What fast film for given developers

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The lab where I have my films developed uses the following developers:

Rodinal HC-110 ID-11 Microphen Tmax Atomal (maybe)

I will be needing a fairly high speed EI of 1600 or 3200 and the following films are available to me: Delta 400, HP5-plus, Tri-X, Neopan 400 and 1600, Agfa 400, Tmax 400 and perhaps Tmax 3200. Unfortunately no Delta 3200 as it is WAY to expensive here.

Any suggestion on the film, developer, dilution combination?

I will be shooting a wedding (not as the main photog. :) in the "available darkness" and I do not use flash.

Best regards,

-- Boris Brecelj (boris@brecelj-op.si), April 23, 2002

Answers

HC-110 'B' dilution <1:31> works very well with Tri-X.

Best of luck, Howard

-- Howard Posner (hposner1@swarthmore.edu), April 23, 2002.


HC-110 is ok with most films but I don't think it's the best choice for anything...

For low light situation, John Hicks suggested a few months ago about pushing Delta 400 to EI 800 in Ilfosol-S. I strongly recommend to find that discussion and consider test shooting before the real wedding. I think ID-11 1+1 would also be a good candidate for this, but I'd switch to Microphen (stock) if you need further push. TMZ is great but I think it'll be too grainy for the purpose. I suppose you are using 35mm (as TMZ doesn't come in medium format) so use something like 35mm f/2.0 on Konica Hexar or rangefinder cameras and move around. Available light is in many aspects harder than using a flash.

Also, I find myself draining films quickly when shooting Hexar without flash because people do not notice me photographing and it's really easy to shoot a lot with it. Bring a lot of films...

-- Ryuji Suzuki (rsuzuki@rs.cncdsl.com), April 24, 2002.


> pushing Delta 400 to EI 800 in Ilfosol-S. I strongly recommend to find that discussion and consider test shooting before the real wedding. I think ID-11 1+1 would also be a good candidate for this

I've wandered back to D-76H; I feel that although Ilfosol-s is a perfectly fine developer it really wasn't giving me anything significant I wasn't getting with D-76H plus carried the disadvantage of wondering if the stock had gone bad in the bottle.

To specifically address the question, I'm really impressed with how well Delta 400 pushes to EI 800 in D-76H 1:1, I think a little more gracefully than HP5+ although I don't hesitate to use HP5+ that way either.

A key factor is that the film will be lab-processed; imho that definitely requires some testing in advance.

-- John Hicks (jhicks31@bellsouth.net), April 25, 2002.


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