Topic: Enhanced Grain

[jharr]

If you have looked at many of my photos, you might have noted that I prefer grainy images over those beautiful sharp smooth images many of you are able to create. I say 'prefer', but in reality, it is probably just a lack of ability to create the latter that drives me to the former. In any case, I found myself shooting a roll of Dacomatic Recordak copy film (expired whilst the dinosaurs still held sway). I was planning to use my usual Adonal 1:100 stand x 70 min developing scheme that has worked well in the past. However, I found myself at about 5 minutes in with an errand that could not be postponed. I had to leave in 20 minutes! What to do? I could just leave it in the developer which would probably then end up being about a 3 hour dev time. I know others (@Indofunk) have done this with no ill effects, but it occurred to me that I might 'speed things up' a bit with some more agitation. A side benefit would be avoiding the bromide drag that has been a problem in the past with 35mm film and stand development. I figured I would also get some additional contrast and grain, but that doesn't really bug me too bad (see sentence #1). So here are some results. The negatives were a bit thinner than usual, but perfectly adequate for scanning. The camera was a Fed-3 fitted with a Jupiter-8 50mm f/2 lens. I am pretty pleased with the outcome and might try experimenting some more with tweaking the development of this film.


dacomatic-fed3-009 by James Harr's Photos, on Flickr


dacomatic-fed3-008 by James Harr's Photos, on Flickr


dacomatic-fed3-005 by James Harr's Photos, on Flickr


dacomatic-fed3-002 by James Harr's Photos, on Flickr

[Adam Doe]

Neato! James, I see by your flickr notes that you agitated every 5 min, but for how long? 10 secs? More? Thanks.

[jharr]

Thanks Adam. It was the usual 30 sec of agitation/inversion to begin and then just about 5 seconds every 5 minutes. Just enough to get some  fresh chem on the surface.

For the sake of comparison, here is some Ilford Delta 100 that was in the tank at the same time as the Recordak. These aren't great shots, but show that there is more dynamic range and less grain on this film Additionally, the Delta 100 negs were not thin at all. Very printable.


delta100-ftn-002 by James Harr's Photos, on Flickr



delta100-ftn-018 by James Harr's Photos, on Flickr