[pure-silver] Re: Fine Grain Experiemnt


----- Original Message ----- From: "Stein" <rstein@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 7:33 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] Fine Grain Experiemnt


Dear Friends,

Well I benefitted greatly from your advice last time and now I wish to ask again. If you remember you gave me practical suggestions as to increasing grain size in medium format film. The combo of Ilford 3200 at 2500 ASA and Rodinal 14 minutes At 20 degrees worked for me.

Now I wish to try the other end of the scale. I want to see if my medium format B/W negatives can get close to the normal 4 x 5 negatives I produce. Note I currently use Ilford FP4 Plus at 125 ASA and Rodinal 8 minutes at 20 degrees.

What are my options re film and developer for this? I use a rotary processor with a 5 minute pre-soak for most B/W films. Please note I live at the end of the world and supplies of esoteric materials like Eastern European films or fresh water can sometimes be hard to obtain. Any formulae for developers based on beer can be easily obtained....

    Uncle Dick

PS: You mustn't think that I distrust my local camera shop owners for advice but you see I hurt my back last year and I cannot throw them as far....

About the finest grain you can get with standard materials is to use a tab grain film like 100T-Max processed in Kodak Microdol-X or Ilford Perceptol (they are virtually identical) used full strength. I've used this combination for 35mm negatives and find they are nearly as fine grain as Technical Pan. Other tab grain films, like Ilford Delta or Fuji Acros should work as well. There is a speed loss of about 0.75 stop compared to D-76/ID-11. Tone rendition is excellent.
I can see the difference between Perceptol (what I have been using recently) and D-76 1:1, my standard developer even on 8x10 prints, especially in the smoothness of tone rendition.
I don't know how much difference this would make for 6x6cm negatives unless you make very large prints.
The extra-fine-grain developers above do not produce much in the way of acutance effects. This may be important for 35mm but the effect is of fixed scale so it becomes less important as the size of the negative increases (i.e., magnification of the image to the print decreases).
One or the other of these developers should be available in oz land. If not, and you have the necessary ingredients for mixing you own developers, you can try Kodak D-25 or a home brew version of Microdol/Perceptol.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx




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