pushing Tri-X in D-76

Hi,

I'm looking to process Tri-X 400 at EI 800 in D-76. From reading Kodak's documentation and the Massive Dev Chart, the consensus seems to be that Tri-X at EI 400-800 is developed for the same amount of time.

Is this what people usually do? It seems surprising to me, if only because my current experience with Tri-X in DD-X requires an extra 25% development time to push one stop.

Thanks,

-jbl

it's the dev.

D-76 is very versatile

+25% seem ok if using 1:1

underexposure latitude is on your side for T-Max and XXX

You don't gain very much in the shadows by pushing Tri-X in D-76, but you do push the higher values up the scale a bit. That may or may not be necessary. If the scenes were of normal to high contrast, there's no point in extending development because you'll only drive up the contrast further. If the scenes were of low contrast, a bit of over development will lend a little punch to the scene, and may make it easier to print on a more or less normal grade of paper. Sorry I can't give you a yes or no kind of answer, but in reality, there is no yes or no type answer.

Tri-X at 800 was standard procedure for me for many years. I used D-76 1:1 at 80 degrees F for 7.5 minutes and kept my stop and fix consistent also. No prob mainly because Tri-X is the most forgiving film in the universe. Good luck.

fschifano said:

You don't gain very much in the shadows by pushing Tri-X in D-76, but you do push the higher values up the scale a bit. That may or may not be necessary. If the scenes were of normal to high contrast, there's no point in extending development because you'll only drive up the contrast further. If the scenes were of low contrast, a bit of over development will lend a little punch to the scene, and may make it easier to print on a more or less normal grade of paper. Sorry I can't give you a yes or no kind of answer, but in reality, there is no yes or no type answer.

Click to expand...

That's what I'd been beginning to wonder. Since I metered off the shadows, the difference between EI 400 and EI 800 is one stop in the shadows which isn't going to get changed much by a one-stop push. Since the highlights are where they are, the only thing the push does is affect the placement of the highlights which weren't metered off of anyway.

Thanks for confirming my hunch.

-jbl

I'm just about over 'pushing' for slightly underexposed roll film. With variable contrast paper, expanding negative contrast isn't worth it a lot of the time especially for well-behaved film like TMAX. As already mentioned, your shadows won't changed much but you are pushing the highlights up. I find that I achieved better results by "pushing" on the easel by using a higher contrast filter. Simply underexposing the film but developing normally, and then cranking the contrast up on the paper as needed works better for metered, slight underexposure. Obviously there is another category where you soup your film a long time just hoping to get something on the negative, and you also wish to get as much as possible out of the shadows, but that's a different situation from carefully metered 1-2 stop underexposures. If I remember correctly Kodak even recommends developing normally for TMY exposed at 800.