8x10 shooters, can HP5 come close to Tri-X 320?

[interneg]

Edit: Never mind I found it in Hutchings’s book. I knew I had seen that before:

“A stained pyro negative, because of the continuous tone effect of the stain, prints fog like a cool liquid - a seamless watercolor effect that baffles the senses…”

And readily achievable with regular (solvent) developers and basic process/ exposure controls... Especially when most of these claims of mystical characteristics of staining developers are based off 3-4x enlargements, and never compared to negs developed conventionally to lower CI's.

[Drew Wiley]

Nope. Wrong again. Typical solvent developers do just the opposite and erode edge acutance, especially with films like HP5. Again, the proof is in the pudding. And in this case, it has nothing to do with the contrast index, whether low or high. PMK accomplishes a crisply outlined watercolor effect regardless of high or low contrast; Pyrocat somewhat less effectively. The fact that it looks good only up to a certain degree of magnification is related to the large grain size involved. But this is in fact a thread about 8x10 film and not about journalistic uses of HP5 in small roll film sizes, where a different kind of look might be appropriate instead. In fact, I don't shoot HP5 in any format smaller than 8x10. Even 4x5 enlarged to a 16X20 print starts looking a little mushy if HP5 is involved. There's a sweet spot to this specific film & developer combination; and that can indeed be magical.

I've cooked up a couple of other pyrogallol tweaks which gave the same wonderful effect; but no sense going into that here. Some of these debates which can go on endlessly on a forum, or by tossing around fuzzy little web images as alleged evidence, can be resolved in a matter of seconds by looking at a serious print in person.

[bob carnie]

Interneg, thank you for your detailed comments, and I can't match your understanding of the chemistry - but you have not mentioned one key feature of staining developers which is the reduction of the Callier effect in the denser areas. This, alongside the acutance, is the other key reason I continue to use PMK after 25 years. This does allow improved detail and separation in the highlights, even if shouldering of the D-logE curve is still present
Like Drew, I have no need to argue about whether real differences exist, or whether Kodak etc thought it pointless to further develop staining developers ( after D-1 ? ) , because i've seen what i need to see. I did a careful test in 1998 on the same subject ( flooded fields, trees, shower clouds ) using FP4+ in two rollfilm backs ( 6x9 ) .
One was developed in Perceptol 1+2 and the other in PMK. The differences in the highlight areas on the prints were not minor, the staining developer was obviously better.
Having tried about 5 or 6 other common developers for B&W, for 10 years, up to that point, this is where I stopped.

I can't comment about watercolour grain though.

ps. apologies for being off-topic

Just my 2 cents- I have been working with HP5 and PMK for over 25 years now with clients and making prints for exhibition.... I have found in my small world that the most important part of the process is the Hardening effect that happens due to tannin and as one develops there seems to be no blooming of the highlights , then as each area is developing out the hardening effect continues. I found that if I used one dev I was losing shadow quality and I figured it was due to exhaustion, these days I split the development into two 7 minute baths so the upper midtones to highlights develop out and harden into place and the second fresh bath of PMK works on the shadows to midtones, and yes I have always stained and after looking at my prints I have decided if it aint broke don't fix.

Many here are much more experienced with sensitometry/ densitometry than I am, in fact most on this thread, - someone above mentioned that PMK is a bit restrictive to manipulations as compared to other developers and I have to agree with that , in fact I only have three time range for my process
which are 10 -12 min for lower ISO films- 14 min for trix and Hp5- and 16 min with extended quantities of developer for film that is really needing a push. In fact if I know that the original capture is under harsh conditions I will go to ID11 or Microphen if I need to play with times more.

If one looks carefully at a PMK processed film you will notice concentric rings on the emulsion which I have always admired and thought was the key, I was hooked on this process from the beginning when Hutchings started promoting it, I actually did experiment with photographing a bare bulb in a dark room to see if his claims were correct - it worked and this combination has helped me with printing for years. Maybe the concentric rings are the watercolour grain effect, I see the same thing in gum over palladiums where the hardening effect holds the image in place.

[Mark J]

That's an interesting method Bob, thanks for that. I must look more closely at some of my negs in reflection as well. I do a lot of work shooting into the light on seashore scenes and backlit trees & suchlike.

I would like to try Tri-X in 5x7 to see how the different curve looks vs. HP5. Unfortunately it cost almost as much as TMax 400 !

[Drew Wiley]

The ability to build significantly more contrast with longer development is mainly a function of the film itself, not PMK versus more ordinary developers. Films like FP4, D100, TMX and TMY are capable of significant expansion in this respect, HP5 not so much without skewing the curve.

Then you've got a couple of other factors. There is the image stain itself and how that interacts with the spectral sensitivity of the print medium itself, especially in terms of highlight reproduction. A great deal has been stated and hotly debated about that topic in older threads on this forum, which one can review for themselves.

