Film speed test.

[Mark MacKenzie]

You say you have a D2? Is it a condenser light source? Thats what I have and I find I develop at about 80% of recommended time to print consistently.

I did both speed tests and development time tests on FP4 and Acros and it was very very beneficial. I followed the instructions of Fred Picker as recommended by Ken Lee in a Zone VI book. I didn't use a densitometer but just judged by eye. Keep notes on those tests. The result is consistency which makes things easier for me.

Before you get around to testing you might want to shoot the same scene twice and develop one at recommended time then one at say 75% dev time. See which one prints like you like it.

Good luck! The best advice among all the good advice above is to go shoot. Don't worry. You'll have fun...

[Ken Lee]

And don't bother with a light meter either. And whatever you, justify it. That's where the rubber meets the road, because you're always right that way - and the ego needs to always be right. Just do whatever you do, and tell people you're right. If they think you're right, then you must be right.

[Mark MacKenzie]

Ken, you just cracked me up!

[Ken Lee]

Sorry for the rant: I've been moderating here and sometimes the "broad range" of opinion takes its toll

[Mark MacKenzie]

By the way, Ken has a very nice write up on testing on his website. http://www.kenleegallery.com/html/tech/testing.php

Very helpful to me. Thanks, Ken.

[Leigh]

There's no need to test at all. There's no time to test. There's no point in even focusing. Just go for it !

Ken,

You've obviously misunderstood the thrust of the earlier posts.

When a person first gets a driver's license, you don't immediately counsel them to enter a Grand Prix.
They need to learn the basics first.

Once they understand the basics, they can start learning what controls affect what results.
That's the time for testing and fine-tuning the process.
The first box of film is not.

- Leigh

[bob carnie]

I agree with both sides here.
I think a good dose of shooting to get use to the materials is a very good idea.

A ring around for exposure development printed out.
then a ring around for lighting ratio printed out.
is the most valuable tool in our lab. Right now our main new tech is doing the lighting ratio and exposure dev test.. Last weekend she did the exposure Development test.

These tests are straight from the Phil Davis Manual and was our main assignment first year photography semester.1973

I am enjoying watching her do these tests , as not only do you see the relationships of over and under exposure of film and how it relates to development
but as well the more complex test of various lighting ratio's tighten the learning curve.

Next month she takes on colour wheel and colour ring arounds..

[Ken Lee]

I did my first Zone System tests - with roll film - before my first box of sheet film. I started testing based on the 1968 Minor White book, in 1969. Before that, it was all hit-or-miss.

My earlier remarks were reductio ad absurdum, poking fun at one of the two extremes: no testing at all, and too much testing.

The other extreme is fair game too. Some people do more testing than shooting, and while it may strike us as extreme, we are indebted to them for their efforts.

We all get to draw the line wherever we like.

[Bill Burk]

I did a test yesterday. I'm going out shooting today.

I made four test strip exposures on one piece of film, two with an EG&G sensitometer and two with a DII enlarger and a 21-step Stouffer scale. To illustrate that an enlarger and step wedge can make a good test strip maker. (If you don't have a densitometer to read the test values you can contact or enlarge the test negatives after processing... to see how many stops fit on paper per development time).

The test strips tell how long I need to develop film using my equipment and working habits.

Leigh, I know you'll agree... The development times ARE different for each individual.

Times have changed from when I used six sheets in a tray versus one single sheet in a tray (the current test I am running).

The results I got show the two curves (EG&G versus Enlarger) are similar enough along their length to convince me that I could use an enlarger as a stand-in for a sensitometer... for making test strips to control development time.

But determining film speed is a different beast.

Right now I am working hard to find 2/3 stop of film speed... using an EG&G sensitometer that is designed to do the job. I'm validating my test conditions trying to find what is causing discrepancy expected vs actual results.

I would not hesitate to recommend a camera test for film speed, trusting the box speed, using half box speed arbitrarily, or adjusting as experience proves.

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

if anyone needs to have their zone 1 negs read on a densitometer I still have mine set up and working. Its a very accurate McBeth checked against a few different densities.

No charge, of course, but you pay for the postage if you want the negs back.