tonghang_zhou

Just checked <a href="http://www.chemistrystore.com/propylene_glycol.htm">chemistrystore</a>, shipping a gallon of it costs as much as the product itself. Anyone knows what kind of local stores might have the same?

Patrick, this seems to have come out of the blue, what an interesting idea! Have you tried it, say in dil-B? Any difference in developing properties?

Here's a sample of the white spots, crop to 1/6 of a 35mm frame.<div></div>

I can see if I can crop something small enough to post. As to the spots, are they surely particles stuck to the film, not tiny areas of extreme over-development? I actually don't see them too well in the film under a loupe. The filtered water is from commercial machines of the self-serve 25 cents/gallon type.

I'm posting this message to see if other people have similar

experience. There was a message before about the effect of

filtered water on developer activity, but I don't remember any

one complained about spots.<p>

 

The summar temperature has risen a lot recently, so I

started using filtered water to dilute the developer,

from the water dispenser that has cold and hot faucets.

This is very convenient to make for the exact temperatures

in any weather.

<p>

However, the two times I did this, the negatives showed up

a lot of random white spots in the scans (black in negatives

but hard to see). Most of them are small, but they are there

and ruin the pictures. I haven't had spots for some time, so it

puzzled me quite a bit, until

I realized it might be the filtered water.

Previously I used distilled water and didn't have such

problem.

<p>

I've also started, at the same time, to use ice cubes in the water for

the stop bath and film washing. Am I right to suppose this doesn't

have much bad effect? The stop bath and the final wash are both in

distilled water.

<p>

Any similar experience?

<blockquote>

<i>"it seems to work pretty well,"</i><br>

<i>"it seems to work great,"</i>

</blockquote>

<p>

Might I ask how you people know these alternative methods work? Has anyone performed a residual hypo test and compare?

<p>

I don't use any HCA. The TF-4 fixer instruction says it's unnecessary because TF-4 is easy to wash off. I'm only too glad to save an extra step. But I cannot tell the difference either way.

I imagine the factories load the cassettes using some sort of fast winding mechanism for a good production pace. I assume

the film ought to be wound tighter than from manual loading at home.

Tighter in the roll should make it tighter on the spool in the camera and tighter in rewind. The difference could be small but significant for some cameras.

<blockquote><i>My automatic camera hangs up with the plastic cassettes but never with the metal ones.</i></blockquote>

<p>

I wouldn't be surprised if the metal cassettes have much thinner walls than the plastic ones, the former being stronger and more machineable material. Double that for the tubular shape. That could make a difference.

Amul, I advice you to limit the number of exposures you load per roll, to say 30. I think one tends to load more, even over 40. That causes problem. Also before you put the roll in the camera, you might tighten the film a bit, by holding the film and rotating the reel in the cassette. You might do this even when you load the bulk film into rolls. Not loading too many exposures is likely the best cure. I think commericial film rolls are wound tighter, or at least more evenly.

This is nice to know. I assume the labels also have the DX coding. I see it makes a lot of sense for C41 process film.

<p>

What other C41 or E6 bulk film come with labels? Any one has something to say? May be this thread can become a searchable list of such films.

I read before in this forum that this film is made in English and

therefore likely a privately labeled Ilford FP4+. However the

<a href="http://www.photowarehouse.biz/pdf/devchart.pdf">development

times</a> posted by Ultrafine shows big differences from those for FP4+.

So it doesn't look like the same film. On the other hand the

Ultrafine B&W 400 plus has identical times as HP5+, so that's likely

the same film.

 

<p>

Anyone knows what Ultrafine B&W 125 is or has compared it with FP4+?

Very nicely written essay.

Has anyone done comprison with Minolta's new Scan Dual IV and found improvements in any way?

I tried Vuescan. It seems to be slower than Minolta Dualscan III's software and the interface is not as sleek. May be I'm not doing it right, but I could not discern any advantage in Vuescan whatsoever.

