Did I push properly?

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Last night, I developed a roll of T-Max 100, shot at EI 400 (I know, stupid me for not checking the ISO after I loaded the film). Anyhow the negatives appear to be a little thin. They are also contrasty but I expected that with pushing film. The edge print looks just slightly thinner than usual (assuming due to extended development). Other than the thin-ness of the image, everything looks cool. I have never pushed film before and was just curious if I did it right. My setup:

All chems were in a 68 degree F water bath.

Sprint developer: 11 minutes, agitated first 30 seconds, 5 inversions every 30 seconds.

Kodak stop bath: 1 minute, constant agitation.

Sprint fixer: 3 minutes, first minute constant agitation, 10 seconds agitation every minute after that.

Water rinse: 1 minute, fill and dump.

Sprint HCA: 3 minutes, first minute constant agitation, 10 seconds agitation every minute after that.

Water rinse: 5 minutes, fill and dump.

Photo-flo bath

Did I do something wrong or is this the nature of pushed negatives (thin)? I have developed Tri-X and T-Max 400 with this method and times (with the exception of developer times - 8 minutes instead of 11) and I am happy with the results.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

-- Johnny Motown (johnny.motown@att.net), June 01, 2001

Answers

Thin and contrasty. Sounds like you did all right to me.

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), June 01, 2001.

If what you mean by thin is that the shadows do not have enough density, that sounds correct. Presumably, you underexposed the film by rating it at a higher speed. That means the shadows are underexposed and nothing really helps much here. The highlights are underexposed too, obviously, but since the density in the highlights is also proportional to developing time and you developed longer, the highlights will gain density. Pushing allows you to extract extra speed out of the emulsion (and may be the only way out in a number of situations e.g., handholding in low light etc) but it works best when crucial areas of the picture lie in the midtones and highlights. Nothing really saves the shadows (short of other techniques like cooking the film in peroxide fumes etc). The characteristic curve of a pushed film will have the shadows underexposed and the highlights overdeveloped i.e., you will be developing the film to a higher gamma as well which will increase the local contrast in the midtones and highlights. Cheers, DJ.

-- N Dhananjay (ndhanu@umich.edu), June 01, 2001.

Thanks for the answers. I thought everything was ok but I wanted to check with you all to be sure. Yes, the shadow detail is gone and it looks like the highlights are weak (almost blocked up). By the way, I forgot to mention that all chems used were used one-shot. Oh well, that'll learn me! ;-)

-- Johnny Motown (johnny.motown@att.net), June 01, 2001.

i've never used Sprint developer. you might try T-Max deveolper if this ever happens again. you may get better results. you might want to experiment and shoot some film and push it so you can get the best results at all times, even when it's human error.

-- d.a.galgozy (rollemfilm@yahoo.com), June 03, 2001.

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