Negative Quality (3)

greenspun.com : LUSENET : B&W Photo - Film & Processing : One Thread

A few weeks back, I raised the question about my negatives being too grainy. Several persons replied, and a few asked for a answer, if I achieved any resolution to the problem. A couple of items seem to have solved the problem. One was focusing. I found that my loop was not focused anywhere near the ground glass. Once I had corrected this, what a difference. Second, equally significant, was my well water. Our water here is very hard, and I took the suggestion from one person to substitute distilled water for the rinse portion. (Distilled water was already used for developer, rinse stop and fixer).

I cannot believe what a difference these two suggestion made. FP4 is printing like TMAX when you get everything perfect, but without all the fuss.......

-- John Clark (john.e.clark@mindspring.com), March 09, 2000

Answers

Thanks for the feedback.

BTW: Developer manufacturers maintain that their developers contain agents to prevent water hardness from ruining the developer (and film). Seems distilled water is more reliable.

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), March 09, 2000.


I live on top of chalk hills (The Chiltern Hills in England - northwest of London) and our water is extremely hard. I've never had problems with graininess on ISO 100 or 400 films. TMZ 3200 was grainy though ... not unexpected. The only thing I do have to do is to use a wetting agent, otherwise I'll get chalk streaks all over (Ilfotol is my usual).

-- Klaus Werner (kwerner@electronicsweekly.net), March 09, 2000.

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