Well I feel something I am doing is wrong here. Knowing I have developed lots of good negatives/final prints using 130 paper developer at 1-10 for film, I just tested the time to achieve maximum blacks and it was around 1 min that the neg faded to black. I was really expecting it to be close to my development time of 6:30 for tri-x. I assume I only needed to develop the test piece and not fix it?
Zone System - Find EI and dev time without resorting to sensitometry
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Well I feel something I am doing is wrong here. Knowing I have developed lots of good negatives/final prints using 130 paper developer at 1-10 for film, I just tested the time to achieve maximum blacks and it was around 1 min that the neg faded to black. I was really expecting it to be close to my development time of 6:30 for tri-x. I assume I only needed to develop the test piece and not fix it?
You should fix and wash as well. Remember that this is only a test for minimum development time to get Dmax. Although, I am surprised at the short time you gave. It may be that the unfixed film gave a false reading.
PE
PE
Eyes could be sometimes deceiving in judging whether the film strip has developed to maximum black. The following method can be of help. Take an adequately long strip of daylight fogged film. Hold it at one end and immerse the opposite end in fresh working developer for about an hour. Take care that only one half is immersed and the other is not. Wash the strip. Hold it at the developed end and immerse the undeveloped end into fresh working developer till it appears to have reached maximum black. Note down the time. Wash the whole strip and fix it. If the entire strip appears to be uniformly black (or use a meter to measure the light through each of the two halves and check if you get the same reading) then you have the minimum time for maximum black.
I did the daylight development maximum blacks test again tonight, but in a different way. In one tank I had the leader in a130 developer at 1-10 for 1.5 hours, in the mean time I also did cut pieces of tri-x in another tank of a130 developer at 1-10 for 30 seconds, 1 min, 2 min, 3min........and so forth till 10 mins per cut piece of tri-x 400. All have been stopped, fixed and washed. Doing a quick look threw each piece looking at the bathroom vanity lights, ZERO light gets threw leader section that developed for 1.5 hours. Each of the other pieces gets denser with each extra min of development. The 10 min one can only see the physical light bulb and nothing else. The 5 min range can see whats around the light bulb like the mirror and such.
Based on your experimental findings I would guess that minimum time for maximum black is around 12-15 minutes. Surely, 1 minute (reported in post #140) was an underestimate.
If you are in the mood to experiment, you can shoot a few frames with your camera and develop the strip for 10 minutes in daylight tank and tell us what you get.
If you are in the mood to experiment, you can shoot a few frames with your camera and develop the strip for 10 minutes in daylight tank and tell us what you get.
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I habitually have a look at the leader of the films I develop. When the leader is so dense that only the bulb can be seen through it, then the film is probably overdeveloped. When the film is developed to a reasonable contrast, the surroundings of the bulb can be seen, at least to some extent. In fact, I have seen leaders which looked a bit too thin, but the film printed very nicely. Pull processed film would have a leader looking that thin. Considering your test, the 5' development time looks closer to the ideal IMHO, perhaps extending it to 7' is better.
Based on your experimental findings I would guess that minimum time for maximum black is around 12-15 minutes. Surely, 1 minute (reported in post #140) was an underestimate.
If you are in the mood to experiment, you can shoot a few frames with your camera and develop the strip for 10 minutes in daylight tank and tell us what you get.
Correct, the one minute was the point that it really started to build contrast, but with no test strip of absolute max black to judge it against, i could not determine that it was actually max black.
As for the second part, actually develop some negatives with pictures on them for 10mins?
Thank you for your insight. Im starting to thinking have been slightly overdeveloping my negs.
Yes. As I understood it, PE's point was that the minimum time for (near) maximum black is a good starting point for figuring out the development time for a film developer combination.
I am going to do some more testing just for my own curiosity and understanding. Shoot the same scene and do part of the roll at 4 min, 7 min, and 10min. Just to get a better understanding of the overall effects that developing time has.
Fantastic! Please consider sharing your learning as well as pics of the negatives when you are done with the testing.
Does this mean that you can overdevelop your film to be too dense?
I am going to do some testing with a roll of all the same exposures, and cutting the roll into sections and using different developing times. I will post the results to the tread.
But yes. You can over develop.
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