I assume you have printed the negatives?
I assume you have printed the negatives?
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Yes I have printed many of these negatives. They seem to be lacking in contrast...just a bit thin. I'm blaming the negatives, but there are so many variables...
I rate it at 50 too, and do 11 min development (1:1:100) in Jobo CPE2 with presoak.
Thank you, Darek. I will try a couple of sheets at iso 50 just to see... Appreciate the input.
Too many variables here for anyone to simply state that one should be getting "box speed." Also, while there seems to be a decent amount of info here with respect to various processing scenarios...what about our light metering habits? One person's ISO 50 could be another person's ISO-100...simply as a result of how these two folks happen to use and interpret their light meters. Hey...just sayin'!
John, yes I have thought about a metering issue.... I'm using the same method I have always used, but maybe I just need new batteries in my meter?!! Actually I have two and they do differ by about 2/3 of a stop. Maybe I got them mixed up. They are otherwise identical. I will go check that...
I think Pyro negatives in general look thinner than gray tone negatives due to the color. But the beauty of Pyrocat is that it has some latitude to be adjusted to your personal desires for development. My personal process alters the 1:1:100 mix to 3.5:3:500 for a single sheet 4x5 in a tank and time will vary between 12 and 14 minutes at 70F for a normal scene depending on what the overall scene contrast and consideration for the volume of Shadows, midtones, and highlights. I also tend to agitate only once every 3 minutes. Printing my negatives usually requires grade 2.5 to 3.5 on Ilford papers. I also use Steve Sherman's EMA technique sometimes when I have many middle tones, or if in a hurry I use the 1:1:100 at 75F for 10 minutes with 2 minute agitations. Just do a little testing with extra shots of the scenes you are working with, you will soon see the subtle differences. I also prefer the simple variant of Pyrocat-Metol.
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Eric, out of curiosity, what's "baseline" for your salt prints (I'm assuming FP4 and some sort of pyro here)? Interpolating from Sandy's resources, I'm planning on 2:2:100 for my POP prints (e.g. VDB, etc.) for normal contrast scenes, then perhaps 5:3:100 and a corresponding faster film speed for low contrast scenarios. Sound in the ballpark for you?
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