Suggestions for heavy push on TMY-2?

Hi all, new to the forum. Recently had my fire for photography relit by a new friend and jumped into buying my own darkroom setup. For my first several rolls I wanted to revisit some of my favorite shots from the last time I was in a photography class, but much to my dismay Kodak had discontinued P3200 for quite a few years already. The shots in question were pushed to somewhere between 6400 and 12800 (not convinced my TTL meter is totally accurate for such low light conditions, but it -should- be 12.8k) and processed at educated guess times for 12800 in D-76. They're super grainy, but had good tonal range and a really soft focus; they looked like a half-remembered dream, and I always liked that a lot.

After doing a bit of research and thinking, I decided to get some TX 400 and TMY-2 400 and push them ~5 stops and try some chemistry I hadn't used before to possibly achieve similar results while waiting for a brick of Delta 3200 to ship to my house. I've already processed the TX 400 in a 'soup' of 5:1 Rodinal(1:50 dilution):Microphen(stock) and it turned out surprisingly well. I still need to print the results, but while the negatives are super thin, there's definitely a printable image on most of them, and a couple of really good shots that will be fun to work with. Based the idea on a thread where the OP was using a blend of borax, sodium sulfite, mostly Rodinal, and a little XTOL. His examples were pretty nice, so I decided to try mixing chemistry.

Anyway, with the background out there now, that brings me to the real question. I have a range of developers at my disposal and two rolls of TMY-2 400 that were shot somewhere in that 6400-12800 range. Any tips/times/temps anyone can suggest? Currently in my photo cabinet, I have Microphen stock solution, Rodinal, TMAX Developer (though after reading about the differences between it and the RS solution, kinda wish I had that), Ilfosol-3, and some old D-76 powder that I could mix up. I was thinking TMAX dev, but I'd be guessing at the times, and Kodak only posts times for 75 F once you get into heavy pushing; prefer to work at 68 since there's no fiddling with keeping it warmer or colder than room temp. Was originally going to do Rodinal semi-stand processing, but I found a lot of hate for the way Rodinal played with TMY-2 specifically on more than a couple forums.

Any feedback is appreciated.

If you try experiments with crazy pushing, always think of the basic rule of thumb, which is: there will be no discernible density four or more stops below you actual speed point.

This means: if you push P3200 (which was an ISO 1200 film) to EI 12800, you had about a 3-4 stop push, and the spot you aimed your light meter at will barely show up on the negative. With a 5 stop push this spot would disappear into nothingness, leaving you only with the part of your motive which were brighter than what you aimed your light meter at.

Either way, once you have settled with these above facts, you can proceed to (there was a url link here which no longer exists), which contains info on extreme pushing together with image results and links to other mega push soups.

i havent really done what you are hoping for, that said I have pushed other films (100 ISO )
a handful of stops and I wouldn't suggest stand developing or semistand developing..
that techniques is sometimes used for contrast control .. not for extend hopefully
adding a bit of contrast developing. I'd recommend using something like d76 and extending
development 30-40% for every fstop ... when I accidentally exposed 100 under by lotsastops that saved my skin,,,
if you have dektol you could experiment by diluting it 1/5 and instead of 5 mins, maybe try 12 mins for starts ...

good luck ..
john

I have, somewhere on my hard drive, a recipe for a "super soup" and one for a hydrogen peroxide treatment that purports to get speeds something like this.

But a much better approach is to just use Ilford Delta 3200. It's a superb film. In fact I like it better than my lamented TMZ, albeit mainly because I can get it in 120. It may not be quite as pushable as TMZ was, but it's close and the closest thing on the market now. I get superb results at 3200 with it when I develop in T-Max developer per instructions for 6400. I haven't tried beyond that but from the results I get at 3200 I think that 6400 would likely be quite usable.

