(I haven't been reading much -- not feeling well has left me with
insufficient energy to keep up. This is temporary, and I will
still peek at the list to catch answers...)
Hey folks,
I've started developing film at home, using Sprint developer.
Oddly, I've been getting better results with 120 than with 35mm,
though I may have finally solved that (I just don't know why).
Sprint says this developer is the same as D76 diluted 1:1, but
the times on the bottle don't match those on Kodak's web site.
This morning I used Kodak's times for the 35mm Tri-X and Sprint's
times for 120 Tri-X, and oddly, both came out pretty.
So a tangential question is, "Why?" ...
But the main question I've got today concerns TMZ and Delta 3200.
I've just about run out of TX to develop (yes, of course, I'll go
shoot more, but in the meantime ...) so I'm thinking of trying
the high-speed stuff. The question is: should I go ahead and
do it in the Sprint developer, or do I really want to go buy some
other developer -- TMax or something -- to use on the TMZ?
IIRC, Kodak gives times for TMZ in D76 straight, so if I use the
Sprint, which I've diluted 1:9 per the instructions on the bottle,
should I mix up a batch at 2:9 to make it act like straight D76?
* * * * *
'Nuther darkroom question: I want to make some BW slides. The
first thought I had was to buy some Scala, which will be a special
order at my local camera shop, or mail order, and I presume I'll
have to mail it off to be processed, right? The second idea was
to find out whether there was a chemical trick to turn Tri-X into
slide film, and it turna out there's chemistry to do that with TMax,
again special order and I'm not sure whether it works for TX. And
the third notion was to make a contact copy by unrolling a bit of
Tri-X in the darkroom, laying the negative I want to make a positive
of on top of it, and shining the enlarger on it briefly (this'll
be using 120 film for both, BTW). So ... is that last idea sane,
and if so, how do I guesstimate a reasonable starting range for the
length of time to light it? (I'm assuming that I am going to have
to determine the exact exposure experimentally.)
* * * * *
BTW, the results of the "35mm film in the Holga" experiment amused
me enough that I'm considering adding a rewind knob to the Holga.
I'm not sure it's really worth it for anything other than "look
what I can do" though, since I don't know where to find a negative
carrier the shape of the resulting neg, and I could always just
crop a normal Holga neg down to that panoramic shape anyhow. Still,
it amuses me.
-- Glenn
PS: I've got four rolls of TX that have the green blocks on the
cans and say "Kodak Tri-X pan 400 Professional" instead of the
current "Kodak Professional Tri-X 400". These take a slightly
shorter development time, right? I'm sure that info is buried
somewhere on the Kodak web site, but I wasn't able to figure out
where.
