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Tri-X @200 in HC 110


Stealth3kpl

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With hindsight before posting all those, I should've just rolled back my editing as I have here. This is the above file rolled back to how it came off the scanner with a white point adjustment (only) in Photoshop.

 

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And this is after 0.70 stop exposure increase in Lightroom.

 

 

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Edited by Stealth3kpl
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Similar for this shot.  This is how it came off the scanner with a white point adjustment (only) in Photoshop.

 

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Edited by Stealth3kpl
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And this is the first photo scanner file having had the white point found in Photoshop levels

 

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That's interesting, what makes you say that? It may well have been underexposed slightly. The day was very dull, and I recall shooting at 1/60 at times with the Summiicron wide open. The other lens was an Elmarit 28 asph. The exposure may have creeped to underexposure with both, and partic the Elmarit. I recall thinking it will probably be alright as I was shooting at 250.

The other frames came out pretty similar. I'll upload some for you to look at, but they have been manipulated so might not be a very good guide.

I'd love to hear some guidance.

Pete

 

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First let me say that eventual output for your other posts are very good to my eyes. Therefore it doesn't matter whether it is post scan or not.

 

My comment on underexposure was based on your scanned pic (before PP) and its histogram. It is shifted to the left.  Your pictures have varied lighting from sunny (with dog pic) to heavy overcast (classic cars and under tree shade). Even in these conditions, simple sunny16 rule works since exposure is only between Sunn16 (sunny) and +4 max (for full cloudy dull) stops. Under the tree shade may be +6 stop. In my experience, using lightmeter in day time outdoors is not needed unless the subject is heavily under the shadow (in that case I have difficulty guessing).

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There are at least three things possibly going on, so I would not jump to the conclusion that you need to drop to ISO 100.

 

1) What scanner exposure settings are you using? Auto Levels? Manual brightness controls?

 

2) You used incident metering ("hand-held, not reflected")?

 

3) How is you shadow detail (ignoring the overall brightness of the raw scan)? Are the shadows clipping to black anywhere, even when you raise the brightness in post? Or is there plenty of detail/density?

 

FIlm ISO is based on shadow density. If you are getting enough shadow detail without important detail clipping to pure black (before and after fixing the scan), the issue is not the ISO you are using.

 

Incident light meters, while not influenced by subject tones, do have a slight bias favoring the brightest light. They were developed for use in the motion picture industry, and - typically - in "controlled" lighting in the studio (motion picture or still pictures) they are used to measure lighting ratios. Measure the main light, and then measure the "fill light" (point the white detector away from the main light towards a fill light) and determine the ratio between the lights (2:1 or 4:1 or whatever).

 

Something like a strong directional point light source (the sun) or - counterintuitively - also, an overcast day in an "open setting" as in your car rally shots - open fields, with the entire sky visible to the meter, stretching horizon to horizon, can fool the incident meter as to the amount of light available. And it will read high, leading to underexposure.

 

(As opposed to, say, taking an incident reading in a narrow urban alleyway, with just a sliver of overcast overhead between the surrounding buildings.)

 

Typically, with scenes like yours, even with an incident meter, I might tilt the meter "ball" down slightly or away from the sun slightly, to reduce the influence of a large and/or extra-bright main light source. Or at least do so in combination with a "straight" incident reading, for comparison, and perhaps averaging of the two.

 

Regarding scanner exposure - a scanner can be fooled by one small extremely dense (black on the film, white in the positive scan) speck. E.G. a dust speck or specks (and I note some of those in the car rally shots). The scanner may set that to white, and then scale everything else in the picture against that "white," leading to the actual scene being scanned too dark overall. The same would be true if the picture itself contains a few "outlier" extremely bright tones, such as sky reflected off chromium car trim.

 

Either of those scanner effects could lead to the "half a histogram-type" dark exposure for 99.9% of the image.

