First Developing: Disaster - Please tell me what I did wrong

[billorg]

I used to develop my black and white film in the 70's and 80's, so I am not a newbie, but it's been a long time and there have been so many new developers and films since then, so I need to get up to speed. Here was my recipe:

Film - Ilford Delta 400

Tank - Paterson Super System 4 Universal (holds 2 35mm or 1 120) I only had one 35 reel in so did not do inversions, just the twirly stem.

Camera - Minolta Maxxum 7000 w/35-70 lens and 50mm 1.4.

Scanner - Epson V550

Only distilled water used to mix with chemicals.

I did an initial film rinse with water for 5 min. Dumped and added developer. I know this wash is not necessary and I never did it in the old days.

Developer: Ilford Ilfotec HC 1:31 dilution. 31.2ml developer and 968.8ml water. Developed at 68F for 8 min 11 sec. Agitated for 10 sec each minute using the twirly stem - not inversions. Dumped 10 sec before last min.

Stop bath - Ilford Ilfostop - 50ml concentrate to 950ml water. Stop bath for 1 min

Fixer Ilford Rapid Fixer 200ml fixer and 800ml water fixed for 5 min. Agitated every 1 min for 10 sec.

Dump and wash with filtered tap water for 10 min. Filled and drained many times

Photo Flo for 2 min - 5ml in 1000ml water

Here are the results - Mud with no dynamic range at all. Flat as a pancake, grainy and no acuity. Even a tintype is better.. Is this a bad combination of developer and film? I would doubt Ilford would make a film and developer that would be this incompatible. The motorcycle pic is better but not sure why.

Please let me know what you think happened or what I did wrong. Time? Agitation style or? Also, film leader with black areas, never seen this before.

I have a roll I shot on my Rolleiflex 2.8f to evaluate the camera which I need to see asap, but now I am gun shy to use this same recipe. That film is Ilford HP5. Any suggestions for a recipe for that? Thank, Bill
























Black spots in a row




Film leader - does not continue on to pictures. What could this be from?

 

[Tom Axford]

You say the film was Ilford Delta 400. If my memory serves me well, that is b&w negative film. Yet you have shown positive images as the results. What do the negatives look like?

Post a photo of the actual film strips, that makes it so much easier to diagnose development faults.

 

[billorg]

Here’s one

 

[tassienick]

billorg

Please let me know what you think happened or what I did wrong. Time? Agitation style or? Also, film leader with black areas, never seen this before.

Honestly I’m not sure what I’m suppose to be looking at? The scans you’ve shared seem fine (excepting the black dots, not sure what that is). It might just be poor resolution for web sharing, but that’s about what I’d expect from 35mm black and white…

Are you sure the ‘flatness’ isn’t down to your subject being in shade (ie. low contrast)? The motorbike shot, which you seem happy with, is the only one where the subject has direct, contrasty light.

 

[philm5d]

I've been devving film all my life - started off on the local newspaper, (also in the 1970s). We used tri-x film, 35mm and 120, a got lovely smooth relatively - grain free results devving in Kodak D76 in Paterson Tanks. I have to say I never used your Ilford film and developer. The dark spots look like air bells - suprising since you did a pre-rinse. I recommend vigorous inversions for the first 5-10 secs then a few inversions every minute thereafter- throw the twirly stick away.

If I had to guess about the grainy results I'd say outdated or badly stored film???- You are meticulous in your devving description method so I doubt you would use old film, but it's possible? Second is some chemical contamination somewhere down the line. I've often found that the more meticulous one tries to be the more likely some sort of ****-up will occur - it's a paradox (or is it ironic- I mix these terms up!).

Again wht we used to use was Kodak Tri-X devved in full strength Kodak D76, 68 degrees f. for 6 minutes if memory serves, vigorous inversions every minute - followed by lukewarm plain water rinse- followed by a rapid fixer (I think that may have been Ilford). The D76 was poured back into the 5 litre bottle and re-used ad infinitum. We had no process control in terms of number of films going through although I tried to introduce a system of logging film throughput - a bit useless if I was the only one doing it!

Eventually the dev would take on a pea-soup greenish colour and then we made a fresh batch. Oddly enough the results seem to get better in terms of grain the older the developer became, sort of like fine-wine, until pea-soup time when, all of a sudden, a film would emerge "thin" and undeveloped - even then the results were printatble. Happy days!

