I am beginning to experiment with a water bath development process as described by Ansel Adams in "The Negative" (p232). Adams recommends 30 seconds in the deve loper (Ildord Delta 100, Kodak HC110, 1+19, [F]) with constant agitation and the n 1 minute in the waterbath with no agitation.

To get an appropriate contras t range in the neg for my condenser enlarger I have found I need to repeat this cycle 6 times (Adams suggestes 10 but this produces negs that are too contrasty for my darkroom setup).

I have encountered two probelms:

1). In areas on the neg that are relatively flat, I am getting some streaking. D oes anyone have a suggestion as to what I might do to avoid this?

2) The shadow areas while retaing detail are very flat. The overall effect has been to compress the entire negative rather than simply holding back debelopment of the highlights. On another BB, Ellis Vernon, suggested (and I'm sure this is right) that modern emulsions are too thin to hold the developer in the way they did for Adams 30 years ago (Indeed Adams does mantion this in "The Negative"). Does anyone have any advice/thoughts on the topic of a modern day alternative to the water bath process Adams described?

(Ellis Vernon suggested trying a method devised by John Sexton using highly T-max developer to achieve the same results. When I find some more details I wil l try this.

Many thanks (and apologies for the long-winded posting).