Fun with Ortho!

[John Kasaian]

What am doing tonight? Developing 8x10 Ortho sheet film (Adox) in trays under a red safe light. These are shots I'd forgotten about, an experiment taken last summer at circa 1850 Ft. Tejon with a $40 B&L Petzval magic lantern lens. I wanted to see if I could make it even more "old timey" with Ortho film.
So far I've got the second negative doing it's thing in a tray of fixer.
I'm using D-76 mixed last year, diluted 50/50-ish with tap water.
It's fun---but so far I've got one looking very under exposed and another looking very over exposed----I guess that's part of the learning curve when using a lens cap for one's shutter.:o
edit Negative #3 looks better!:D

[John Kasaian]

...And negative #4 looks even better-er!:D
Correction----I was so tired last night I erroneously posted that I was using D-76, no, it was old Dektol, not D-76!

[Jim Noel]

Why Dektol, and why old?
If you want to use a developer commonly used when ortho film was prevalent D-76 and D-23 are what you want. Fresh D-76 1+1 does a beautiful job on this film without adding excessive contrast as does D-23. I grew up on ortho film in the 30's and still always carry a couple of holders with me.

[John Kasaian]

Why Dektol, and why old?
If you want to use a developer commonly used when ortho film was prevalent D-76 and D-23 are what you want. Fresh D-76 1+1 does a beautiful job on this film without adding excessive contrast as does D-23. I grew up on ortho film in the 30's and still always carry a couple of holders with me.
I was hoping to get better mid tones with spent paper developer as I'm more familiar with Freestyle's ortho lith type films. It didn't occur to me that Adox might not be a lith type ortho film :o
If I can get a hold of any more Adox Ortho I'll give D-76 a try!
My biggest concern with ortho is the sky---it never seems to look "right" to me. One really nice thing about Ft Tejon is thaqt it is in Grapevine Canyon surrounded by mountains so I was able to avoid a "horizon" of sky and got a backdrop of mountains instead.
I can hardly wait to make some prints!