PS We did experiment with other developers. Kodak brought out HC110 a sort of thick brown gloopy liquid that had to be diluted but was quicker to make up than the powder based D76. However we found it too grainy and unpredicatable so we went back to plain old simple D76 that has only two things in it - three if you count water !!!

If we ever needed to uprate Tri-X we used ilford Microphen dev which was more "vigorous" - I once actually rated Tri-X at 1600 ASA and got useable results,- can you believe it?

I used to develop my black and white film in the 70's and 80's, so I am not a newbie, but it's been a long time and there have been so many new developers and films since then, so I need to get up to speed. Here was my recipe:

Film - Ilford Delta 400

Tank - Paterson Super System 4 Universal (holds 2 35mm or 1 120) I only had one 35 reel in so did not do inversions, just the twirly stem.

Camera - Minolta Maxxum 7000 w/35-70 lens and 50mm 1.4.

Scanner - Epson V550

Only distilled water used to mix with chemicals.

I did an initial film rinse with water for 5 min. Dumped and added developer. I know this wash is not necessary and I never did it in the old days.

Developer: Ilford Ilfotec HC 1:31 dilution. 31.2ml developer and 968.8ml water. Developed at 68F for 8 min 11 sec. Agitated for 10 sec each minute using the twirly stem - not inversions. Dumped 10 sec before last min.

Stop bath - Ilford Ilfostop - 50ml concentrate to 950ml water. Stop bath for 1 min

Fixer Ilford Rapid Fixer 200ml fixer and 800ml water fixed for 5 min. Agitated every 1 min for 10 sec.

Dump and wash with filtered tap water for 10 min. Filled and drained many times

Photo Flo for 2 min - 5ml in 1000ml water

Here are the results - Mud with no dynamic range at all. Flat as a pancake, grainy and no acuity. Even a tintype is better.. Is this a bad combination of developer and film? I would doubt Ilford would make a film and developer that would be this incompatible. The motorcycle pic is better but not sure why.

Please let me know what you think happened or what I did wrong. Time? Agitation style or? Also, film leader with black areas, never seen this before.

I have a roll I shot on my Rolleiflex 2.8f to evaluate the camera which I need to see asap, but now I am gun shy to use this same recipe. That film is Ilford HP5. Any suggestions for a recipe for that? Thank, Bill












Black spots in a row


Film leader - does not continue on to pictures. What could this be from?

--
"If people knew how hard I worked to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all" - Michelangelo.

 

[Overrank]

I’m also not sure what is wrong with the photos - they look fine to me.

Ive noticed that when I post photos to here it ups the contrast a bit … do they photos look different on your computer ?

 

[billorg]

I’m also not sure what is wrong with the photos - they look fine to me.

Ive noticed that when I post photos to here it ups the contrast a bit … do they photos look different on your computer ?

Yes, they do look different here. Why would they make changes to uploads on a photo forum?? That makes no sense. Bill

 

[Tom Axford]

I’m also not sure what is wrong with the photos - they look fine to me.

Ive noticed that when I post photos to here it ups the contrast a bit … do they photos look different on your computer ?

Yes, they do look different here. Why would they make changes to uploads on a photo forum?? That makes no sense. Bill

They do not make changes to uploaded images, they are identical to what was on your computer before uploading.

However, they may look different if they use a colour space not supported by the browser that someone is using to view them.

Make sure your images are sRGB so that they will appear the same to everyone viewing them.

 

[AlbertTheLazy]

...

Tank - Paterson Super System 4 Universal (holds 2 35mm or 1 120) I only had one 35 reel in so did not do inversions, just the twirly stem.

...

Developer: Ilford Ilfotec HC 1:31 dilution. 31.2ml developer and 968.8ml water.

Why are you making everything up in 1 litre batches. IIRC the Paterson tanks need about 300ml for a 35mm spiral.

Ilford's recommended practice to minimise measurement errors is to dilute the concentrate 1:4 to make a stock solution and then dilute 1 part stock to
7 parts water to make a working solution.

The dilution figures you give are suspiciously precise, to a fraction of a millilitre. Are you sure about them.

Developed at 68F for 8 min 11 sec. Agitated for 10 sec each minute using the twirly stem - not inversions. Dumped 10 sec before last min.

I have no experience of this film/dev combination but I have used the Patterson taks extensively. I always used inversions for agitation. If you are concerned about the spiral riding up the column just use a short length of plastic pipe or hose to act as a spacer to hold it down.

