Need More Stain!

[sanking]

I will echo the comments of Christian Olivet about Efke 25. This film is a very high contrast film with very little latitude in either exposure or development. It has a hair-trigger response to the 2:2:100 dilution of Pyrocat-HD and I would not even considering this for normal processing as it will result in development times of less than four minutes for scens of normal contrast. Even 1:1:100 might be too energetic for scenes of normal contrast. In fact, although I have rather limited experince with Efke 25 my initial tests suggest that a dilution of 1:1:150 might actually be better than the 1:1:100 dilution. This is based on the premise that development times of 8-10 minutes will result in more even development with most types of processing.

[Andrew O'Neill]

I have extensive experience with HP5+ in many many developers including PMK and Rollo Pyro. I didn't like either of these pyro developers. I know what the stain looked like. HP5+ in Pyrocat has a great image stain and very little overall stain compared to PMK or Rollo negative. I didn't like how my negatives printed on VC paper. I love the look with Pyrocat-HD. My experience with efke 25 is limited. I started with it this week. Sandy, the 1+1+100 I tried this morning actually looks good. Much better than 2+2+100. N time was just under 4 minutes. With the 1+1+100 dilution, N development is 9.5 minutes with very gentle rotations in BTZS tubes. EI is 12. I'll give the 1+1+150 dilution a shot tomorrow. I'll also be looking how this film stands up to stand development. HP5+ is beautiful under the right conditions with stand developement and pyrocat. Finally, I'm also working out the films reciprocity characteristics. Perhaps I'll let you know how everything went. Thanks all for your input!

[Tim Curry]

Andrew, if you get decent numbers on reciprocity with Efke 25, I'd be very interested in your findings. With money and time very tight this year, I haven't wanted to invest in enough film to do a series of tests. I do bracket on some shots, but haven't had enough time to do a really good series ranging from 2 seconds out to 10 minutes or more.

Could you post results if you have an opportunity to do these tests?