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Response to Ilford Delta question

from chris almqvist (chris@propellerheads.org)
Some of that magenta coloring washes away when you rinse the film. Ilford suggest a water saving approach: change water in tank five times; after the first water change invert or rotate the tank once, after the second change do it five times, after the third change ten times and after the fourth change twenty times. You can see the coloring disappear when you flush out the first waters. Anyway different films usually look a bit different, and the same film may look different when developed in a different developer. What really counts is if you can make good enlargements from your negatives.

Ilford also have a proposal for establishing clearing times: take a small piece of the film (the leader) and put one single drop of hypo on it and wait for thirty seconds. Then put the whole piece into hypo. (I use a small glass jar for this, it allows you to inspect the clearing progress easily without having to take out the film.) When there is no difference between the area where you placed the initial drop and the rest, then the film is cleared. Make a note of the time needed with unused hypo. You should discard the hypo when it is so used that the clearing time is twice the time for unused hypo. If you monitor your hypo quality this way, there should be no need to fix for more than twice the (current) clearing time.

By the way, have you seen that Kodak has changed its developing instructions from 'use vigorous agitation' (for T-Max developer) to 'gentle ......agitation' (for XTOL). If you are a fine grain freak, try gentle agitation with your T-Max developer and see what it does to your grain.....

(posted 9728 days ago)

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