...

Here are the results - Mud with no dynamic range at all. Flat as a pancake, grainy and no acuity.

Looks under-exposed to me. Although inadequate agitation might account in part for that.

Why do you post such low resolution scans? It makes it practically impossible to assess your images.

Even a tintype is better.. Is this a bad combination of developer and film? I would doubt Ilford would make a film and developer that would be this incompatible.

So would I. There is definitely something wrong with your technique.

That said, in the Ilford product sheet for Delta 400 there is a list of recommended 'best' developers and Ilfotec HC is not in there.

Loading…

www.ilfordphoto.com

In fact, reading the tech sheet for Ilfotec HC I would not consider using it for small throughput tank processing. It has all the characteristics of a developer intended for use in professional quantities. Yes, it is possible to use it in spiral tanks but the 'make up a litre, then re-dilute that for use' approach gives a high risk of the dev oxidising in storage unless it is used very quickly. One film per week could be bad news.

Was your stock solution fresh when you processed this film?

The motorcycle pic is better but not sure why.

Contrastier lighting.

Please let me know what you think happened or what I did wrong. Time? Agitation style or? Also, film leader with black areas, never seen this before.


Black spots in a row

As someone else has said, these look like air bubbles. Standard advice is:

'Tap the tank firmly on the work bench to dislodge any air bubbles which may be trapped in the processing spiral.'

Your mention of using the 'twirly stem' indicates that you may have been agitating by just twisting the rod. Are you aware that you can also dunk vertically with that 'stem' ? It may not be as effective as inversion but at least it will further minimise the risk of air bubbles.

Film leader - does not continue on to pictures. What could this be from?

Assuming that the leader image is a positive scan this looks perfectly normal. The reason for winding on 2 or 3 frames is to get past the part of the film that is fogged through the cassette slit.

--
Albert the lazy photographer
Having fun with my cameras in Herefordshire

 

[Paul P K]

I used to develop my black and white film in the 70's and 80's, so I am not a newbie, but it's been a long time and there have been so many new developers and films since then, so I need to get up to speed. Here was my recipe:

Film - Ilford Delta 400

Tank - Paterson Super System 4 Universal (holds 2 35mm or 1 120) I only had one 35 reel in so did not do inversions, just the twirly stem.

Camera - Minolta Maxxum 7000 w/35-70 lens and 50mm 1.4.

Scanner - Epson V550

Only distilled water used to mix with chemicals.

I did an initial film rinse with water for 5 min. Dumped and added developer. I know this wash is not necessary and I never did it in the old days.

Developer: Ilford Ilfotec HC 1:31 dilution. 31.2ml developer and 968.8ml water. Developed at 68F for 8 min 11 sec. Agitated for 10 sec each minute using the twirly stem - not inversions. Dumped 10 sec before last min.

Stop bath - Ilford Ilfostop - 50ml concentrate to 950ml water. Stop bath for 1 min

Fixer Ilford Rapid Fixer 200ml fixer and 800ml water fixed for 5 min. Agitated every 1 min for 10 sec.

Dump and wash with filtered tap water for 10 min. Filled and drained many times

Photo Flo for 2 min - 5ml in 1000ml water

Here are the results - Mud with no dynamic range at all. Flat as a pancake, grainy and no acuity. Even a tintype is better.. Is this a bad combination of developer and film? I would doubt Ilford would make a film and developer that would be this incompatible. The motorcycle pic is better but not sure why.

Please let me know what you think happened or what I did wrong. Time? Agitation style or? Also, film leader with black areas, never seen this before.

I have a roll I shot on my Rolleiflex 2.8f to evaluate the camera which I need to see asap, but now I am gun shy to use this same recipe. That film is Ilford HP5. Any suggestions for a recipe for that? Thank, Bill




Black spots in a row


Film leader - does not continue on to pictures. What could this be from?

Started shooting, and developing b/w film in the early 70's with Paterson Super System 4 Universal tanks, despite sometimes having to develop dozens of films (I had a number of those tanks), and continued doing so untill I gladly (no more messing around with chemicals and spending long nights in the darkroom to have prints to show the next day) switched to digital in the early 00's.

What I learned from the start was that the ' recipis' manufacturers gave for developing film asre mere indications to get a morer or less acceptable result.

But in the end it boiled down to having to experiment (a lot) with various/many brands of developer, and development times, agitation and developer temperature untill you found that one developer that gave that specific result for that one film in that one situation.

