Perceptol not recommended for HP5+ ?

Juan Valdenebro · Dec 17, 2021

John Bragg said:
Thanks a lot. I hardly ever push film so not high on my priorities. I find it very hard to blow the highlights with this combination. I couldn't ask more from any developer and if memory serves me correctly, I used Perceptol many years ago @1:1 dilution, usually with FP4. In my mind the tonality is similar.

Totally agree about how close those tonalities are!
And that sure made Ilford recommend Ilfosol-3 at 200 for HP5+, instead of Perceptol, inside the small boxes.

Lachlan Young · Dec 17, 2021

Juan Valdenebro said:
What would you prefer for 35mm in general?
I ask because Microphen is my most used developer yet... Seems like 35mm and speed are more common in my case than smallest grain. For tripod work in MF I know what to do.
In 35mm I use zone focusing with Tri-X, HP5+ and TMY at EI1000, all in Microphen, so what you said sounds like my future...
I have not tried Delta400 except for some school projects 15 years ago, when I wasn't ready to see things clearly.
What would you use for 35mm @1000, 99% of the time soft light?

I wouldn't suggest Ilfosol 3 if you are trying to significantly push the CI - it seems to slow down a lot in getting from box speed (G-bar 0.62) to +1 (usually a low 0.7 G-bar), possibly due to inhibition effects (which will help sharpness too) - and a side-effect of this is that it's harder for people with poor process control to overdevelop their film.

As for the EI 1000 question, that depends on your metering habits and aim contrast index for your enlarger.

And while I'm on the topic, don't assume metol only developers are sharper than PQ - in fact, the opposite is true, if the PQ (or PA) relationship is set up to do so.

Juan Valdenebro · Dec 17, 2021

Lachlan Young said:
I wouldn't suggest Ilfosol 3 if you are trying to significantly push the CI - it seems to slow down a lot in getting from box speed (G-bar 0.62) to +1 (usually a low 0.7 G-bar), possibly due to inhibition effects (which will help sharpness too) - and a side-effect of this is that it's harder for people with poor process control to overdevelop their film.

As for the EI 1000 question, that depends on your metering habits and aim contrast index for your enlarger.

And while I'm on the topic, don't assume metol only developers are sharper than PQ - in fact, the opposite is true, if the PQ (or PA) relationship is set up to do so.

Hi Lachlan, although the word sharpness is not used the same ways by all photographers, I have never been interested in sharpness, and I've never considered Perceptol a developer for sharpness.
What I like in 35mm is acutance and very sharp grain.

Juan Valdenebro · Dec 17, 2021

I use a modern condenser enlarger, and I meter soft light at 1000 with precision: camera, incident and spot.
My last two years' preferred materials for speed in 35mm: TMax400 at 1000 in FX-39 II.
I guess you don't do much street, but what would you use for fast zone focusing?

Lachlan Young · Dec 17, 2021

Juan Valdenebro said:
acutance and very sharp grain

By 'sharpness', think MTF. How apparently 'sharp' grain appears can also relate to the grade chosen for printing. You'd be surprised by full strength ID-11/ D-76 with good process control.

Juan Valdenebro said:
I use a modern condenser enlarger, and I meter soft light at 1000 with precision: camera, incident and spot.
My last two years' preferred materials for speed in 35mm: TMax400 at 1000 in FX-39 II.

There's not a lot of distance between Ilfosol 3 and FX-39II, at least in terms of their intent. With a condenser you're probably not going to run into issues with getting to higher CI's.

As for 'fast zone focusing', Konica Hexar AF. What fast action are you needing to stop absolutely stone dead anyway?

Juan Valdenebro · Dec 19, 2021

Lachlan Young said:
By 'sharpness', think MTF. How apparently 'sharp' grain appears can also relate to the grade chosen for printing. You'd be surprised by full strength ID-11/ D-76 with good process control.

There's not a lot of distance between Ilfosol 3 and FX-39II, at least in terms of their intent. With a condenser you're probably not going to run into issues with getting to higher CI's.

As for 'fast zone focusing', Konica Hexar AF. What fast action are you needing to stop absolutely stone dead anyway?