Then you've got the issue of tanning per se, which happens to be quite complex. In photographic contexts, it was studied mainly in relation to dye transfer printing, including the Technicolor process, and then in relation in certain kinds of photo-resist media. But most of the study of gelatin cross-linking due to pyrogallol has been done in the medical prosthetics field, and in a technical manner probably way over the heads of anyone here. There seem to be still unanswered questions in that specialty field itself. Once again, the mantra is, if it works, it works - exactly how and why is an ongoing discussion.

Now as per TX, or Tri-X 320. Although the characteristic curve is only slightly steeper than HP5, the grain structure given by PMK is drastically different. Instead of "watercolor grain" you get more of a sharp shrapnel effect visible in open areas.

A well known practitioner of the combination of Tri-X 320 and PMK is Roman Loranc. He practiced the old "thick negative" technique of placing shadow values fairly high in order to get them up onto the relatively straight line section of the curve. Then ample development would give a good amount of separation to the midtones. But since he worked with a silver paper (MGWT) instead of a contact paper, the highlights often shoulder off and go blank, despite the pyro stain. You might argue that you can see quite a bit of character in his highlights. It all depends. When successful, those are due to the fortuitous split toning effect of the Kodak Brown toner he used, which could be dicey and unpredictable. When it didn't work out so well, the highlights are disappointingly blank. And again, there is a real world distinction between seeing a number of prints in person rather than as selectively edited and tweaked on the web, or even in a book.

[Michael R]

Is shrapnel grain sort of like buckshot grain?

I never much cared for Loranc’s stuff. Another guy who gives TXP a lot of exposure is Barnbaum. I’m not a fan of his either though.

[Drew Wiley]

Bingo. Barnbaum also placed the shadow values bellybutton high, but then would resort if necessary to drastic compression or minus development. That left the highlights muddy; so he'd restore the sparkle up there with Farmer's Reducer. It worked, just as long as he was using a paper where a hue shift didn't occur in the highlights due to the reducer. But in my opinion, that's a rather complicated answer to a simple question. I would have just switched to a longer-scale film like TMX400 instead. But we've discussed that numerous times before.

I'm not going to comment much on the esthetics side of the question here. Loranc can make stunning prints; but again, his results tend to vary depending on how the final toning turns out. His technique itself is rather inflexible. Barnbaum is a little too frilly or overly-dramatically Baroque at times for my taste; but that's just my taste.

[Eric Woodbury]

I switched away from the great yellow father 30 years ago and never went back. Ilford films are wonderful. I especially like FP4+ and now I'm trying Pan F and Ortho+. HP5+ I've used a very long time. Ilford films have a different green sensitivity that I like, but one needs to be aware of this. The FP4+ can be pushed to N+4 using Wimberley's developers. That's the film he used. I haven't tried the 3200 film, but there a few rolls in the frig.

Give it a fair shake. I don't like developers with hydroquinone, which is many of them. I use Eco Pro Ascorbic acid types (Xtol) mostly for the HP5.

[Drew Wiley]

Delta 3200 is really more like 1000 speed (officially - read the fine print in the tech sheet); I rate it at 800 for PMK. It has a very long toe. Don't keep it stored a long time before use either.

Pan F is basically an exaggerated S curve film with the shortest straight line section of any current film I can think of. I rate it at 25 in 1:1:100 PMK (note the alteration from the typical 1:2:100 dilution). It can be lovely for low contrast scenes in the fog. The other oddity of Pan F is that it doesn't retain the latent image as long as most films after exposure. You need to develop it within a couple months or so.

Don't expect the versatility of either of these film to be anywhere near that of FP4; and of course, they're limited to roll sizes. They do have their own special looks. The spectral sensitivity is similar to that of other Ilford pan films.

[interneg]

Despite what Drew claims, Delta 3200 has a short toe, but a long soft shoulder. It is designed such that processing to an average gradient of 0.6 really consists of the toe section being 0.7 and the shoulder 0.5 gradient - i.e. the toe is sharper than normal and the shoulder softer than normal. This makes sense when you consider the lighting conditions it is intended to be used under (low light, often with very contrasty highlights - where closed shadows, but printable highlights are demanded) - you can really get yourself into a mess if you try to expose at the ISO speed (rather than EI) without paying attention to the curve shape, as you'll drive a lot of information off the straight line on to the shoulder (hence why people end up in a muddled cycle of confused development times and EI as they try to force the film to do things it really wasn't designed to do. Rodinal changes the curve shape to something more conventional (quite solvent developers seem to be necessary for the full designed-in effects to work). When you respect those characteristics it can be astonishingly good.

Pan-F is pretty well behaved in conventional developers like dilute ID-11 - boringly so, in fact. The chaos that some claim, likely has more to do with it being a pretty simple 3D-crystal structure without much in the way of addenda either for latent image retention or development rate/ developer diffusion rate regulation (i.e. with some developers, access is so fast, and development times so short that it can run away very readily in terms of density).