The contrast (and density) of the final negative caan be infulenced by choice of developer, temparature and amount of agitation.

E.g my preferred film was Tri-X. Loved the grain, and the contrast it gave depite being a relative high ISO film (slow B/ film like Kodak Panasonic-X give high contrast, while fast b/w film like Kodak Tri-x X or - worse - Kodak FourX are more flat). Initiaqlly tried HC-110, later D76, but ended up with Ilford Microphen with experience based various development times, temperatures and agitation, for e.g. an acceptable grain, spunk but not exaggerated contrast and good 400/800 ISO result/negatives, or Rodinal if I wanted high contrast. course grain (which became spectacular when developing TMZ 3200 in it).

Unfortunately you IMO will need to experiment (a lot) to find that one combinatiion of all factors mentioned that will give you the results you envison. Back in the film shooting days that was pretty much normal, and plenty of books have been written by famous and not so famous photographers on how they developed their films .

I e.g. still have a copy of early 80's bought Lustrum Press : Darkroom ( Lib of Congress Cat Card Nr 76-57201) in my photobook library. In it several photographers ranging from e.g. Wynn Bulock, Ralph Gibson to Duane Muichals and W. Eugene Smith allow a sneek peek in their darkroom secrets, and most of the time those are not 'standard' procedure.

One thing I however would change immediately is the 'agitated for 10 sec each minute using the twirly stem - not inversions' part. It's an open invitaion to the (what I think are) bublesd and developing (IMO actually residue undeveloped film, which normally would be disolved by the fix) stripes. Better go for full inversion, toppling the tank 180 degrees a few times, and then gently tapping it on a table or whatver you use to dislodged possible bubbles from the film.

With regards to your scan results, I strongly recommend to use some kind of editing software to brush up the initial scanning results.

I use the same scanner, but don't stick with the results OoF the scanner. Instead I afterwardds run them through Nikon NX-2 and NX-D, free software.

That doftware allows to easily and WYSIWYG retrieve overblown highlights and underexposed shadows, change exposure and contrast, sharpen and crop, basically everything you did, with much more effort and messing around with chemicals etc. back in the analog film developing and printing days ( and without copy/past or mandatory ong time subscribtions)


Processed with NX D

My 2 cents

--
all in a day's work
http://www.pbase.com/paul_k/

 

[Overrank]

I’m also not sure what is wrong with the photos - they look fine to me.

Ive noticed that when I post photos to here it ups the contrast a bit … do they photos look different on your computer ?

Yes, they do look different here. Why would they make changes to uploads on a photo forum?? That makes no sense. Bill

They do not make changes to uploaded images, they are identical to what was on your computer before uploading.

However, they may look different if they use a colour space not supported by the browser that someone is using to view them.

Make sure your images are sRGB so that they will appear the same to everyone viewing them.

Original colour profile


sRGB colour profile

It must be something else than that - the original wasn’t sRGB, converting to sRGB makes no difference when displayed on an iPad using Safari, seems to be *very* slightly lighter on a PC, but using the image viewer they're the same. Looking again on Safari maybe the sRGB is slightly more sepia toned in the browser, but not difference in the image viewer

 

[billorg]

They do not make changes to uploaded images, they are identical to what was on your computer before uploading.

However, they may look different if they use a colour space not supported by the browser that someone is using to view them.

Make sure your images are sRGB so that they will appear the same to everyone viewing them.

Color space? These are black and white. Bill

 

[billorg]

>>Why are you making everything up in 1 litre batches. IIRC the Paterson tanks need about 300ml for a 35mm spiral..

I only needed enough to develop 1 35mm and 1 120 roll in 2 separate development sessions. I dumped everything from session one and used fresh for session 2 since this was my first time and didn’t want to make up multiple dilutions. I used 300ml for the 35mm and 500 for the 120.

>>The dilution figures you give are suspiciously precise, to a fraction of a millilitre. Are you sure about them.

Of course. I use a 1cc syringe to measure the fraction of an ml..

>>>Why do you post such low resolution scans? It makes it practically impossible to assess your images.



I scanned at 1200dpi just so I could get an initial impression for the sake of time. No need for anything higher for a quick preview. I did no image editing on any of them other that a crop on one, so these were fresh off the scanner

.>>Was your stock solution fresh when you processed this film?
it was bought from B&H a few days before using. Ilford doesn’t have expiration dates, just serial numbers so I don’t have that info.

