TXP + D-76 times

Nicholas O. Lindan wrote:
"Kevin" wrote in message


D76 ... 320 Tri-x (TXP) [sheet film] ... negatives are
about 2 stops under exposed. [Are Kodak's published
times reliable?]


Kodak's published development times are the _last_ thing
I would doubt.

If you haven't found the cause it is because it is somewhere
you have not yet looked or that you are sure is not the cause.

Have you tried distilled water, only costs $0.69 to find out?
I found Cleveland city water was the cause of 20 years
of development woes. I only stumbled on to it when I tried
Rodinal and got consistently blank negatives.
One bottle of Distilata and I was hooked; in the succeeding 20
years I have not had _one_ case of mysterious under/non
development. Non-mystery failures are another matter ...

No city water supply anywhere is pure H2O, it always contains something
else, chlorine is almost a given, floride is another one, copper, lead
and iron are often in there, along with other things. Trace amounts of
these metals, depending on what the pipes were made of, how old they are
and how much other crap has built up in the pipes since the
neighbourhood was built.

You can always get water tested by a lab. They will tell you what's in
it, and in what amounts. You might want to review the results with your
doctor as well, if it's not healthy for your developer, it may not be
healthy for you either.....

The solution can be using distilled water, or simply putting one of
those cartridge water filters in the line, depending on what is causing
the problem.

W

Nicholas O. Lindan wrote:
"Kevin" wrote in message


D76 ... 320 Tri-x (TXP) [sheet film] ... negatives are
about 2 stops under exposed. [Are Kodak's published
times reliable?]


Kodak's published development times are the _last_ thing
I would doubt.

If you haven't found the cause it is because it is somewhere
you have not yet looked or that you are sure is not the cause.

Have you tried distilled water, only costs $0.69 to find out?
I found Cleveland city water was the cause of 20 years
of development woes. I only stumbled on to it when I tried
Rodinal and got consistently blank negatives.
One bottle of Distilata and I was hooked; in the succeeding 20
years I have not had _one_ case of mysterious under/non
development. Non-mystery failures are another matter ...

No city water supply anywhere is pure H2O, it always contains something
else, chlorine is almost a given, floride is another one, copper, lead
and iron are often in there, along with other things. Trace amounts of
these metals, depending on what the pipes were made of, how old they are
and how much other crap has built up in the pipes since the
neighbourhood was built.

You can always get water tested by a lab. They will tell you what's in
it, and in what amounts. You might want to review the results with your
doctor as well, if it's not healthy for your developer, it may not be
healthy for you either.....

The solution can be using distilled water, or simply putting one of
those cartridge water filters in the line, depending on what is causing
the problem.

W

"Kevin" wrote

Another thing that bothers me is how purple the base is. I've never
had negatives come out purple before.

That's not the base. The base is the plastic part of the film. Sometimes
the plastic is dyed a very light grey.

The purple is the anti-halation dye that sits under the emulsion.

Again, this purple stain has nothing to do with the developer.
The culprit is the fix and the wash.

Use fresh fixer: fresh stock from the store, mix it up with water
just before use. Agitate in the fix just as you do when developing.
Fix for the full time: 5 minutes for rapid fix and 10 minutes for
powdered fix.

Follow with freshly made up and mixed hypo clearing agent. Again
agitate, leave the film in for at least 5 minutes. Keep the HCA
and wash water at 68F - 72F. Wash for 10-15 minutes.

Use Photo-Flo, with agitation, for 5 minutes.

You mention you are taking up darkroom work after a longish hiatus --
are _all_ the chemicals fresh?

--
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
Remove spaces etc. to reply: n o lindan at net com dot com
psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/

"Kevin" wrote

Another thing that bothers me is how purple the base is. I've never
had negatives come out purple before.

That's not the base. The base is the plastic part of the film. Sometimes
the plastic is dyed a very light grey.

The purple is the anti-halation dye that sits under the emulsion.

Again, this purple stain has nothing to do with the developer.
The culprit is the fix and the wash.

Use fresh fixer: fresh stock from the store, mix it up with water
just before use. Agitate in the fix just as you do when developing.
Fix for the full time: 5 minutes for rapid fix and 10 minutes for
powdered fix.

Follow with freshly made up and mixed hypo clearing agent. Again
agitate, leave the film in for at least 5 minutes. Keep the HCA
and wash water at 68F - 72F. Wash for 10-15 minutes.

Use Photo-Flo, with agitation, for 5 minutes.

You mention you are taking up darkroom work after a longish hiatus --
are _all_ the chemicals fresh?

--
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
Remove spaces etc. to reply: n o lindan at net com dot com
psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/

Kevin wrote:
I was thinking of trying distilled water and forgot about. I'm going
to give that a try tonight. If that doens't work, maybe I'll pick up
another batch of film.

