Tri-X @ 1600 help!

Michael W said:

I rate Tri-X at 320 for Rodinal 1:50 13 mins at 20 degrees.
Haven't pushed it but I have seen it done with good results. Pretty sure they used your time of around 18 minutes, so you should be on the right track.
I also presoak with no problems, been doing it for more than 20 years.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Michael. After re-fixing, re-rinsing, etc. I loaded one in the enlarger last night and made a few prints. Really nice tonality. Plenty of shadow detail. Couldn't believe it. And at 5x7, no grain at all. A tad contrasty but i like a lot of contrast, anyway. This may be a new favorite combination for fast film, for me.

Tri-X at 1600 in Rodinal, is a winner.


Hope to get a decent scanner before too long, and when I do, I'll post a few of these images!

Alternative for Rodinal

Glad you found a solution for your fogging; as noted, always first suspect your fixer.

As far as stand development is concerned, my own experience is a technique called "FFDD", or "Fast Film Diluted Developer". I used it extensively for theater and dance photography in the 80's.

Basics : take a normal, but vigorous working stock developer (like D-76), dilute it (e.g. 1 dev + 4 water), agitate for 30 - 45 secs, and let stand ; total dev time = original dev time (stock solution) x total dilution (here : x5)

Chemical/mechanical gist : fast film used to be thicker (Tri-X still is), and not agitating the soup made developer "exhaust" faster in the areas with more density (causing underdevelopment).
Result: "overdevelopment" of the areas with low density in the negative (the shadows in the original) without hiking up the gradation of the negative, but still gaining 2/3 - 1.5 stops in sensitivity (based on the actual sensitivity point).

Danger : bromide drag; you can see it as drag lines dropping down from your perforations on your neg, or as halo in dark areas (in the print) close to lighter areas. In theater photography (using 35 mm) some kind of halo above a character with a black background.

My experience indicates this can mostly be avoided if you agitate for 5 secs (1 up-and-down cycle with the tank) every 4' (on 1+3) to 6' (on 1+5).

The result is a neg that has a REAL increased sensitivity of 2/3 to 1.5 stops, without an un-printable contrast, but with a copy range of 8 - 11 stops (very useful in theater photography, but a PITA for normal lighting conditions).

A strong No-No would be the pre-soaking : this is useful when using very short dev times with a lot of agitation (used originally by press photogs to shorten their dev times), but when combined with stand development could lead to uneven development (you have to migrate your chemicals through a water soaked emulsion, not very efficient if you don't shake your soup constantly).

BTW, FFDD is bound not to be very useful on T-Max, because of the 2-layer construction, the thinner layers and less silver in the emulsion.

Of course, YMMV.

Wkr,
Geert

I have been ussing the Rodinal 1;100 STAND for a long timenow and since i din't know it didn't work, (chuck, chuck) I got super results.... and I still do. Cut pre-soaks and vigorous agitations..... just a regrular one will do every now and again .... super results..... try it..... forget experts get your own tests and have some fun
Logan

Belfox - thank you for some great guidance on FFDD. Whlogan ... Now that I have had such great results with normal 1:50 processing, I don't see a benefit to trying stand developing. Maybe it would reduce the contrast to use stand developing instead of 1:50?

I guess it will be easier for you to comment when I post some of the images but I'm really thrilled with the results of 1:50 Rodinal Tri-X / 18.5 mins / 20 degrees C / 3 minute pre-soak / normal agitation. I like the look ... which is not to say that I won't like the look of stand dev ... maybe even better? Maybe I will give it a go one day. But 18.5 mins is more convenient for impatient people such as myself.