Questions questions……

[shadesofgrey]

Hi all. Pens to the ready? Your starter for ten is..... Soup’s
1/ Neopan 400 in HC110. Anyone try this?
2/Neopan 400 in Ilfosol S Anyone try this?
3/D23. Where to buy these days? Can you? Equivalent? Is there?

I normally Dev Neo 400 in Rodinal/ID11 but have seen some real nice work using HC110 so I though I’d like to give it a go but, before I rush out and buy a ton of it I thought you guru’s might have some pointers for me. As to the others, just looking for that holy grail…..the perfect developer for the perfect film.


Cheers guys..and gals.

Brian.

[Nick Zentena]

You need to mix D-23 yourself. No big deal.

100 sodium sulfite
7.5 grams metol

water to make 1 litre.

[mono]

Why change your combi Neo 400/Rodinal to HC110??
There might be a little more grain!

[jim appleyard]

There is no Holy Grail. There is no perfect film. There is no perfect film. It's whatever combo satisfies most of your needs.

I like to shoot waterfalls in the woods. For me, it's a slow film with a slow shutter speed. APX 25 was great, as was Pan-X. Now it's Efke 25 and Pan F, all souped in Rodinal. These films are/were nearly grainless, so Rodinal brought out the sharpness in them.

Portraits? ISO 400. I like to do portraits of Caucasion folks against a black backdrop and overexpose by oe stop to make the backdrop really black. I soup this film in somethng like D-23, D-76; something to shave the grain a bit.

Point being that these two styles of photography are not necessarily interchangable. Use the right tool for the right job.

Lots of films left, lots of devs out there. Try them all.

[srs5694]

3/D23. Where to buy these days? Can you? Equivalent? Is there?

As Nick pointed out, D23 is one of the simplest developers to mix yourself. If you can't bear to open two bottles rather than one packet and measure rather than dump, Photographer's Formulary sells Developer 23, which it says is "similar to Kodak D-23." Your guess is as good as mine as to precisely what "similar" means in this context. One point: The PF product costs $8.95 for 1l, or $15.95 for 4l ($3.99/l). Mixing it yourself will cost about $0.85/l, depending on where you buy your chemicals and in what quantities.

[shadesofgrey]

You need to mix D-23 yourself. No big deal.

100 sodium sulfite
7.5 grams metol

water to make 1 litre.

Hi Nick. I know the D23 formula, I was just hoping that maybe someone knew of a ready made-ish alternative product that was similar, like the one SRS (hi SRS) pointed out though not sure if it’s available over here. Don’t mind the mixing, do it all the time (ID11) getting hold of the ingredients is just a pain sometimes. Hi Mono: Changing my brew may indeed produce more grain, only way to find out for sure is to try it; plus, I learn about another developer film combination. Thanks for the post Jim, not sure what it was about but thanks anyway.

B.

[k_jupiter]

Portraits? ISO 400. I like to do portraits of Caucasion folks against a black backdrop and overexpose by oe stop to make the backdrop really black. I soup this film in somethng like D-23, D-76; something to shave the grain a bit.

Ummmm... overexpose to get a really black background? I can see metering on skintone and overexposing to bring it up to zone 6, but what does that have to do with a black background?

Please explain.

tim,
Cornfused in...
san jose

[titrisol]

Tried this a while ago, results were OK, printable, but the neopan looked grainy and the shadow details was lost. Ilfosol S is a great developer for slower films though.
Neopan 1600 in Ilfosol S is also an interesting combo, if you want to have nice solid black shadows

2/Neopan 400 in Ilfosol S Anyone try this?

Brian.

[jim appleyard]

I guess I left some folks in the dark; (Get it? Of course you do!) my point of my answer is that there is no one film to do everything. Often we need 2 types of film or more to do different things.

With the black background I often get an image where it comes out dark gray; this is with ISO 400 film, studio flash, incident reading at EI 400. By overexposing by at least one stop, the black backdrop comes out black, not gray when I print for skin tone. Does this help?

Ummmm... overexpose to get a really black background? I can see metering on skintone and overexposing to bring it up to zone 6, but what does that have to do with a black background?

Please explain.

tim,
Cornfused in...
san jose

[Jeremy]

With the black background I often get an image where it comes out dark gray; this is with ISO 400 film, studio flash, incident reading at EI 400. By overexposing by at least one stop, the black backdrop comes out black, not gray when I print for skin tone. Does this help?

Jim, I think Tim was asking because I believe you have your terms backwards.

Overexposing means letting in more light so the background would become even lighter.

Underexposing would let in less light therefore making the background darker (black).

I have made this mistake myself too many times to count!