Thanks, Bill

 

[billorg]

What I learned from the start was that the ' recipis' manufacturers gave for developing film asre mere indications to get a morer or less acceptable result.

But in the end it boiled down to having to experiment (a lot) with various/many brands of developer, and development times, agitation and developer temperature untill you found that one developer that gave that specific result for that one film in that one situation.

Right. But I have to start somewhere to know where I need to go.

One thing I however would change immediately is the 'agitated for 10 sec each minute using the twirly stem - not inversions' part. It's an open invitaion to the (what I think are) bublesd and developing (IMO actually residue undeveloped film, which normally would be disolved by the fix) stripes. Better go for full inversion, toppling the tank 180 degrees a few times, and then gently tapping it on a table or whatver you use to dislodged possible bubbles from the film.

I did this with the second roll (120). I will be scanning those tonight to see how they are.

With regards to your scan results, I strongly recommend to use some kind of editing software to brush up the initial scanning results.

Of course, but these were not worth working on and I wanted to show them as untouched as possible. I am not new to image editing, I've been doing it for decades as I was also a web designer long before digital came along.
Thanks, Bill

 

[Autonerd]

I wouldn't call it a disaster. No pictures on the roll -- that's a disaster!

I think you got some great advice here about agitation via inversion vs. the swizzle stick. I use steel tanks, not Pattersons, but inversion has never done me wrong.

If the negatives seem a little flat, I'd urge you to think back to the 70s and 80s when you were last developing film -- and remember the printing process, when one of our parameters was the choice of paper. I think there are a lot of younger film fans now who have only worked on a hybrid process (chemical development hen scanning) and have not done optical printing. They seem to think all the contrast should show in the negative, but I don't agree with that -- the negative should be a little flatter with lots of gray tones to give us the most options when printing. We can punch up contrast in our choice of paper (or filters) and our dodging/burning technique. With scanning, there's nothing wrong with punching up contrast in post-production -- to my thinking it's not cheating if it emulates what we can do in the darkroom.

If you're having trouble, I'd suggest working with the materials you last used in the 70s and 80s. I started where I left off -- HP5 and Kodak D-76 developer. I moved on to HC-110, but am now back to D-76 and experimenting with XTol. Contrasting (heh) what I said above, I do find that HC-110 leaves some negs a little flatter than what I'd like, and I would think Ilfotec HC might do the same.

BTW, when you show us negs, show us the whole thing, outside the frame -- edge writing and the sprocket-hole area can give vital clues as to what is going on with development.

Lastly, don't be so hard on yourself! You developed your first role in, what, 30 years? 40? and got images! That's a win!

Aaron

 

[billorg]

I wouldn't call it a disaster. No pictures on the roll -- that's a disaster!

I think you got some great advice here about agitation via inversion vs. the swizzle stick. I use steel tanks, not Pattersons, but inversion has never done me wrong.

If the negatives seem a little flat, I'd urge you to think back to the 70s and 80s when you were last developing film -- and remember the printing process, when one of our parameters was the choice of paper. I think there are a lot of younger film fans now who have only worked on a hybrid process (chemical development hen scanning) and have not done optical printing. They seem to think all the contrast should show in the negative, but I don't agree with that -- the negative should be a little flatter with lots of gray tones to give us the most options when printing. We can punch up contrast in our choice of paper (or filters) and our dodging/burning technique. With scanning, there's nothing wrong with punching up contrast in post-production -- to my thinking it's not cheating if it emulates what we can do in the darkroom.

If you're having trouble, I'd suggest working with the materials you last used in the 70s and 80s. I started where I left off -- HP5 and Kodak D-76 developer. I moved on to HC-110, but am now back to D-76 and experimenting with XTol. Contrasting (heh) what I said above, I do find that HC-110 leaves some negs a little flatter than what I'd like, and I would think Ilfotec HC might do the same.

BTW, when you show us negs, show us the whole thing, outside the frame -- edge writing and the sprocket-hole area can give vital clues as to what is going on with development.

Lastly, don't be so hard on yourself! You developed your first role in, what, 30 years? 40? and got images! That's a win!

