Development fiasco... TriX + Xtol

[tgray]

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I should add that agitation is a personal thing. The key to it is to be consistent. If you don't like a result, you can change the development time. If you change your agitation style AND the time, it will be hard to change your results systematically.

 

I always do five NON-gentle inversions every 30 seconds. Each inversion is a quick flip 180 degrees and back, and then a slight twist of the can so as not to do all my inversions around the same axis. Works fine for me.

 

Overdoing agitation can give you sprocket hole surge marks and high contrast. Under doing it can give you bromide drag trails in the sprocket holes. Which a lot of people mistake for surge marks and over agitating your film.

[drums1977]

Thanks a lot too, tgray. For next rolls, I'll stick to 3 inversions (5 secs) every 30 seconds, it has worked well this time.

 

My my, hey hey... Home development is here to stay... (I'm going to see Neil Young next saturday! ).

[john_s]

Drum, you mentioned agitation back there. I'd like to offer an alternative to the frequent agitation that most people use. More agitation means more contrast. Longer development means more contrast. But these two are not exactly the same. More agitation means more contrast in the highlights, relatively speaking. Sometimes that is what you want, but often you don't. I prefer minimal and gentle agitation. My negs are easier to print this way (traditional printing, not scanning). For scanning you don't want too much contrast anyway.

 

You have heard the old saying "expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights." It's good advice (as long as there is enough light, of course). Recently I read (and I've already forgotten where! Sorry!) another version which I like very much:

 

"Expose for the shadows, develop for the mid tones and agitate for the highlights."