[Leica] B&W Films/Developers

[feli at creocollective.com (Feli di Giorgio)]

On Tue, 2004-06-29 at 20:00, Mark Rabiner wrote:
> On 6/29/04 4:11 PM, "Wade Heninger" <lists@heninger.org> wrote:
> 
> > 
> >> I've read that it is a very active developer. Thus developing times can 
> >> be
> >> very short, making it easy to overdevelop negatives.
> > 
> > Not as short as acufine, and never had issues.  I tried all kinds of
> > experimenting with dilutions and times.  All too contrasty.
> > 
> > So I didn't continue because Xtol, FG7, Acufine all work great.
> >

I just developed my first 3 rolls of TX400 in HC-110 dilution B (1:8)
for 4.5 minutes with low agitation. My usual developer is D76.

Here are my initial observation. 

a) High contrast. Highlights are gone. The scans look like a b/w
newsprint.

b) Grain is highly dissolved tot he point that the images look soft.

c) The images "bloom". Everything looks like it was shot with a very
weak promist filter.

Dilution B has a very short development time and you really have to
stick to the clock, because even an extra 10 seconds pouring the
developer in/out seems to make a difference. I am going to try some of
the higher dilutions and maybe even Ansel's "H" mixture. Hopefully this
will help control the contrast and dissolve less of the grain. It would
be nice to have a developer on hand with a very long shelf life.

Feli