Pushing Delta 3200 to 6400 or 12500 in Microphen?

[kraker]

Gandolfi, those are some nice examples! Could you tell us more about the above shots (or about the way you work with Delta 3200 in general)?

[baachitraka]

Delta 3200 is one of my favourite films - I rarely expose under 12.500 iso..

a couple of results:

Very nice shots indeed. Please throw some more light on the developer and EI.

[Dave Martiny]

You might try to check with Lex Jenkins over at photo.net. As far as I know, he's still a moderator of their black and white forum. He's a big fan of Microphen as a speed enhancing developer and has always been very helpful in answering questions like this.

[Michael R 1974]

Funny thing, I just ran across this thread and the thread starter seems to have gotten usable results from pushing Tri-X all the way up to ISO 12800 with Rodinal. I have no idea whether this also works for Delta 3200, though, but I'm going to try this at some point.

All depends on what you call "usable results" of course. You can't "push" more than a very small amount of shadow speed onto a film even with greatly extended development. It just builds contrast in the information already on the film.

[keithwms]

Very nice results Gandolfi, thanks for sharing.

Sure would be nice if the massive dev chart had embedded examples.

The thing about pushing, though, is that it can always be done but the resulting tonality in the print depends so much on enlargement factor... and then there is the issue of reduced ability to handle contrast.

It'd be nice if we had a look at what happens to the sensitivity curve under push. I guess it tends to pure knee and toe, with a shorter linear range at lower slope.

Anyway, good to see examples!

[baachitraka]

Delta fan(s) are still waiting for you answer Mr. gandolfi, regarding the developer and EI of those pictures you have posted.

[Rudeofus]

Gandolfi, subscribe me, too, to the list of folks who want to learn which soup you use.

Apart from that, I found some info about a "Super Soup" invented by Donald Qualls which supposedly pushes Tri-X all the way up to 12800. To my great surprise nobody has posted anything so far about using this super soup for some of the modern high ISO films like TMZ or Delta 3200. Since Delta 3200 @ 6400 in HC-110 looked almost grainless to me (6x7 enlarged to 18x24cm) I am highly tempted to try this super soup, too, like the Rodinal mega push, grain be damned!

One more thing: according to this thread you may gain a stop or so by developing the film very soon after exposure (unless you do this already).

@Michael R 1974: of course you are right, simple pushing rarely raises the shadows (it can make negatives printable, though). There is, however a difference between developers, e.g. Xtol is said to achieve twice the speed of Rodinal with the same film. I may be completely off here, but if one lowers his demands for small grain, nice characteristic curve and reasonable acutance, one could be able to find developers which achieve even higher speed than Xtol.

[Roger Cole]

I shoot it regularly at 3200 and develop per the Ilford instructions for 6400, in Kodak T-Max developer. I love the results, and even shadow detail looks pretty good. I'm sure giving more development would get a nicely usable 6400 out of it. I too would like to learn what Gandolfi used for his 12500.

I have preferred TMZ in 35mm because I can usable results at 6400 (to be fair, I haven't tried this with Delta 3200) and a bit less grain, and I started with it. When I got a medium format camera I had to find something else for really high speed. I need to try Delta 3200 in 35mm and see if I can just settle on that for both.

I recall reading decades ago in Pop Photo about people using HC-110 replenisher to push Tri-X to speeds like 12500 or even more. HC-110 replenisher is gone but Freestyle does sell something similar as Legacy Pro. I googled a bit and found a suggested dilution/time/temp for this combo for Tri-X at 5000. It might be fun to play with it using TMZ and Delta 3200 and see how far you can go with usable results.

[Michael R 1974]

@Michael R 1974: of course you are right, simple pushing rarely raises the shadows (it can make negatives printable, though). There is, however a difference between developers, e.g. Xtol is said to achieve twice the speed of Rodinal with the same film. I may be completely off here, but if one lowers his demands for small grain, nice characteristic curve and reasonable acutance, one could be able to find developers which achieve even higher speed than Xtol.

XTOL gives more speed than Rodinal, and slightly more than say D76. And compensating acutance developers give more speed than XTOL - at least with traditional films. Once you are pushing, all bets are off. All you're doing is developing to higher contrast. This will raise shadow contrast a little too, which can make very low densities somewhat easier to print, but you can't put anything on the film that wasn't there to begin with. So pushing really only gives you a small increase in EI. So XTOL, being somewhat "faster" than Rodinal, might allow you to achieve the push without quite as much loss in image quality, but not much in reality. Grain can increase dramatically with overdevelopment, and XTOL is not much better than any other general purpose developer in that department. The XTOL/Rodinal example is not very good anyway since those two developers are not really comparable under normal circumstances.

Bottom line is once you're into pushing territory, and particularly extreme pushing, the normal speed of a developer becomes less and less relevant.

For what it's worth, with normal development of most films, I have found Ilford DDX to be the fastest general purpose developer out there, with excellent image quality. It is slightly faster than XTOL. Although it should be noted the speed differences between most general purpose solvent developers, with development to the same contrast, are generally overstated in my opinion.

[warejn]

Delta 3200 is one of my favourite films - I rarely expose under 12.500 iso..

a couple of results:

Wow, those are great!