Favorite Tri-X (120) film-developer combinations

[Tom Stanworth]

Xtol 1+2 or 3. Crisp grain and decent tones. Good speed too.

[pgomena]

Tri-X 400 at EI 200, HC-110 Dil. B, 5 minutes at 68F/20C. Agitate continuously first 30 seconds, invert twice gently each 30 seconds thereafter. Works like a charm.

Peter Gomena

[Clay2]

Gee,
Surprised no one has mentioned Microdol-X as the old time developer for Tri-X.
Have used it since the 1960's, about 8 minutes at 68F.
/Clay

[Philippe-Georges]

Gee,
Surprised no one has mentioned Microdol-X as the old time developer for Tri-X.
Have used it since the 1960's, about 8 minutes at 68F.
/Clay

This reminds me of what happened in 1978 when I was a first year student photography at the 'Royal Academy for Fine Arts' (what's in the name).
As my father did not 'believe' in a career as a photographer, he did not really support my choice and I had to go to school with an 'old' Rolleiflex I had been using as a young amateur for years. But I was full of high expectations and courage. Not for long!
The Royal Academy teachers were not pleased whit me using this kind of camera because all of my fellow students (51 of them) had 35 mm camera's, and they did not like the advantage of my 6x6 camera. As I was used to work on AGFAPAN 400 film and Rodinal, for about 4 years with good results, one can imagine the troubles I had to 'adapt' working on TXP-320/120 and developing it collectively, all together with the 'normal' TRI-X 400/136 in D-76 1+3 as imposed by the Fine Arts teachers. I was not entitled to any 'extravagance' as they constantly remembered me.
Needless to say that after half a year, I still had very poor results, all my megatives ware useless for good printing. And no teacher seemed to have an answer to this, very strange indeed.
Desperately as I was (what else?) I send my negatives and my modus operandi to Kodak Belgium. A few day's later the helpful answer came very clearly. Kodak advised me to develop the TXP-320/120, for the best results, in CONCENTRATED AND REPLENISHED MICRODOL-X! I do not recall the exact times, temperature and replenishment rate, but the results were super from the very first time I followed these instructions! Kodak also mentioned that the TXP-320 should not be processed in diluted developer, concentrated was much better.
But, naive, young and inexperienced as I was I did something very stupid, I showed the letter from Kodak to my teachers... Their reaction was clear too : every time I asked the supposed 'munificent' teacher for something, even simple and small, the answer was : "...why don't you ask Kodak?...".
At the end of that 'interesting' year, I left this Art school for an other one (Sint Lucas)!
From then on, I never touched TXP-320 and Microdol-X again, the remembrance hurted to much...

Salut,

Philippe

[jordanstarr]

I use Pyrocat-HD, 18 minutes semi-stand rated at 320 ISO.....when I push to 1600 I use D-76 1:1 for 14 minutes. However, I've used it with HC-110 Dil.B and Xtol with awesome results too. I think there's a lot of good developers with this film and you really just have to try them all and stick with what you like.

[Clay2]

Hi Phillipe,
Thanks for the interesting story, I laughed!
Had the same type argument with the instructors at The New York School of Photography over how to
photograph the full moon. They insisted that the moon was in full sunlight and to use the 'Sunny-16' Rule,
f/16, 1/film speed. I said yeah, it is in full sunlight but on the other side of the Earth and much farther
away. The inverse square law says that the amount of radiation from a source varies inversely as the
square of the distance from the source. I used the 'Looney-11' Rule, f/11, 1/film speed. Mine were the
only decent shots of the full moon. The instructors avoided me from then on, sigh.
Best regards,
/Clay

[Lee L]

The moon is 250,000 miles from earth, and the earth is 93,000,000 miles from the sun. So at full moon, the distance from the sun to the moon is 1.002688172 times the distance from the sun to the earth. Using the inverse square law that should mean a decrease of light falling on the moon to 0.9946% of the sunlight hitting earth. Nowhere near a stop. It's the same as thinking you need to make an exposure adjustment when moving your flash from 10 meters away from the subject to 10 meters + 2.6 cm from the subject.

Nothing personal, it's just that this patently wrong "logic" for the looney 11 rule seems to have taken on some sort of legitimacy on the internet.

The actual reason for your shot looking better is that the moon has a lower albedo (reflectivity) than the average scene on earth, about 12% as opposed to the earth's commonly used 18%. Add in the fact that we expect to see the moon "shine" against a dark sky, but don't expect that of the earth. So the moon needs to be placed higher on a gray scale than the average earthly scene to match our visual preconceptions.

Your method works, but not by the mechanism you assert.

Lee

Hi Phillipe,
Thanks for the interesting story, I laughed!
Had the same type argument with the instructors at The New York School of Photography over how to
photograph the full moon. They insisted that the moon was in full sunlight and to use the 'Sunny-16' Rule,
f/16, 1/film speed. I said yeah, it is in full sunlight but on the other side of the Earth and much farther
away. The inverse square law says that the amount of radiation from a source varies inversely as the
square of the distance from the source. I used the 'Looney-11' Rule, f/11, 1/film speed. Mine were the
only decent shots of the full moon. The instructors avoided me from then on, sigh.
Best regards,
/Clay

[Clay2]

Thanks Lee, You are quite correct.
I was just trying to inject some humour into the topic. Reminds me of Ansel Adams' quote about his shot
of 'Moonrise Hernandez N.M.' : 'I had to make an educated guess since I could not find my exposure
meter.Knowing that the moon is usually about 250 candles/square foot at this distance from the horizon, I
used this value to make a quick calculation and then made the exposure.'
Do we really care as long as the shot turns out the way we visualized it ?
Best regards,
/Clay

[Rolleijoe]

Very easy. For portraits: HC-110 1:50. For everything else: Rodinal 1:50.