----- Original Message -----
From: "Godfrey DiGiorgi"
Subject: Re: B/W Film Advice Needed
On Jul 10, 2005, at 6:43 PM, Mark Roberts wrote:
A man after my own heart! I shoot Pan-F whenever I can. Microdol-X seems
to keep the harshness in check.
My test bed for film and chemistry evaluation was Minox subminiature
format, where tiny changes in exposure and processing become immediately
apparent even in a 6x8" print (19x magnification).
Pan F is good, but no better than TMax 100 when it comes to grain,
acutance, and mid-range tonalities. It's an older formula emulsion. TMax
100 took me a while to learn ... I finally figured it out: it needs a LOT
of agitation as it was designed for machine processing, and the
traditional 68 degrees F B&W temperature isn't best suited for it in most
developers. Go to 72-74F and strong agitation, it comes alive.
When I tested T-Max, I discovered that it has an almost straight slope when
processed in T-Max developer. I never did try it in X-Tol.
I found it worked best using a Jobo 1500 tank system on agitation 1.
When I was running it commercially, it was HC:110, Dilution A at 24ยบ for
2:45 seconds, IIRC, after a 30 second presoak.
I use a CPE-2 with lift, not one of the fancy ones.
Microdol-X is a pretty crummy developer for landscape work, where detail
is very important. It was designed with a lot of grain dissolver (sodium
sulphite) to soften grain for portraiture. I used to use it for
portraiture a lot, stopped using it entirely for anything else.
Did you ever try T-Max in Microdol-X?
It just turns the grain to mush.
I didn't use the stuff much for my own work, the early stuff was bad for my
120 camera, and I stopped using it almost immediately.
William Robb
