[pure-silver] Re: Agfa APX 100

At 09:55 AM 3/29/2008, you wrote:
You know FP4 might be a good replacement for APX 100. I too found Delta 100 flat for my type of work. But I do not think that anything will replace the APX 100/Rodinal combination. Just my experience though. Ten years ago I used D-76 allot but left it because of getting blown out highlights.
Contrast is a matter of development. While there is a characteristic contrast range of film due to the distribution of crystal sensitivity in the emulsion this is usually not much different from one to another pictorial films. One sees it when comparing pictorial film to commercial or lith film. If the contrast is too low increase development. Of course, exposure must be adjusted also. You should be able to get the same contrast index with any common pictorial film. The shape of the characteristic curve will vary among films and will affect the tone rendition to some extent but the only current film with a curve much different than others is Kodak Tri-X Professional film, the one with ISO-320 speed. It has a curve with contrast that increases continously with density. I don't know about blown out highlights with D-76. I use D-76 1:1 for T-Max films and do not have this problem. I also use Rodinal, mostly for sheet film, and have never seen a significant difference in tone rendition between the two. Tabular grain films like T-Max and Delta tend to increase contrast faster with development time than cubical grain films so its possible to get very high highlight densities if one is not very careful. Rodinal at very high dilutions will produce some "compensation" that is, the creation of a shoulder, or low contrast area, for the highlights. But, since "blown out" highlights means no detail in them, this is probably even worse than normal contrast and high densities because burning in will not help. I've used a fair amount of APX 100, mostly as sheet film, its very nice stuff, I liked especially for portrait work. 


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Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
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