Hmm. As I recall from the thread, even HC-110 didn't improve your
negatives; you're still getting a very thin appearance with 320TXP in
4x5 sheets. Right?

Water certainly could affect things if you have something bizarre in
your water; I always dilute with (at least) filtered drinking water,
which is, if not of exceptional purity, at least very consistent (since
I've recently moved and the filtered water I'm used to seems unavailable
in North Carolina, I'll be switching to drinking water which, the bottle
states, is prepared by distillation and ozonation). One thing in water
that could affect you is oxidizers, which could lead to premature
exhaustion of the developer -- if you're in an area with perchlorate or
nitrate in the water, tap water could cause this (but if you are, you'd
probably have seen all sorts of stuff in the news, since perchlorate
especially is getting a pretty bad name as a water impurity). I'm not
sure of the effects of dissolved metals, other than that it's usually
considered a bad idea to have exposed non-stainless steels in contact
with developer -- whether the iron picked up by solution affects
development, or it's just an issue of corrosion leading to rust flake
shedding, I'm not certain. Tin is a foggant, of course, but there's
generally not much tin in water supplies (could be, I suppose, if you
have unusually alkaline water and newly installed copper plumbing, but
you're not seeing fogging).

Another remote possibility is that industrial pollution in your water
could act as a restrainer, but ISTM if there were enough to have the
effect you're seeing, one or another of the environmental watchdog
agencies (governmental or otherwise) would be barking up a storm.
Softened water might also do this; softening replaces calcium in
solution with sodium, but since it uses salt (sodium chloride) in the
ion exchange, it can also add traces of chloride which, like bromide and
iodide, acts as a restrainer. I've heard softened water is bad for
development, but never heard of it restraining development enough to
notice; mostly I've heard of it as a consistency issue, because the
water pH can change depending on how close you are to recharge time on
the softener.

Another thing that bothers me is how purple the base is. I've never
had negatives come out purple before. It's the same whether I use D76
or HC-110. I've heard of other people seeing this and have heard is
not a problem.


Purple negatives are endemic to the new coating plant -- it started with
T-Max films, but since everything is coated on the same equipment now,
we see it with Tri-X and Plus-X as well. More washing and/or use of
Hypo Clearing Agent generally clears the purple; some have reported
better fixing to solve the problem, but the general take seems to be
that sulfite denatures the dye -- so the sulfite in fixer might reduce
it, but could require over fixing, and the sulfite in a wash aid will
likely improve it as well.

Interestingly, I've never had purple negatives despite using TMY almost
exclusively in 120 for the past year or more. I do slightly overfix; I
keep the film in rapid fixer for six times the clearing time (i.e. twice
the recommended time of 3x clearing for T-grain films). I don't think
that amount of extra fixing does any harm to the image (an hour in rapid
fixer seems to have only barely visible bleaching effect), ensures I
have adequate fixing, and that or my Ilford method wash does the job on
the purple dye.

Purple negatives aren't really a problem in terms of printing, but they
might indicate a sub-archival level of fixing or washing; at the very
least, you might want to try a residual silver test in unexposed film
put through your normal process to verify complete fixing, and also
consider a residual hypo test to verify your wash is complete.

--
The challenge to the photographer is to command the medium, to use
whatever current equipment and technology furthers his creative
objectives, without sacrificing the ability to make his own decisions.
-- Ansel Adams

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer http://silent1.home.netcom.com

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.

Kevin wrote:
I was thinking of trying distilled water and forgot about. I'm going
to give that a try tonight. If that doens't work, maybe I'll pick up
another batch of film.

Hmm. As I recall from the thread, even HC-110 didn't improve your
negatives; you're still getting a very thin appearance with 320TXP in
4x5 sheets. Right?

Water certainly could affect things if you have something bizarre in
your water; I always dilute with (at least) filtered drinking water,
which is, if not of exceptional purity, at least very consistent (since
I've recently moved and the filtered water I'm used to seems unavailable
in North Carolina, I'll be switching to drinking water which, the bottle
states, is prepared by distillation and ozonation). One thing in water
that could affect you is oxidizers, which could lead to premature
exhaustion of the developer -- if you're in an area with perchlorate or
nitrate in the water, tap water could cause this (but if you are, you'd
probably have seen all sorts of stuff in the news, since perchlorate
especially is getting a pretty bad name as a water impurity). I'm not
sure of the effects of dissolved metals, other than that it's usually
considered a bad idea to have exposed non-stainless steels in contact
with developer -- whether the iron picked up by solution affects
development, or it's just an issue of corrosion leading to rust flake
shedding, I'm not certain. Tin is a foggant, of course, but there's
generally not much tin in water supplies (could be, I suppose, if you
have unusually alkaline water and newly installed copper plumbing, but
you're not seeing fogging).