<p>

The downloadable evaluation version puts big dollar signs all over the image in a tight grid fashion to prevent you from making use of any part of the image until you pay to get the proper version. But this makes it very difficult to judge the scanned image from the evaluation copy. I would think a single sign in one quadrant should be adequate, or may be just some inconvenience in usage. Who can seriously use such a version anyways? A hundred dollar signs in the image is too much an overkill. Such an attitude is difficult to appreciate. I deleted it from my harddisk pretty quick. But if some one can point out a specific advantage over Minolta's program in terms of image quality, then I may be tempted to try again. BTW, I do a lot of B&W.

The more I use my scanner, a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III, the more

I'm unhappy with it. I mostly scan 35mm B&W negatives and color chromes.

<p>

Among the problems I have, the most frustrating is that the scanned

images often show white spots where there's no dark spots to

correspond on the negative. These are not spots on negatives, but are

simply added by the scanner, it seems, and they appear to be rather

random. The size of the spots are

similar to those that do correspond to spots on negatives. I use a 6X

loop on the negatives.

<p>

Another problem is with the dust brush feature. Sometimes it fixes up the

light sparkles in the photo subject eyes, making them hollow

and jagged as if the eyes are punctured. Turnning off the dust brush

however admits numerous tiny little dusts all over the image.

<p>

And there's the thing everyone seems to complain about that pockets of

high contrast are rendered with gritty grains.

<p>

Are these problems common for film scanners, or are there better ones

out there?

Ron, very interesting and informative.<p>

 

I had occassion to compare the color in the film coming off my processing both in acid and alkaline fixers and have not noticed any difference between the two methods, not enough difference I can tell at least. I've tried these films: TMX, FP4+, HP5+. What I found however, is that the color comes off mostly depends on the lenghth of soaking time in the fixer and water wash hence after. The water soaking is very effective in fact. TMX, for example, does not lose its pink totally in the fixer even for a long time like 6 minutes, but the after-fix soak in water for a few minutes does the trick.

 

Tonghang.

Question for those who suggest a sulfite wash, do you get deep colors to dump out like Rodinal gives you or even a water-pre-wash does?

The "Single Photos" folder is quite amazing, in the smoothness of the skin tones you get out of HP5+ even pushed to 800. I see they are in fact 35mm film, but something you are doing there seems magical to me.

<a href="http://www.adorama.com">Adorama</a> ships both the <a href="http://www.adorama.com/CHDG.html?searchinfo=diafine&item_no=1">1 gallon</a> and <a href="http://www.adorama.com/CHDQ.html?searchinfo=diafine&item_no=2">1 quart</a> packages of Diafine. I bought from them last year.

<a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=1394&is=REG">

B&H</a> doesn't ship Rodinal either,

but Adorama again <a href="http://www.adorama.com/AGR125.html?searchinfo=rodinal&item_no=1">does</a>.

Fixer temperature variation would not cause under developement. The developer is clearly bad. I once decanted Paterson Aculux 2 into small baby food bottles. They later had little lint like things suspended in them. First I thought they were food particles despite the thorough cleaning. Then I read about how organic things grow in developers, I think they are more likely some sort of algae.

<blockquote><i>"HC110 is dangerous if handled carelessly. It has some components that can cross the skin barrier, IIRC."</i></blockquote>

 

Patrick, do you mean HC-110 is <b>more</b> toxic than other main stream developers, such as D76, Microphen, Rodinal, Diafine? I guess we can exclude the extreme cases of Pyro and Xtol (or Gainer's formula.)

I make a 1+1 stock from concentrate, which I then dilute 16X to make dilution B as needed. Less water, hopefully last longer. Still I wouldn't keep it (the stock) for more than 2 months. It develops a very slight red tint when it's about 2 months old. That's your sign to make fresh stock. Also, use glass bottles, use plastic wrap material under the cap to seal better, and use 'Dust-Off' or other canned "air" to fill bottles that are not full. HC-110 is so cheap, no need to take any risk. In concentrate form, it probably keeps forever.

Looks like the advertisement back fired.

Wow! Such good skin tone. Is there any magic in your scanner? What brand/model? Is this from print or negative? And it's 35mm Tri-X right?

Tony, I'm surprised the difference in the 3 films are quite small as shown in that folder, and your other folders as well. I don't see grains in your HP5+, for example. What format film do you use? Did you scan the negatives or prints? What scanner, any post-scanning enhancements? Very nice photos by the way.