Stone Zone Test-18%, DeHart and Sons, 2008
I finally found some time to do technical tests yesterday. My goal with the first 6 sheets of film was to start seeing in black and white again and to iron out some kinks with metering and developing. In addition I was testing some filters I recently purchased. Developing in the bathroom with my HP Combiplan T tank was a little awkward at first, though I am getting the kinks ironed out. My sons and I collected stones at the beach yesterday and we thought we would make a stone zone chart for fun.
3 comments:
You don't mention what you are developing the tmax in. If using xtol 1+1 (recommended), keep in mind that +1 and -1 development is about 10% of your N development. tmax films are very sensitive to change. good luck.
Dear anonymous. Thanks for your post. I am actually developing in D-76 @ 1:1. I know that Adams used xtol, though for better or worse I have been using D-76 for the last few years and have decided to stick with it for now. Prior to D-76, I used Sprint chemistry for the lat 5 years for teaching purposes. Do you think there are any major advantages to xtol over D-76? In terms of +1 and -1 for developing, in the past I have used the formula generally in high contrast scenes of over exposing by 1-2 stops and lowering the developing times by n-1 to n-2 (10-20% less). This formula worked fairly well in the Arizona desert, though now that I am back in the Pacific NW, where the weather can be high contrast one day, one no contrast the next, I need to be more exacting in being able to use the full gamut of the zone system. Being able to be able to shoot interesting black and white pictures in all lighting conditions is one of my goals technically in the next few weeks.
Well, xtol was the last film developer created by Kodak and is the recommended developer for the tmax films. It gives true box speed too with all films.
Since you are using a tripod, film speed might not be such a major issue, especially during the day.
Tmax and Ilford Delta films are T-grain films and work better, IMHO, with xtol which is a very modern developer.
Also, I think you will find that the Kodak dev times for the tmax films in xtol are quite good. Might help reduce some testing time for you.
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