I'd add the wonderful and underrated TMaxDev to that group of FX-39 and Ilfosol-3, though the former two are very good for pushing 400 to 1000, so maybe Ilfosol-3 doesn't deserve to be there.
About stock D-76, I wouldn't be surprised: I was. I started a thread on it last year or the year before that. By the way, half members, all 1+1 users, shouted loud.
I like D-76 better than Xtol (here come the other half) because of D-76's tone for overcast scenes.
I bought my Konica Hexar AF, silver edition, ten years ago. One of the most interesting cameras ever IMO, because of its capacity to retain an aperture but being able to change it if light absolutely orders so. But it's far from optimal for street photography: its AF system can go for the background easily in such situation, where we move and subjects move, not too fast, but all the time. After a couple of unforgettable images focused a kilometer behind my subjects, I stopped using it for street.
And we never think of freezing action in street: that was not the reason for all I wrote, but the need of comfortable DOF... We have a central focusing distance for most photographs, and a second one if subjects are really far from camera, and those two are totally easy. The real game is, the third focusing distance: the closest one... That means very shallow DOF; without focusing, we need to have very well focused our near subjects, in the 1-2m range, even 0,7-0,9 for a common and sometimes necessary head shot. That can't be done with a 50, can be done at f/11 1/2 with a 35, and can be done at f/8 1/2 with a 28. That's why I use my 35 at 1000 (Microphen) but I use my 28 at 400 (D-76).
Many good tripod photographers feel they started learning photography after leaving the tripod, when they tried to do good street photography for years and got nothing.
Others were never able, like Ansel Adams, who felt himself his books were so horribly cold he had to use Cartier-Bresson inside.
Joking apart, hope this helps.

John Wiegerink · Dec 19, 2021

Any good photographer can become a "street" photographer. The real question is, does he or she have the EYE for it. For me, the most compelling street shots are the ones where street folks are caught in motion and frozen. Like a young ladies slender leg starting to lift she steps up on to the curb. Oh, she has spiky high heels on of course. Next is catching facial expressions. It's always fun trying to figure out what they are thinking when the shutter trips. Sometimes you find out exactly what they are thinking and move to a new location swiftly. I was never real good at it, but I also didn't do much street work either. I do believe I would have got my timing down right sooner or later. There's a ton of good street work out there, but most of us never get to see it. JohnW

Sirius Glass · Dec 19, 2021

michael_r said:
I know a highly accomplished photographer who processes his film for half of the development time in XTOL and the second half in D-76.

Some men are just unable to commit. And some women too.

NB23 · Dec 19, 2021

Some days I’m at the point where I don’t really care.
The other day I developed 4 films in a 1Liter tank with a One year old used/seasoned dektol, yeah I reuse my dektol and top it off after each printing session.
I figured 1:5 would be ok for 5 minites @ 20c. I developed and dumped the dektol back into its bottle.

Just like they did it in the good old PJ days. The films came out real nice.

I wouldn’t have a problem doing this all the time.

John Wiegerink · Dec 19, 2021

Years ago I knew several old photographers that were born in the early 1900's to about 1925. They all had some kind of secret thing when it came to their photography. Either it had to do with film exposure, film development or on the printing end. They are all gone now and most took their secrets with them. I did manage to get some of their equipment when they passed, but not their secrets. Of course dummy me never ask them about their secrets before they checked out either. JohnW

Juan Valdenebro · Dec 19, 2021

michael_r said:
I know a highly accomplished photographer who processes his film for half of the development time in XTOL and the second half in D-76.

Wow !
I had never heard that one !
I wonder if he uses only 120ml of D-76 and if he replenishes his Xtol: seriously, it would be great to see how he reached that place or if he tested several possibilities around that... If it works I see no problem in promoting such a healthy source of smiles.
Does he wash in between?
I swear I'm really curious.

Juan Valdenebro · Dec 20, 2021

Thank you, Michael.
People are also mixing things, mostly adding Rodinal.
Sure Xtol and D-76 in line (not mixed) can develop film perfectly.
Who knows if mixed they'd be less optimal...
The funny thing was both do basically the same.

Lachlan Young · Dec 20, 2021

michael_r said:
His reasoning wasn’t sound, but it doesn’t matter

I think it tends to get forgotten how resilient many materials are to the bad habits/ strange ideas of the end user - and were designed to be so. 95% of the threads full of hypotheticals and metaphysical doubts about developers and dilutions on here wouldn't exist if even the tiniest fragment of reasoning was brought to bear!

