100 - higher than or equal resolution to Pan-F, and I think they'll teach you far more than obsessing over needing an 'S-curve' - getting a good, fully detailed negative & learning how to print expressively using the full contrast range of multigrade paper will be much less troublesome.

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I will just measure the falling light at the main part of the scene and don't apply any corrections to it. That should 'hang' the scene to spread from the middle of the films HD-curve (what would be the "middle" of the curve, slightly eludes me..).
Your advice about films sounds good. I have suspected it now for some time, that I just need something workable, no special curve shapes or contrast - just something that can be manipulated with at the printing stage. Of those you mention, Delta 100 seems to be most attractive choice. Should I use my "special" dilution (5 ml + 290 ml) for developing it or ordinary 1+31? EI 100 or one stop over? And what would be developing time for easy-to-work-with negative?

drbrain said:

I will just measure the falling light at the main part of the scene and don't apply any corrections to it. That should 'hang' the scene to spread from the middle of the films HD-curve (what would be the "middle" of the curve, slightly eludes me..).

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Ahh, that explains some of the issues you have been having - easily solved. Have a look at this article: http://btzs.org/Articles/Sensitometry Part 5.pdf - it goes into depth about how incident metering works & how to get it in tune with what you want it to do. That said, the TL;DR version that doesn't involve lots of testing and computer programmes is quite simple: set your meter to read in EV; take a reading near to you with the brightest light falling on it (let's assume you get an EV of 15); next take a shadow reading - from your own shadow perhaps (let's assume an EV of 12); subtract those numbers, add 5 and you've got an exposure scale of 8 stops. You then switch back to the F-stop & shutter speed, take a shadow meter reading at the Effective Film Speed you determined by testing & shoot. In reality, with the aid of MG papers & once you've worked out a dev time that doesn't make the highlights awkwardly dense, you simply take a shadow meter reading & shoot. Essentially you base your exposure off the shadows for negative film (so they don't block up) & off the highlights for transparency film (so they don't blow out) - it can get a lot more complex than that, but that's for a different time.

drbrain said:

Your advice about films sounds good. I have suspected it now for some time, that I just need something workable, no special curve shapes or contrast - just something that can be manipulated with at the printing stage. Of those you mention, Delta 100 seems to be most attractive choice. Should I use my "special" dilution (5 ml + 290 ml) for developing it or ordinary 1+31? EI 100 or one stop over? And what would be developing time for easy-to-work-with negative?

Click to expand...

For Delta 100, Ilford state 5 mins at an EI of 50, 6 mins at an EI of 100 in HC-110, dil.B (1+31) - the EI100 numbers will be for a G-bar of about 0.62, you'll be wanting a bit less for your enlarger head. I would not be surprised if something in the 8.5-10 minute range at 1+60 would possibly be a good starting point - adjust to taste in 15%-ish segments. Effective Film Speed will need to be tested to your taste - ie acceptable shadow detail. You might also want to play with a yellow filter or similar. Hope this gives you somewhere to go from.