Another remote possibility is that industrial pollution in your water
could act as a restrainer, but ISTM if there were enough to have the
effect you're seeing, one or another of the environmental watchdog
agencies (governmental or otherwise) would be barking up a storm.
Softened water might also do this; softening replaces calcium in
solution with sodium, but since it uses salt (sodium chloride) in the
ion exchange, it can also add traces of chloride which, like bromide and
iodide, acts as a restrainer. I've heard softened water is bad for
development, but never heard of it restraining development enough to
notice; mostly I've heard of it as a consistency issue, because the
water pH can change depending on how close you are to recharge time on
the softener.

Another thing that bothers me is how purple the base is. I've never
had negatives come out purple before. It's the same whether I use D76
or HC-110. I've heard of other people seeing this and have heard is
not a problem.


Purple negatives are endemic to the new coating plant -- it started with
T-Max films, but since everything is coated on the same equipment now,
we see it with Tri-X and Plus-X as well. More washing and/or use of
Hypo Clearing Agent generally clears the purple; some have reported
better fixing to solve the problem, but the general take seems to be
that sulfite denatures the dye -- so the sulfite in fixer might reduce
it, but could require over fixing, and the sulfite in a wash aid will
likely improve it as well.

Interestingly, I've never had purple negatives despite using TMY almost
exclusively in 120 for the past year or more. I do slightly overfix; I
keep the film in rapid fixer for six times the clearing time (i.e. twice
the recommended time of 3x clearing for T-grain films). I don't think
that amount of extra fixing does any harm to the image (an hour in rapid
fixer seems to have only barely visible bleaching effect), ensures I
have adequate fixing, and that or my Ilford method wash does the job on
the purple dye.

Purple negatives aren't really a problem in terms of printing, but they
might indicate a sub-archival level of fixing or washing; at the very
least, you might want to try a residual silver test in unexposed film
put through your normal process to verify complete fixing, and also
consider a residual hypo test to verify your wash is complete.

--
The challenge to the photographer is to command the medium, to use
whatever current equipment and technology furthers his creative
objectives, without sacrificing the ability to make his own decisions.
-- Ansel Adams

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer http://silent1.home.netcom.com

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.

Well, I tried distilled water tonight and still get the same results.

So far I've...

Compared my meter against two other cameras.
Tried two different lens/shutters.
Verified I'm not putting the film in backwards.
Tried two different developers and two different fixers.
Checked my thermometer.
Mixed new chemicals with distilled water.
Used all brand new chemicals and new film.
Double,triple, quadruple checked everything.
Used two timers, simultaneously.

About the only thing I haven't eliminated is the film. One thing is
pretty clear though is that the film is under-developed rather than
under-exposed. Or maybe both.

I really appreciate all the information you guys have provided. You
guys are amazing!

I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Thanks!
Kevin



On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:50:57 GMT, Kevin
wrote:

According to the data on the package of D76, the development time for
320Tri-x (TXP) using stock solution at 68 degrees is 9 minutes. I've
seen 6 min. published elsewhere. However, even with 9 mins. my
negatives are about 2 stops under exposed. I'm real curious what kind
of times others are using with this combination.

BTW, I'm certain that my shutter and meter and not the problem. I've
been shooting Velvia with no problem. If I have a camera problem I'd
know quickly.

Thanks,
Kevin

Well, I tried distilled water tonight and still get the same results.

So far I've...

Compared my meter against two other cameras.
Tried two different lens/shutters.
Verified I'm not putting the film in backwards.
Tried two different developers and two different fixers.
Checked my thermometer.
Mixed new chemicals with distilled water.
Used all brand new chemicals and new film.
Double,triple, quadruple checked everything.
Used two timers, simultaneously.

About the only thing I haven't eliminated is the film. One thing is
pretty clear though is that the film is under-developed rather than
under-exposed. Or maybe both.

I really appreciate all the information you guys have provided. You
guys are amazing!

I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Thanks!
Kevin



On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:50:57 GMT, Kevin
wrote:

According to the data on the package of D76, the development time for
320Tri-x (TXP) using stock solution at 68 degrees is 9 minutes. I've
seen 6 min. published elsewhere. However, even with 9 mins. my
negatives are about 2 stops under exposed. I'm real curious what kind
of times others are using with this combination.

BTW, I'm certain that my shutter and meter and not the problem. I've
been shooting Velvia with no problem. If I have a camera problem I'd
know quickly.

Thanks,
Kevin

"Kevin" wrote in message
...
[...]
About the only thing I haven't eliminated is the film.

Told ya! But in the wrong thread.
Is the film expired?

"Kevin" wrote in message
...
[...]
About the only thing I haven't eliminated is the film.

Told ya! But in the wrong thread.
Is the film expired?