Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/08/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]In a message dated 8/9/98 9:51:27 PM, you wrote: << I wondered how to improve the quality of my enlargements (8x10) from M6/35mm f2-shot negs (trix400)>> I strongly urge you to learn to develop you own film. It's the only way to have control over a critical part of the printing process. If you don't have good negatives, you can't make good prints. Once you get the hang of loading the reels, it's really not very hard-just time development carefully and don't let the temperatures of the various solutions vary by more than a degree or so. I don't think you can beat Tri-x. It's quite forgiving and has beautiful tonality. It has the perfect look for Leicas. My current favorite developer is Kodak XTOL. It gives fine grain and the prints have a certain sparkle that I don't see with other developers. I would rate Tri-x at 200 or 250 to get a little juicier negative and use about 10 % less time than Kodak recommends. If you want finer grain than Tri-x, I would suggest Ilford Delta 100 rated at 100 in XTOL. It's slightly fussier than Tri-x, but very pretty. Richard Wasserman