Finally done it but not without mistakes

MrDrizz

MrDrizz

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Mark
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Hey guys,
Been a long while since I last posted on TP.
I've finally started to scratch the Film and home development itch. Really enjoying it, enjoying that fact that shooting film is forcing me to slow down and really think about composition.

I've developed my first 3 rolls of HP5+, first one went very well the other 2 something went wrong with the process, not sure what.

When I digitised them (via an Fuji X-T3) and flipped the levels they had a sepia tone to them even though the negative looks ok.

It could be the PP at fault but I followed the same procedure I did with my first roll when digitising them.
So I can only guess it was my development that was at fault.

Just how critical are chemical/water/time and temperature?

Is there much latitude?

Chemicals used:

Ilford DD-X
Ilford stop
Ilford Rapid Fix
Ilford wetting

Loving the while process though, very hands on [emoji106]

Mark.
 
It could well be dodgy white balance on the digital camera. That was a problem I had when digitising that way. It's what makes colour negative work quite tricky... Are you using a neutral backlight?

I ended up importing, reversing, then just desaturating the image. If it was a colour shot, I would use the rebate of the negative (which is white as a negative) to use the WB tool in Lightroom to balance things before reversing.

Even scanning black & white negs requires a desaturation because the scanner browns things out.

It's not a problem with dev (unless I'm doing it wrong of course!) just an issue with ditigal thingies not seeing light properly.
 
from memory, the temperature tolerance on the dev is reasonable, but it is there, on the other chemicals I don't believe temperatures (of a realistic day to day nature) make any difference.

If it is a chemicals issue then it's more likely to be because it's gone off, dev (and possibly fix?) has a short life once deployed

But last time I was in a dark room was 20 years ago so treat what I say with caution :)
 
MrDrizz said:
Just how critical are chemical/water/time and temperature?

Is there much latitude?

Chemicals used:

Ilford DD-X
Ilford stop
Ilford Rapid Fix
Ilford wetting

Loving the while process though, very hands on [emoji106]

Mark.
Click to expand...
See page 4 of the attached Ilford data sheet on DD-X for HP5+ at different iso and at 20 or 24C. While some variation should still get you a usable neg, sticking pretty much to the stated times and temps will give you a better end result. Once you get consistency with that, there is more scope for variation.
https://www.ilfordphoto.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ILFOTEC-DDX-AUG19.pdf
 
Last edited:
Thanks guys, I did notice, after the fact, that the camera was set to fluorescent and the light source was just my tablet with a white image as a background and set to max brightness. I have managed to somewhat correct the issue.

The temp of the dev was with 1°C of the recommended 20°C

I need more film now,
 
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