I do quite enjoy Delta 3200 as well Roger. I've already processed two rolls of it in Microphen at 12.8k and I love the way they turned out. The negatives are thin, but very printable. Recreated my surreal dream-scape shots well with my muse/model and I'll add them to a gallery here or on my site soon. The only drawback is that they don't scan well at all because they're too thin and my scanner is garbage. I'll have to tinker with the contrast filters and make good 8x10 prints to scan instead, but that will have to wait until my timer shows up later this week. I have two more rolls of 3200 waiting to be processed, and another 6 calling out for some attention soon. I might try some other developers with some of the later rolls. I'll give your T-Max developer suggestion a shot, as well as Rodinal stand processing if I can find enough information to make an educated guess at a time/temp that should work. If you can track down the super soup recipe or the hydrogen peroxide treatment at some point, I'd definitely be interested in reading them.

Thanks for the insight Rudeofus. I've quickly realized I need to get a good dedicated spot meter so I can aim at the darkest part of the scene that I want detail from to counteract some of the effects of hard pushing 3-5+ stops since I enjoy it so much and want to make my results a little more consistent. Until I can set aside the funds to buy a good one, I'll just have to be more mindful of what the camera meter is actually looking at and adjust accordingly.

That thread you linked has been a very interesting read so far.

please post your results inthis thread

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

I suggest xtol if you don't mind the higher contrast. Ultrafin at 5 min 30 sec will work as well for normal contrast.

I typically like the higher contrast look. I don't have any xtol at the moment, though it's on my list of things to buy next time I make an order. Unfortunately I have to process these rolls before I'll be able to get that order setup and delivered.

brokenglytch said:

I do quite enjoy Delta 3200 as well Roger. I've already processed two rolls of it in Microphen at 12.8k and I love the way they turned out. The negatives are thin, but very printable. Recreated my surreal dream-scape shots well with my muse/model and I'll add them to a gallery here or on my site soon. The only drawback is that they don't scan well at all because they're too thin and my scanner is garbage. I'll have to tinker with the contrast filters and make good 8x10 prints to scan instead, but that will have to wait until my timer shows up later this week. I have two more rolls of 3200 waiting to be processed, and another 6 calling out for some attention soon. I might try some other developers with some of the later rolls. I'll give your T-Max developer suggestion a shot, as well as Rodinal stand processing if I can find enough information to make an educated guess at a time/temp that should work. If you can track down the super soup recipe or the hydrogen peroxide treatment at some point, I'd definitely be interested in reading them.

Click to expand...

Here's the one for "Super Soup," and then one for using HC110 Replenisher, which is no longer available but Freestyle has something sort of similar that might work. Note that I've never tried either but wondered what "Super Soup" would do with Delta 3200 (or TMZ when that was an option.) These are from some forum or Usenet posts long ago that I copied into text files.


HC-110 Replinisher method:

While there is a small group of developers that do a better job at developing the latent image the speed increase that they provide is rather modest. Any increase amounts to 1/2 to 1 stop. The developers in this group are low pH, of high solvent content and use Phenidone or one of its derivatives. Examples are Xtol and Microphen. Any others that claim to increase speed do not improve shadow density and merely increase negative density at the expense of contrast. Now there are situations where shadow density is not important and featureless shadows are acceptable. It is all a tradeoff and the photographer must choose what he wants to obtain.

Roger Cole said:

I came across this recipe somewhere, either here or maybe photo.net a long time ago using HC-110 Replenisher:

tri-x extreme push
To process Tri-X at ISO 5000, you use not HC-110 Developer, but rather,
HC-110 REPLENISHER. You can buy a 16-ounce container of the stuff at a
good camera store, although they may need to order it from Kodak, so you
may have to wait a while to get your hands on it.

To make a solution of this special developer, make a 1:15 solution of
HC-110 Replenisher. That means, one ounce of the replenisher to 15 ounces
of water. So, if you're processing 4 rolls of 35mm film, or 2 rolls of 120
film in a one-quart tank, mix 2 ounces of replenisher with 30 ounces of
water. Unlike many developers that use a 68-degree temperature, this
formula requires that you bring the working solution of HC-110 replenisher
to 75-degrees. The processing time is 5-3/4 minutes at 75-degrees, with
agitation for five seconds every thirty second.​

Click to expand...

HC-110 Replenisher has not been available for many years.

Gerald C Koch said:

HC-110 Replenisher has not been available for many years.

Click to expand...

