I’ve always given my Kentmere 400 @ 3200 only 16 mins in HCb, by extrapolating from the 12 min time in MDC for 1600 😬
Tbh I’m happy enough with the negatives and when I’m pushing that much it’s likely to be a dark scene where I prefer to have the shadows crushed to black anyway.
Before I started printing in my darkroom I was a lot more forgiving of my negs. This photo is an example. I was thinking of printing it yesterday, but after taking one look at neg and seeing how thin and flat it was, I decided against it. I still may try to print it as a challenge.
The massive dev chart is just a list of times submitted by users. It can be great for weird film or developer combos, but I always check the manufacturer datasheet first.
I’ll admit to never checking the datasheets. I should. As things stand now, I’m not trying out new film stocks. I’ve settled on HP5, Foma 200 (Arista), and FP4. I’ve got my times and dev choices nailed for those.
I do the same thing: take notes and refine. By all mean, I’m not sure my times are the best, but surprises me to see that much variance in time (I suppose continuous agitation would shave off time 🤔)
MDC has always worked for me, that 12 minutes has worked on a few films this year, on a different film this shot was exposed correctly for iso 1600, 1/30 @ f4.5 if I remember correctly, the dev time looks pretty good to me.
Yep, and an unpopular opinion of mine, dev time and temp aren’t that critical, I dev at room temp, usually 22c/71.5f and to me the negs look just fine. 😁
A bit warmer temp would account for the time difference as well.
I would say my focus is on consistency and making sure my dev and stop water bath temps are close. A lot of films don’t like a cold shock for stop (with water at least)
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Tbh I’m happy enough with the negatives and when I’m pushing that much it’s likely to be a dark scene where I prefer to have the shadows crushed to black anyway.
I would say my focus is on consistency and making sure my dev and stop water bath temps are close. A lot of films don’t like a cold shock for stop (with water at least)
I ask so I can sense check my times 😎