I am doing some Zone System testing with FP4 in 4x5. I established an EI of 100 and now I am trying to get my development time established but I am getting wildly inconsistent results.
In the first test, I photographed a grey card, out of focus, filling about 2/3 of the frame, placed on Zone VIII. I developed this in HC-110 dilution E (1:47, 6 ml syrup + 282 ml water) at 68F for 5 minutes. The density of the grey card was 1.37 (1.47 - 0.10 fbf). A little high, but I didn't want to go less than 5 minutes. I can live with a little high.
In the second test, I wanted to produce a Zone VIII negative to do some testing with my dichroic head, so I did exactly the same thing, except that I did not use a grey card. I used a plain wall and set the focus at infinity so it would be completely out of focus, and placed it on Zone VIII. Same developer, same dilution, same temperature, same time. The density of the negative was different from one end to the other by quite a bit: 1.75 (!) to 1.50, with an fbf of 0.8, giving a net density of 1.43 to 1.67.
Can anyone see anything obvious here?
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