Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/09/04

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Subject: [Leica] Lab vs. home processing.
From: feli at creocollective.com (Feli di Giorgio)
Date: Sat Sep 4 06:33:30 2004
References: <000c01c4114d$cd97d410$6501a8c0@dorysrusp4>

On Tue, 2004-03-23 at 19:12, Don Dory wrote:
> Feli,
> It goes without saying that A&I used an automated system so time and
> temperature were within about 0.1 degree.

Of course.

>   My experience has been
> however, that unless your temperatures vary many degrees between
> solutions then the apparent grain will not change much.

It's not so much the processing part where I suspect big temperature
differences. All of my chemicals are stored at room temperature, which
here in sunny California puts them at about the right place. I suspect
that a much bigger problem is the washing temperature. I keep reading
that cold water will cause the grain to clump together, so as of lately
I have been trying to keep the flow at about 70-75 F, instead of just
using straight cold water.

> 
> As to the smoothness, does the grain look a little melted under a loop?
> If there are no crisp edges then they were using a solvent developer
> like Microdol-X.  FG-7 can also give a smoother grain structure than
> D-76 and is commonly used in commercial labs.

Yes, in these negs the grain has been disolved, but the images are still
quite sharp. Not Rodinal sharp, but sharp.


> My experience with Xtol and Tri-X does give a finer grain than D-76 but
> the grain is still very evident.

I like the Tri-X grain, but somehow I've been getting a little too much
of it.

> If you really want to get to the bottom of it, why don't you ask A&I
> what they used?

Bingo. That was my next step.


I have been thinking about switching to something like Divided D76,
which may give me more consistent results.

That or maybe I'll attempt to brew up a few gallons of that
mystery soup 777....;-)


> Don
> dorysrus@mindspring.com




In reply to: Message from dorysrus at mindspring.com (Don Dory) ([Leica] Lab vs. home processing.)