I'm looking to find which chemicals with what B&W film will produce the finest grains and largest range of shades of gray. I'm willing to do whatever I have to do to increase the quality of my B&W negatives!

-- Loralei (Chgowildflower@aol.com), January 24, 2001

Answers

What film and developer are giving you unsatisfactory results, and how are you doing your processing? You seem to realize than some developers work better with some films than with others, and time and temperature play a large role in grey scale, too. Also, slower films generally have finer grain to start with than the faster films. For example, good old Tri-X is pretty fast and still has what I would call fine grain, but Plus-X is slower, and even finer-grained. I've used Tri-X and Plus-X in D-76 1:1 for a long time and don't notice the grain. I'm sure you'll get lots of other suggestions and observations on this message board, so just hang around.

-- Keith Nichols (knichols@iopener.net), January 24, 2001.

Fine grain and wide tonal range are inherently at odds.

General purpose developers fall into 2 major classes: solvent, which minimize grain, and acutance, which tend to allow for compensation (compressing the highlights so they don't hit the maximum density of the film and "burn out").

Developers which seem to defy these rules, at least to some extent, are: Xtol,PMK, and 2-bath or divided developers. Anchell & Troop's Film Developing Cookbook suggests a formula for a 2-bath version of Microdol-X, which might fit your needs.

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), January 24, 2001.

If there were some magic combination that "will produce the finest grains and largest range of shades of gray [whatever that means]" we would all be using it! To give a meaningful answer we need to know (1) what you're using now (2) what you don't like about your current results, an example would greatly help.

-- Tim Brown (brownt@flash.net), January 24, 2001.

Greetings,

The finest grain and longest tonal scale will not necessarily give you better negatives; it depends on your application. A POTA developer will generally increase the "tonal scale" (decrease the contrast or Gamma) of any film. One of the finest grain films is Kodak's Tecnical Pan. Developed properly in a POTA developer, it can yield a 10+ stop range, BUT it's extremely slow (ISO of 25 or less) and a difficult film to tame. You would probably have to run numerous test before getting the processing time/agitation correct.

The Darkroom Cookbook by Anchell & Troop is an excellent place to start searching.

Regards, Pete

-- Pete Caluori (pcaluori@hotmail.com), January 24, 2001.

This is an interesting question and probably difficult for this forum to come to a general consensus on

Generally, all B&W films used with standard recommended developers can yield good results. I think the finest grain film is Technical Pan, but a lot of people don’t like the “feel” of the final prints; photographers such as John Sexton use T-Max films and recommended developers; I like older slow emulsions like Pan-X developed in PMKPyro.

One thing I do is look at other photographer’s work and read what processes and materials they use, then decide if I want to give it a go or stick with what I’m doing. Let research and study be your guide to "better" negatives and prints.

-- doug mcfarland (junquemail222@yahoo.com), January 24, 2001.

I suggest carefully reading ....http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/bw.html and making your own decision. For me Ilford ID-11 and slowest film capable of handling the lighting conditions and subject.

-- Chris Hawkins (peace@clover.net), January 25, 2001.

If you're willing to do some research, read "The Book of Pyro" by Gordon Hutchings. He describes his PMK developer as the only developer able to straddle the fence between fine grain and high sharpness. The yellow-green stain pyro gives to the negative masks some of the grain. It also can control "runaway" highlights when printing on variable contrast paper. I find myself using it more and more.

-- Brian Hinther (BrianH@sd314.k12.id.us), January 26, 2001.