Glen, I know absolutely nil about Sprint developer, but I'd be concerned enough about your proven discrepancies to do a test run before souping any serious photography. Perhaps you could fire off 5 or six sacrificial exposures at the start of a roll and do a clip test with them.
The B&W slide question is interesting , though. In theory any silver halide emulsion can be processed either as negative or reversed for a positive aka a slide. In practise negative films normally have a developed gamma of about 0.5 to 0.7, while slides have a gamma of about 1.5 to 1.9, so the exposure and first development need to be adjusted to get the boost in contrast. An added complication is that reversal processing can leave the highlights veiled with unwanted silver density. Processing formulae that I've seen have a little solvent, usually fixer, in one of the developers (I forget which), to reduce that highlight density. I imagine that a careful rinse in Farmer's Reducer would solve that problem, but you should practise this method before trying it on serious work because it's a one-way street. Printed slides are a practical option, but the films that you can print upon are getting scarce, normal camera film won't do. Tech Pan is good for this, if you can find some (I read that Kodak was to kill it off, but don't know its present status). Develop it in one of the stronger solutions of HC-110. And you don't need to contact print, which would create a nightmare of Newton's Rings. Most enlargers can do 1:1 printing, you only need to support the film on the baseboard. You can even use a film magazine, off the camera of course, in the case of 120 film. I've done this very successfully to make internegatives in pre-digital days. Somewhere I have some Ilford instructions for reversal processing of FP4 (it's old after all). When I next come across them I'll OCR scan them and post it to the list, if film is still in use by that time ;-) regards, Anthony Farr > -----Original Message----- > From: D. Glenn Arthur Jr. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (snip) > > 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.) > > * * * * * (snip)
