TMX & Rodinal examples

[Shawn Dougherty]

Another important excerpt from the Coggins article on Citret concerning his "-3 development" method quoted by Jerevan above, and the required exposure adjustment:



Lee

I e-mailed Mark at one point and he sent me a nice write up about his n-3 procedure. A very nice fellow and fine photographer. I ended up abandoning this approach in favor of semi-stand but it does work as he says....

[df cardwell]

Citret's work is beautiful. His technique is halfway to minimal agitation. He is already achieving the shoulder induction from reduced development (by lowering the concentration of Rodinal). He is probably also reducing the amount of agitation relative to the total development time, which for decades led us to believe that the effect was caused by dilution.

Reducing the agitation further and increasing the development time would allow us to give normal exposure, while maintaining the highlight compression. Rodinal is a good developer for this because it normally builds an equally strong midtone and highlight contrast. TMX is also a good film for this.

This graph shows the effect of reducing the agitation of Rodinal with TMX,
compared to the normal curve. We are actually pushing the shadows and pulling the highlights, and allowing the curve to pivot in the midtones.

Lorenz and White talked about this in The New Zone System Manual in the '70s, about the same time Adams was discussing dilute HC-110 to reduce highlight density without sacrificing shadow density. Nothing is new except our understanding of old technique.

.

[CPorter]

Shawn,

Thanks for the link to Citret's site---I actually have not heard of him before so I look forward to exploring his site over the weekend.

[CPorter]

Citret's work is beautiful. His technique is halfway to minimal agitation. He is already achieving the shoulder induction from reduced development (by lowering the concentration of Rodinal). He is probably also reducing the amount of agitation relative to the total development time, which for decades led us to believe that the effect was caused by dilution.

Reducing the agitation further and increasing the development time would allow us to give normal exposure, while maintaining the highlight compression. Rodinal is a good developer for this because it normally builds an equally strong midtone and highlight contrast. TMX is also a good film for this.

This graph shows the effect of reducing the agitation of Rodinal with TMX,
compared to the normal curve. We are actually pushing the shadows and pulling the highlights, and allowing the curve to pivot in the midtones.

Lorenz and White talked about this in The New Zone System Manual in the '70s, about the same time Adams was discussing dilute HC-110 to reduce highlight density without sacrificing shadow density. Nothing is new except our understanding of old technique.

.

It looks like the mid-tones are robust with these curves; I would be curious to see where they lie on the n-3 curve. I'm going to have to get me some Rodinal and check it out. I am inquiring about it for sharper, more defined grain than what I'm getting with d-76 1:1 and what I recently found with hc-110 (h), although I believe hc-110 is better than d-76 1:1.

Thanks for all the responses.

[df cardwell]

Definitely more acute than HC-110 and D-76 1+1.

TMX is very flexible. It earned a bad rap for being hard to control,
mainly from folks who expected Tri X. Great stuff.

[chriscrawfordphoto]

There you go. All TMX in Rodinal. All shot with 120 film. The Square ones were done with a Mamiya C330F and 80mm f2.8. The others were done with a Mamiya 645 Super with 80mm f1.9 lens.

[df cardwell]

cool

[CPorter]

I really like the one of the old church (I guess it's an old church) the best.

Thanks

[chriscrawfordphoto]

I really like the one of the old church (I guess it's an old church) the best.

Thanks

Thanks,

It is a church, and unfortunately it is gone. Torn down to build a shopping center.

[pgomena]

Hard to argue with great results. Great images, Chris!

Peter Gomena