Base10 has not kept up with his photo-of-the-week challenge. The last word was "distribute." Remember, the purpose of this exercise was to see if I could keep this up in one-week blocks. This week was just impossible. Base10 will extend the time to next Monday.

Base10 did do some photo tests over the weekend. He wanted to compare compensating developers. I exposed two 120 rolls of tri-x to the identical shot and pushed them two stops to 1600 asa. I then developed one roll in Diafine and one roll in HC-110. The winner to my eye is Diafine. I even scanned the negatives without adjustment and printed them as 8x10's. I noticed the HC-110 had a little more contrast but also a bit more grain. Overall, I thought the Diafine results were a little sharper. I think I might try the same thing with D76 to see what happens.

Also, as an experiment, I pushed a roll of tri-x to 12,800 asa. That's pretty extreme, but I wanted to see what kind results I could get. I developed it in a week HC-110 dilution for 50 minutes agitating lightly every five minutes. This technique is discussed in Ansel Adams' book "The Negative." The week solution and long times are used because the developer in the highlight areas becomes quickly exhausted and stops while it continues in the shadow areas. When you do agitate, you start the process all over again. It's possible this way to really extend the tonal range of the film. The results were not astouning. First, Base10 did get a useable, albeit grainy, image that actually cleaned up in Photoshop, but unless you were going for this effect, I'd use another technique. I'd like to try this again using say Ilford 3200. I've gotten very good results with that film and HC-110 pushing it one stop. I wonder how far it could go?

Base10 will post some results tonight or tomorrow.

- posted by Base10 @ 12:23 PM