Edited by adan
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I don’t think you can determine ISO and developer time and strength on the basis of scans. Scanners have much more tolerance than enlargers and paper, also because you judge the image on a screen which is like a transparency. Shadows are much sooner problematic in prints than on a screen. Developing times delivered by Kodak and in the Massive Chart are meant for wet prints and in my view these times seem to be given for condensor enlargers, because you mostly get quite soft negatives.

A development time of 3:75 that Kodak gives is too short anyway. You shouldn’t go shorter than 6 minutes in my view because all the little variations in temperature, solution and especially agitation are becoming relatively too important in such a short time. So in that case the dilution should be adjusted.

I don’t understand actually why you would want ISO 200 with TriX in the first place, did you read that somewhere? In principle, nobody can tell you what your ISO should be in your system with your incident metering. I have two Gossen’s, a Digisix and a Sixtomat F2, both quite new, and they give with incident reading 2/3 stop difference, systematically. In my system a TriX is well served with ISO400 in HC110 - B for 6:30. I have a cold light head and even then these negatives are on the soft side, with no risk of loosing shadow detail.

In my judgement your solution E was too weak for these exposures, I miss deep blacks.

Edited by otto.f
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There are at least three things possibly going on, so I would not jump to the conclusion that you need to drop to ISO 100.

 

1) What scanner exposure settings are you using? Auto Levels? Manual brightness controls?

 

2) You used incident metering ("hand-held, not reflected")?

 

3) How is you shadow detail (ignoring the overall brightness of the raw scan)? Are the shadows clipping to black anywhere, even when you raise the brightness in post? Or is there plenty of detail/density?

 

FIlm ISO is based on shadow density. If you are getting enough shadow detail without important detail clipping to pure black (before and after fixing the scan), the issue is not the ISO you are using.

 

Incident light meters, while not influenced by subject tones, do have a slight bias favoring the brightest light. They were developed for use in the motion picture industry, and - typically - in "controlled" lighting in the studio (motion picture or still pictures) they are used to measure lighting ratios. Measure the main light, and then measure the "fill light" (point the white detector away from the main light towards a fill light) and determine the ratio between the lights (2:1 or 4:1 or whatever).

 

Something like a strong directional point light source (the sun) or - counterintuitively - also, an overcast day in an "open setting" as in your car rally shots - open fields, with the entire sky visible to the meter, stretching horizon to horizon, can fool the incident meter as to the amount of light available. And it will read high, leading to underexposure.

 

(As opposed to, say, taking an incident reading in a narrow urban alleyway, with just a sliver of overcast overhead between the surrounding buildings.)

 

Typically, with scenes like yours, even with an incident meter, I might tilt the meter "ball" down slightly or away from the sun slightly, to reduce the influence of a large and/or extra-bright main light source. Or at least do so in combination with a "straight" incident reading, for comparison, and perhaps averaging of the two.

 

Regarding scanner exposure - a scanner can be fooled by one small extremely dense (black on the film, white in the positive scan) speck. E.G. a dust speck or specks (and I note some of those in the car rally shots). The scanner may set that to white, and then scale everything else in the picture against that "white," leading to the actual scene being scanned too dark overall. The same would be true if the picture itself contains a few "outlier" extremely bright tones, such as sky reflected off chromium car trim.

 

Either of those scanner effects could lead to the "half a histogram-type" dark exposure for 99.9% of the image.

 

Thanks for taking the time to respond agian, Andrew. To answer your points

1) I use vuewscan, and set scanner exposure by previewing an unexposed part of the film which has as few of those bright spots as possible. I lock exposure then preview again and lock film base and colour. After that I scan an image. I believe this is the proper way to set black in the scan without clipping. I don't think I can influence exposure on the scanner further(?)

 

2+3) That's interesting what you say about incident meters. I'll bare that in mind in future. I only use an incident meter, but I have a tendency to check light, then only pull it out again if I feel the lighting has changed. 

The scans aren't clipped in the Black.

On setting the black point in Vuescan, I try to avoid any area with those little white spots. I think the standard vuescan settings allow for ignoring some of the white spots so long as they don't occupy more than 0.1% of the area being previewed (from memory).