Aaron

Thank you so much for understanding Aaron! I left off with Tri-X and D-76. I never once shot a roll of Ilford back then as it seemed the second class citizen next to Kodak (just in principle I guess as no one used it that I knew of and I think it was cheaper than Kodak). So it was Tri-x or Plus-x, and sometimes Panatomic x. In the darkroom, I made test exposures by covering all of the paper but a 2-3" swatch using something opaque and did 5 sec exposures moving the cover each 5 sec, then I developed and decided which strip was the right exposure and used that time. I don't remember my paper choices varied as to what contrast I needed, more just what finish I wanted. I was a yearbook photographer too and those were all done on glossy. My own personal ones were usually an RC paper. But at school, I think most of the chemicals were already mixed for us so I can't say I remember mixing the chemicals much there. I worked in Medical Photography at Georgetown University Hospital for a while, so did a lot more there in that darkroom. But that was still a long time ago. Before that I also did hand color printing/enlarging at a place that had all the processors including a great Colenta machine and you would pay by the hour and by the print. I spent a lot of time there.

I guess with these first negatives, they looked nothing like what I was used to from B&W of the past which I have scanned in these later years with no problems. So the differences just jumped out at me. I am hard on myself as I am a detail oriented person, so when things go unexpectedly bad, I am just kind of left wondering... But I never give up and just want to learn from others doing the same thing who are further along.

I am interested in XTol and have some here, so I may try it first, but tonight I have to get to scanning my 120 roll that I used the Ilfosol HC on as well but did full inversions and no pre-wash on. Those were the only changes I made other than time as that film was HP-5. Thanks again for the kind words! Bill

 

[Tom Axford]

They do not make changes to uploaded images, they are identical to what was on your computer before uploading.

However, they may look different if they use a colour space not supported by the browser that someone is using to view them.

Make sure your images are sRGB so that they will appear the same to everyone viewing them.

Color space? These are black and white. Bill

Black and white images still have a colour model and colour profile. Here is what the metadata in your first image shows:





More often, black and white images are produced from cameras that capture colour images and the b&w image is often in the same colour space as the original colour image.

I make quite a lot of b&w images in sRGB because it is easier for me to use the same colour space as I use for colour images.

 

[Autonerd]

I left off with Tri-X and D-76. I never once shot a roll of Ilford back then as it seemed the second class citizen next to Kodak (just in principle I guess as no one used it that I knew of and I think it was cheaper than Kodak). So it was Tri-x or Plus-x, and sometimes Panatomic x.

I took my college photo classes in Rochester, NY, so I was all about Kodak -- mostly T-Max, which was new and nifty then (a tabular-grain film like Delta). I had a semester planned in the UK and was going to take a 100' roll, and a friend (and accomplished photographer) recommended Ilford HP5 -- "Treat it just like Tri-X", he said. (I didn't shoot much Tri-X so didn't know how to treat it.) I got great results from it and when I went back to film in 2019, HP5 was my first choice.

Oy, I'm reminiscing. Anyway, I've settled on traditional-grain films like HP5, FP4 (Ilford's Plus X competitor) and Kentmere 100 (an Ilford product). I have shot some Tri-X but the base curls; Ilford films lie flat and I find them easier to scan in my Epson.

ANYWAY -- You might find the traditional-grain films give you a little more contrast in the negs. I'd try that. As for developing, as I said, it's still good ol' Kodak for me.

I guess with these first negatives, they looked nothing like what I was used to from B&W of the past which I have scanned in these later years with no problems.

Interesting. The nature of Delta, maybe? I've never shot it. I ran a roll of T-Max a few months back and decided that it bored me -- Back In The Day, I loved its lack of grain, but today I have a way to get nearly-grain-free B&W photos with lots of contrast (this little gizmo I own that says Sony on the front). I like the character of traditional-grain films. For now, at least.

I am hard on myself as I am a detail oriented person, so when things go unexpectedly bad, I am just kind of left wondering... But I never give up and just want to learn from others doing the same thing who are further along.

Sometimes you have to remind yourself that some things are skills rather than inborn talents. And it's been a long time since you've been on the back of this particular horse. Cut yourself a little break.

Aaron

 

[Bags27]

With t-grain films, I'm thinking either DDX or T-MAX is the optimal developer.

For scanning, thin negatives seem preferable. And one does wonders in post with contrast. So, if I get a clear, sharp negative, I don't really ask for more. But then again, I don't wet print.

 

[Gesture]

STAINLESS STEEL TANKS. So much easier to load, dry and clean, put in a water bath and invert and tap after inversion.

These negs look good.

Only rules: keep the temperature of all solutions and rinse water the same. Agitatiion as prescribed.