This is really very good looking. Congratulations on trying
the monobath. You may want to find copies of Grant Haist's book
on monobath processing and his general text "Modern Photographic
Processing". (by memory, I may not have that exactly right).
You know that monobaths must be concocted for the particular
film. It is mostly experimental. Haist claims superior quality
for it.
I am not familiar with Eastman 5222 but in the past used the
motion picture version of Plus-X, which I liked very much. If the
IE 250 is Eastman's speed you should be aware that B&W cine film
is measured by a somewhat different method than is used for still
film. I have the still film ISO standard but not the motion
picture film standard. However, I think the speed is slower than
would be given by the still film ISO speed to insure good shadow
detail.
I can't advise about agitation for monobath but I've found
with sheet film in either Nikor tanks or in rotary processors the
developer makes a big difference. For the Nikor tank I used 10
second every minute since I found 5 seconds every 30 second
produced surge marks. For the drum processor on sheet film I
found the continuous agitation of the print roller caused
problems with bromide steaks when using Rodinal. It seems to me
it did not with D-76. Depends on the sensitivity of the developer
to bromide. Something else may be happening with the monobath.
If you took outdoor pix I would love to see them. What you
posted has wonderful tone rendition and appears to be very sharp.
Haist talks about monobaths given very sharp results but not
exaggerated edge effects.
Monobath is a very ignored process, thank you for giving it
a practical trial.
On 5/10/2020 6:40 PM, Dana Myers wrote:
I shot a roll of CineStill BwXX last week, both outside and indoors. I used
the recommended EI 250 for daylight exposure, in a Canon T-70 w/ 50mm f/1.4
lens.
Then I mixed the Df96 monobath developer/fixer to 1 liter. Processing a single
35mm roll in a steel tank used 250ml of solution, which was returned to the
stock.
I processed at 75F for ~4m30s with "mild agitation" (perhaps too mild; see
below). This is 30 seconds agitation, then 10 seconds every minute.
Resulting negs have good density and look a little contrasty to the eye.
Scanning (LS-9000) confirmed they are a bit contrasty. I also noted very
mild bromide drag on one frame that was mostly sky; I believe I'll change
agitation to every 30 seconds. Somewhat ironically, the neg contrast is
*reduced* by increased agitation (because it speeds the fixer up in the
horse race). Next roll I'll start with 30 seconds agitation and then ~7
seconds every 30 seconds and see what that does for contrast.
Timing is non-precise, with a minimum of 4m at 75F with 15 seconds added to
the minimum for every roll processed.
Outdoor photos tended to be contrasty with glowing highlights. Indoor
photos in flat light looked pretty darn good.
In particular, this photo was taken in flat light, scanned with
only auto-exposure and no additional exposure adjustment in post:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ShlDXhEvjYEw3dL1_48tQMmJMb96I7r3
Eastman 5222 certainly has a very classic look; even contrasty, I find
it very appealing.
I'm shocked how well the monobath worked; CineStill recommends use with
T-Max/Delta with doubled processing time to allow complete fixing.
I'll try a roll of 100TMX here soon.
Dana K6JQ
=============================================================================================================
To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.
