Hi all, I have been shooting Tri-X 400 on medium format for awhile. I just started with 4x5 and so the first negative film pack I am trying is Tri-X 320 sheets.
I was experimenting by shooting at the box listed ASA of 320, and then shooting with and without reciprocity correction at shutter times ranging from 2 seconds to 20 minutes to see how the film looks and responds. I have the problem I am asking about here on all of the frames regardless of shutter times or reciprocity / development time, and yes it is on the film itself as I can easily see it on a light box with and without a loupe.
I would best describe what this looks like as "cobblestoning." At first, I thought this was very large (huge) grain based on the scans and the pattern being circular (maybe it is) and that the 320 sheets must just look totally different than I am used to. But as I look at the film itself it looks more like some sort of large tiling pattern.
The film was developed as such:
Used a small hand tank without any reels to process two inward facing sheets at a time.
Initial wash using the hot from the tap, which is limited to around 105 to 110F
Developer 68F (My rooms are cold and I heat it to 68F) D-76 1:1 for 9:45 either without reciprocity correction, or the box listed -10%/-20% when correcting for reciprocity per tech specs
Wash with same hot tap fill and dump 7 times
Fix with Kodak fixer for 5 minutes room temp (which is like 62F)
Photoflo to finish for about 10 minutes in a tray
Here is one of the frames. It's basically just the raw scan with white and black points selected. If you zoom in on it hopefully you can see the pattern. I haven't uploaded images on the site before:
I would like input from those of you more experience than me because if you said "hey that is was TriX 320 normally looks like" then I will consider switching films. But if you said "hey nope it's something YOU are doing and mine doesn't turn out that way", then I will start troubleshooting it because I really liked using small and medium format Tri-X. I used this same process for my small and medium format Tri-X but maybe the 320 if more finicky for some reason. Culprits I would start with might be wash temp, longer fixer, shorter exposure times etc.
Any input appreciated.
Devin
P.S. Ignore the vertical line in the photo... I had to stitch two images together because my scanner doesn't scan 4x5.
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