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

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Originally Posted by Mark J

I'm with Drew on this.
I don't think you've done the baseline work on what HP5+ is capable of in staining developers.

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Sorry Mark, but the two main staining developers are respectively a muddled variant on Beutler and a D-76 derivative modified to stain. Most of the effects attributed to the 'stain' (really just a not very good coupler forming) have more to do with the effects of the other developing ingredients (which were known in manufacturing R&D long before anyone was trying to revive staining developers). The overall impact is that some of those development inhibition effects contribute to improved sharpness and more controlled highlight density - and for somewhat related reasons, also dramatically increase the error margin for coping with poor process control. Having observed multiple users of staining developers over the years, a significant majority of them are not (or will not) enact the basic process controls that are implicitly assumed by Ilford, Kodak etc's instructions - and thence they attribute the relative improvement of their negs to some 'magic' in the developer rather than it being far more insensitive to significant user error (owing to development agent exhaustion effects, inhibition effects, relatively low/ slow development rates etc). For what it's worth, most of the big manufacturers' developers commercialised since the mid-late 1980s have set out to exploit development inhibition effects properly (i.e. developing agents properly balanced against solvency - emulsion interaction is essential for grain/ sharpness relationships - which staining developers are inherently unable to do owing to non-solvency - and non aqueous developers like HC-110 struggle with). Very simply, if staining developers had effects that were truly uniquely effective, the big manufacturers would have made them decades ago (and probably made them safer) - given that it is known that Ilford, Kodak etc have been willing to use pretty unusual ingredients (or custom synthesise those that they need) in mainstream developers, the claims around stain owe more to the journalistic abilities of their promoters than anything else.

Film characteristics are just one part of the equation. Your metering style, preferred fstop/exposure time, lens contrast and quality, developer, dilutions, and water quality all come into play. Then the printing exposure methods, papers, and developers can give you a wide variety of looks for that single image. Each image has its own potential for the photographer to explore. And a large number of people now scan and fix it in PS anyway, so getting the tones is more important than tonal separation.

I'll just await Interneg's peer reviewed scholarly article in, "Lead into Gold Scientific Journal". Until then, I'll continue to believe what my eyes, densitometer, and hundreds of actual prints have told me instead. I love what HP5 can do when intelligently used; but hell will freeze over before it ever behaves like a true "straight line" film like Super XX once represented. Yeah, you could scan it and reconfigure the curve in PS to sorta mimic something else; but there will always be some kind of real visual penalty torturing the curve that way, predominantly in the microtonal scale itself. For those of us who strongly prefer to darkroom print, that's not an option anyway.

Staining developers are yet another layer of nuance. And in that case, the combination of PMK and HP5 has a very special look which has been described as "watercolor grain" in combination with beautifully enhanced edge acutance. I really don't give a damn if it's as traditional textbook unscientific as "eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog". It works. Go argue with the prints, not with me. And that's what counts.

What is watercolour grain? Personally I like egg tempera grain but you have to be careful not to flex the film or else it cracks. And don’t overcook the eggs.

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…”

The grain is smooth and blended, but ironically, along with an enhanced almost etched look to the edges. This pertains to modest levels of enlargement with HP5 which sheet film printers can appreciate - with an 8x10 original, anywhere from contact print size up to about 20X24 inches. (Opaque Tempera wouldn't fit the analogy. Isn't that the kind of paint little kids ate in the classroom, along with Elmer's glue? - perhaps that's the kind of taste you remember.)

Back to tonality - if the long toe shadow values of HP5 can be semi-salvaged in PS, so can it be done using a supplementary mask for sake of darkroom printing. I have plenty of experience doing just that. But that only works to a certain extent; and you simply can't recover tonality that's not there to begin with. Want a longer scale? Use a different film with the appropriate kind of curve instead.

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

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

The grain is smooth and blended, but ironically, along with an enhanced almost etched look to the edges. This pertains to modest levels of enlargement with HP5 which sheet film printers can appreciate - with an 8x10 original, anywhere from contact print size up to about 20X24 inches. (Opaque Tempera wouldn't fit the analogy. Isn't that the kind of paint little kids ate in the classroom, along with Elmer's glue? - perhaps that's the kind of taste you remember.

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No, tempera like what people used before oils, and what some modern masters like Andrew Wyeth used. You should know that.

You're a Wyeth fan, a sentimentalist? Figures. And, uh, oils were being used for centuries before Wyeth. I actually preferred NC Wyeth, the cowboy painter head of the clan. Which oil paints were you referring to - Standard Oil or Chevron?

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

You're a Wyeth fan, a sentimentalist? Figures. And, uh, oils were being used for centuries before Wyeth. I actually preferred NC Wyeth, the cowboy painter head of the clan. Which oil paints were you referring to - Standard Oil or Chevron?

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I’m not much of a sentimentalist - it’s more A. Wyeth’s technique with tempera I admire. Anyway it was just an example of a 20th century painter who chose tempera even though oil superseded it in western art in the renaissance.

I really admire good watercolor paintings. But artists in the past didn't understand paper conservation issues very well, and you run in to a lot of brittle yellowed paper; so oil paintings tend to hold their value better. I defaulted to a camera instead 60 years ago.