[pure-silver] Re: Does Shorter Dev Time Always Give You Lowest Grain?
- From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:42:11 -0800
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Daneliuk" <tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Pure-Silver Mailing List" <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2012 6:14 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] Does Shorter Dev Time Always Give You
Lowest Grain?
For N Development of TXP 120 @68F, I do the following:
PMK 13 min / 15 sec agitation
HC-110B 4.5 min / 30 sec agitation
D-76 6 min / 30 sec agitation
Is it the case that the shortest development time will
always lead to
the least grain or does the formulation of these different
developers
contribute in ways that makes this rule of thumb
incorrect?
To my eye the HC-110B does seem to yield the lowest grain
but I haven't
done carefully controlled tests with the same batch of
film and subject/
lighting conditions.
--
A lot of things contribute to grain but generally low
activity developers will produce less than more active ones.
However, more active developers require less time to reach a
given degree of contrast. I have not worked with either
HC-110 or PMK enough to have an idea of their graininess but
have used lots of D-76. D-76 is a low grain developer but
some, such as Xtol, will produce less. Probably the minimum
you can get with a practical developer will be from
Perceptol or Microdol-X used full strength. That will have
about 3/4 stop less speed than D-76.
Among the factors tending to finer grain is the salt
content of the developer. Those with a lot of sulfite tend
to be fine grain more because of the salt effect than
because of the halide solvent effect.
If you want to see if short development time leads to
fine grain try Dektol at 1:1, time will be a couple of
minutes for Tri-X. Press photographers often used paper
developer for film because it was fast and readily
available. But that was 4x5 sheet film where grain was of no
consequence.
--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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