Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/05/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I've been really busy since early January, and have let rolls of exposed film pile up in the film drawer until I have time to develop them. Well, the time has come and I'm making my way through the film, developing a couple of rolls each day. I began with rolls of Neopan 1600, which as some of you may recall I had struggled with to find appropriate developing time. After some experimentation, I had found the following combination produced consistently good results for me: Xtol 1:2, 68°, 7 mins, light agitation. So, using the above combo, I've thus far developed 4 rolls from my backlog of film, two yesterday and two this morning. To my surprise, the negs are all thin: low contrast and little shadow detail. Since yesterday I used Xtol from a half-empty bottle and fixer mixed last November, I thought that might have been the problem, so today I mixed fresh chemicals (new fixer + Xtol from a full bottle). Same problem. My guess is that the development time is too short. The Film Developing Cookbook recommends 10 minutes for Neopan 1600 shot at 1600 in Xtol in a 1:2 dilution, but that gave me really dense negs with overdeveloped highlights. In my experimenting, I eventually cut the time back to 7 minutes and that worked perfectly. So here I am again with a f****** Neopan problem! Tomorrow morning I experiment again, using the 10 minute time to see if that works. If not, I'm going to switch to a 1:3 dilution (my usual dilution) and start over. Oh well. Guy - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html