Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/05/16

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Developing problem
From: Tom Finnegan <TomF@piengr.com>
Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 12:31:47 -0700

I've heard from a couple different sources that high speed films should be
developed very soon after exposure. I don't recall off hand how or why the
latent image detoriates. If these rolls date from January, perhaps your
seeing something of this effect. You may want to expose a fresh new roll and
develop it right away to see how that comes out in comparison. Good luck,
and let us know how it turns out.

Tom Finnegan
Seattle

- -----Original Message-----
From: Guy Bennett [mailto:gbennett@lainet.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 12:20 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: [Leica] Developing problem

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
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