Originally Posted by
Alan9940
Hi Steve,
Yes, the issue I'm having is that my highlight density is coming in at about 1.98 - 2.10; I'd like to hit about 1.8 for pt/pd printing and/or printing on a paper like Lodima. I think one of the problems I've had with my recent testing is that the ambient temp in my darkroom is so high (live in the desert southwest) that my development times are just too short to control properly. Now that it's cooling down some in the early morning, I'm putting containers of solution outside, and developing early, so that I have a fighting chance of working at or very near 68F. Tomorrow morning I'm trying 5.5 mins in A followed by 3 mins in B with little to no agitation. As you can see, if this time turns out to be correct then any appreciable increase in developer temp would demand a shorter developing time; I always try to stay above 5 mins with any kind of manual development process.
The dance with x-ray film is finding a shorter enough developing time that will hit your target highlight density while still maintaining decent shadow detail. Generally, if I decrease developing time by >20% I'll start to nudge EI downward to ensure that shadow detail. Right now I'm at EI50 which for my outdoor work is about as slow as I care to go for 8x10.
Anyway, x-ray film is cheap (vs regular sheet film) so I don't mind burning up many sheets as I experiment to lock all this down.
Thanks for all your input above.
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