I recently looked through the archives of the Infrared Mailing list and picked up an idea to use with IR films. One can perhaps reduce the grain of 35mm HIE by underexposing by at least a stop and then lowering the resulting contrast by developimg in Techidol. Anyone have any experience to share?

-- Gene Crumpler (nikonguy@worldnet.att.net), August 15, 2000

Answers

Gene, I would save your money (and frustrations) and use POTA or Divided D76. Technidol is twichy at best with other films let alone the cost of it... I have done alot with DD76 and have gotten GREAT results. Email me if you want me to send you a picture. Cheers, Scott

-- Scott Walton (scotlynn@shore.net), August 16, 2000.

Scott:

I've used tech pan for nearly all of my 35mm work in the last 10 years, so I'm familiar with all of the developer tricks to reduce contrast. I was really asking whether anyone had seen an improvement (lower contrast) in IR films that would allow reduced density (less grainess in 11x14's)and still retain detail in the shadows.

I'm going to shoot some test shots with HIE and try my own personal TP developing trick, and was wondering if anyone had tried this.

-- Gene Crumpler (nikonguy@worldnet.att.net), August 16, 2000.

Scott Eaton on photo.net reported excellent results using Technidol on HIE, and posted a few intriguing sample images. I'm sure you could look up his email address there and find out directly from him. I'm not sure about the low-grain possibilties, but the contrast on his sample images looked very low for HIE.

-- John O'Connell (boywonderiloveyou@hotmail.com), August 16, 2000.

To follow up;

Scott is developing 35mm HIE in technidol for 16 minutes at 70. He uses a TTL meter setting of 300 and takes exposure readings off a grey card. His images look pretty low contrast for HIE. Hope this idea works on 120 MACO which is NOW available on B&H's web site! Konica 750 is just too high contrasted and nonhalated(new word?)for me.

-- Gene Crumpler (nikonguy@worldnet.att.net), August 23, 2000.

Just treat the HIE kodak stuff like Tmax 100 using TMAX developer, it seems to reduce the grain...

-- Jason Tuck (jtuck80@csi.com), October 07, 2000.