 

Thanks again for your input.

Pete

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I don’t think you can determine ISO and developer time and strength on the basis of scans. Scanners have much more tolerance than enlargers and paper, also because you judge the image on a screen which is like a transparency. Shadows are much sooner problematic in prints than on a screen. Developing times delivered by Kodak and in the Massive Chart are meant for wet prints and in my view these times seem to be given for condensor enlargers, because you mostly get quite soft negatives.

A development time of 3:75 that Kodak gives is too short anyway. You shouldn’t go shorter than 6 minutes in my view because all the little variations in temperature, solution and especially agitation are becoming relatively too important in such a short time. So in that case the dilution should be adjusted.

I don’t understand actually why you would want ISO 200 with TriX in the first place, did you read that somewhere? In principle, nobody can tell you what your ISO should be in your system with your incident metering. I have two Gossen’s, a Digisix and a Sixtomat F2, both quite new, and they give with incident reading 2/3 stop difference, systematically. In my system a TriX is well served with ISO400 in HC110 - B for 6:30. I have a cold light head and even then these negatives are on the soft side, with no risk of loosing shadow detail.

In my judgement your solution E was too weak for these exposures, I miss deep blacks.

 

Hi Otto,

Thanks for your informative post. It's my first time with HC110 and I had difficulty deciding what dilution to use to give at least 6ml per film (3 in the tank) but also give me a long development time (I would prefer longer than 7 mins).

It's interesting what you say about different meters giving different readings. Another potential problem I have is my 4 thermometers, two of which are Patterson, disagree!

I think I've run it through at 250 to ensure shadow detail thinking I can always darken things in post processing. Also, I've heard people saying they've settled on 320 as the true speed of TriX so I've been reluctant to shoot it faster than that. For example, if shooting sunny 16 and it's bright sunlight, should the shutter be set to 1/500 at f16, or 1/250? So I run the whole film at 250 and try to process accordingly. I take your point though. I'm starting a new film of Neopan 400 today so I think I will set the meter to 400 and see how it develops/scans.

Pete

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  • 3 years later...

Stumbling around, looking for suggestions on how to develop Tri-X in HC-110. D-76 may be the best choice for Tri-X but not wanting to mix up a gallon so it can sit around and eventually expire, I decided to stick with HC-110. Currently, I have a small bottle of Rollei R09 which give fair results at 1:25 for seven minutes. Grain and contrast are more pronounced with the R09, doubt if I'll go back to it once it's gone. I've had the HC-110 for a while now, initially splitting the liter bottle into four 250ML glass bottles. I use a stopper and oral syringe to draw the proper amount of developer, I'm about half way through the bottle at this point. Making the transition from TMax 400 to Tri-X has been a bit of a learning curve. At first I tried the Dilution B that I had been using with the TMax and the times from the Massive Development Chart. The negatives seemed dense so I reduced the time but then they looked muddy. Checked with Covingtions unofficial HC-110 page and the suggestion was for Dilution E (1:47) for six and a half minutes. This still allows me to use the minimum amount of developer, 5ML, for my 250ML tank. At this point, I have enough HC-110 for about 125 rolls. M4, 28 2.8 Elmarit-M, Kodak Tri-X @ ISO 400, HC-110 Dilution E for 6.5 minutes:

 

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On 10/4/2018 at 2:37 AM, otto.f said:

 

I don’t understand actually why you would want ISO 200 with TriX in the first place, did you read that somewhere? In principle, nobody can tell you what your ISO should be in your system with your incident metering. I have two Gossen’s, a Digisix and a Sixtomat F2, both quite new, and they give with incident reading 2/3 stop difference, systematically. In my system a TriX is well served with ISO400 in HC110 - B for 6:30. I have a cold light head and even then these negatives are on the soft side, with no risk of loosing shadow detail.

 

Based on my tests, and reports of the tests of others (including Ansel Satan) the ISO standard calls for too little exposure. I rate most films at -2 ISO numbers (e.g., EI 250 for ISO 400 films). 

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