I know that. I said so above. I was suggesting, though, that perhaps Freestyle's L-110 replinisher might work. I know it's different - the developer isn't syrupy like HC-110 - but it might be worth an experiment:

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/10191...W-Liquid-Film-Developer-Replenisher-1-Pint-to

EDIT: I thought I said so. Apparently either that was another thread or it was something I edited out.

Roger Cole said:

I know that. I said so above. I was suggesting, though, that perhaps Freestyle's L-110 replinisher might work. I know it's different - the developer isn't syrupy like HC-110 - but it might be worth an experiment:

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/10191...W-Liquid-Film-Developer-Replenisher-1-Pint-to

EDIT: I thought I said so. Apparently either that was another thread or it was something I edited out.

Click to expand...

No problem, I just didn't want the OP searching for it.

Got it - the other formula can be made today easily and might be a better one anyway.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk and 100% recycled electrons - because I care.

Thanks for the soup recipe Roger. Definitely sounds promising. If I can find a good place to track down the item or two on that list that I don't have, I'll give it a shot. I really should find a good spot meter that can calculate exposures for really high iso and get in the habit of zone metering with it so I can make sure I get details in the parts of the shot I want them in. I do enjoy the learning curve; they never taught this in my photography classes because it's too experimental/advanced/unpredictable.

"Film Speed – Ads vs Reality" by Heribert Schain is an interesting read, available in the English section of SPUR's website. http://spur-photo.com/some-information-in-english/
He is using their own SPUR Ultraspeed Vario, but upto 1600 with Tri-X.

Cheers

Ashfaque

Just finished a shoot tonight, so tomorrow will be processing night for quite a lot of film including some stuff I've had sitting around for a month or more. I've currently for 5 rolls of Delta 3200 (2x EI 1600, 2x EI 3200, 1x EI 12.8k), 4 rolls of TMY-2 (2x EI 12.8k, 2x EI 1600) and 2 rolls of HP5+ (EI 1600). The TMY and HP5 shot at 1600 will be the first in the tank because they contain shots I hope to submit to a show before the weekend is over, but I'm probably going to try some of the crazy push processing while I'm developing and soup the 12.8k TMY rolls in some kind of concoction...currently thinking 3 parts Rodinal, 1 part 1:1 Microphen and/or 1:4TMaxDev, semi-stand developed (two slow inversions every 10 minutes) for an hour and a half as this worked surprisingly well on some TX400 recently. I noticed times on the massive development chart for TMax Dev pushing Delta 3200 up to 12.8k, so I might try that with the single roll and run the other four through Microphen while it's still fresh.

I'll try to make a point of printing contact sheets and scanning them for you guys to have a look once they're done, and of course links to any full prints I make. Wish me luck.

Some success to report! Out of that large batch of film, I managed to get 7 rolls processed and contact sheets made for three of them. The heavy pushed TMY-2 and 3200 Delta are thin as you'd expect, but both look to be very printable at a glance. One of the two rolls of TMY-2 stuck together on the reel and ruined a bunch of frames, but it looks like the parts that did get to process were too underexposed to be all that usable without much head-desking, and I'm not even positive what was on it anymore so I'm not that mad about it. The important shots all turned out really well. TMax Dev 1+4 ratio with TMY-2 and HP5+ in TMax Dev @68F. This is the first time I've been able to use tmax dev and I have to say I'm pretty impressed. The HP5 roll developed with it looks fantastic. I'll try to make sure i get some links up after work tonight.

Also happy to report the Rodinal / Microphen soup worked again. I used a 16oz steel tank and mixed 3 parts Rodinal (dil 1:25) and 1 part Microphen (dil 1:1). This was mixed around 65F and the steel tank was placed in the sink with a basin of cold water that was cycled every 30 minutes to keep it around 65F. 1-2 gentle inversions every 10 minutes for 1h 40m, then stop bath and fix as normal. It's a shame the one roll stuck together, but the other one looks good as a negative...need to get it in the enlarger to really know for sure. The lone roll of Delta 3200 that got pushed to 12.8k got developed in a single reel steel tank with Tmax 1:4 and turned out as well.