Juan Valdenebro said:
I bought my Konica Hexar AF, silver edition, ten years ago. One of the most interesting cameras ever IMO, because of its capacity to retain an aperture but being able to change it if light absolutely orders so. But it's far from optimal for street photography: its AF system can go for the background easily in such situation, where we move and subjects move, not too fast, but all the time. After a couple of unforgettable images focused a kilometer behind my subjects, I stopped using it for street.

I've seen plenty of people make far greater errors with rangefinders because they trusted the focus markings and depth of field scale a little too much for the size they wanted to print to.

Juan Valdenebro said:
And we never think of freezing action in street: that was not the reason for all I wrote, but the need of comfortable DOF... We have a central focusing distance for most photographs, and a second one if subjects are really far from camera, and those two are totally easy. The real game is, the third focusing distance: the closest one... That means very shallow DOF; without focusing, we need to have very well focused our near subjects, in the 1-2m range, even 0,7-0,9 for a common and sometimes necessary head shot. That can't be done with a 50, can be done at f/11 1/2 with a 35, and can be done at f/8 1/2 with a 28. That's why I use my 35 at 1000 (Microphen) but I use my 28 at 400 (D-76).

I can't help but feel that you're massively over-thinking something that could be better dealt with by being much more relaxed about absolute aperture/ shutter speed/ focal length/ depth of field combinations - in the sense that an ill-defined set of 'perfect' technical solutions are usually much worse than just getting on with making an artistically worthwhile image with enough information to make darkroom interpretation of the neg straightforward.

Juan Valdenebro · Dec 20, 2021

You are very wrong, Lachlan.
My priority is real photography. It's just that I don't talk about my photographs here.
And the things I wrote and you just named, are daily bread and butter for real photographers, but not usual for people using tripod.
If you see enough videos of HCB or Frank or Winogrand, you can see how they look at their lenses briefly to set their zone focusing points depending on the subject distance.
I don't consider special or new anything I talk about: just optic laws that don't change.
That's a lot harder to achieve than tripod work, and that's why they are the relevant photographers in history.

John Wiegerink · Dec 21, 2021

michael_r said:
Yes, this, and people see what they want to see. In this particular case the user reasoned by splitting development between XTOL and D-76 he could get the best properties of each without their shortcomings. (his words). Well, ok.

Exactly! Couldn't have said it better.

Lachlan Young · Dec 22, 2021

michael_r said:
In this particular case the user reasoned by splitting development between XTOL and D-76 he could get the best properties of each without their shortcomings.

Given that the major differences (at least in the stock solution forms that the person was using them) are in solvency & inhibition effects, I'm slightly intrigued as to what the perceived 'shortcomings' were.

Juan Valdenebro said:
If you see enough videos of HCB or Frank or Winogrand, you can see how they look at their lenses briefly to set their zone focusing points depending on the subject distance.

HCB was slightly notorious for not skimping on the exposure he gave his negs, Frank used a lot of Plus-X (with B&H perfs - which makes me suspect he got hold of a can or several of cinema film) and some HP3 etc for his Guggenheim/ The Americans - and Winogrand probably said whatever he felt like, depending on how irritating he felt his interlocutor was, but he seems to have pushed film a bit if needed - though not always (shadow details and midtone scale give this away). And under shadow keying conditions using the IRE scale, with a slightly raised aim CI (maybe 0.7), setting an EI of 1000 on a spot meter would effectively put you at an 'ISO' of 650 - which is what Ilford claimed HP5 in Microphen would deliver at around that contrast aim (which is why it's 'ISO' as the contrast aim isn't ISO). In that situation, you aren't getting much meaningful advantage over what I'm getting from shadow keying at box/ ISO speed & processing in ID-11. And yet, I get the results I want with a 55mm lens, handheld on 6x7.

The further reason I'm quizzical about your assertions is that I've printed & scanned negs from photojournalists/ documentarians of 50s/ 60s era who used a lot of FP3/ HP3/ HPS in flat/ quite low light conditions & didn't care too much about perfect exposure, other than that it was usually more than sufficient & the focus was good enough... There seems to have been a lot more sunny 16 & pre-1960 film speed ratings used than might have been fashionable to admit - and the prevalence of RF/ TLR usage meant that even 1/30 was rarely as much of an issue. And printing down shadows will always mess with people's perception of what EI a film was actually exposed at.

Perceptol not recommended for HP5+ ?

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