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cadre · 01-25-2007, 09:25 AM

I may be hitting up the wrong crowd here but here goes nothing.

I just transfered to a new school where I am studying photography and the photo lab is much different here. As a result I am now buying and mixing my own chemicals and I am wondering if anyone has experience with testing films with chemicals to perfect development times and temperatures and all that. This is somewhat using the zone system but hopefully not as much of a full out pain as that.

I'm using Ilford films, mainly fp4+ 125 with Kodak HC-110 developer and Kodak fixer. Basically what I want to do is to find out what temperature and time will give me the best film development. I figure I will start with what the manufacturer reccomends and shoot a couple rolls with my zone equipment (black and white towels, gray cards and such) in order to test what will give me the best result with my setup. I am just going to find a good time and hopefully a good temperature along with a good time for the fixer. The idea is that this will give me enough information to be able to adjust to different circumstances.

The only problem with this is it seems time consuming and I don't know that I will be controlling all the variables properly. I also haven't done anything like this in quite some time and my class here is not this in depth. Does anyone have experience with this type of thing? Any ideas on how I can do this with some shortcuts?

01-25-2007, 09:25 AM	#1 (permalink)
cadre The Worst Influence Location: Arizona	New Films and Chemicals I may be hitting up the wrong crowd here but here goes nothing. I just transfered to a new school where I am studying photography and the photo lab is much different here. As a result I am now buying and mixing my own chemicals and I am wondering if anyone has experience with testing films with chemicals to perfect development times and temperatures and all that. This is somewhat using the zone system but hopefully not as much of a full out pain as that. I'm using Ilford films, mainly fp4+ 125 with Kodak HC-110 developer and Kodak fixer. Basically what I want to do is to find out what temperature and time will give me the best film development. I figure I will start with what the manufacturer reccomends and shoot a couple rolls with my zone equipment (black and white towels, gray cards and such) in order to test what will give me the best result with my setup. I am just going to find a good time and hopefully a good temperature along with a good time for the fixer. The idea is that this will give me enough information to be able to adjust to different circumstances. The only problem with this is it seems time consuming and I don't know that I will be controlling all the variables properly. I also haven't done anything like this in quite some time and my class here is not this in depth. Does anyone have experience with this type of thing? Any ideas on how I can do this with some shortcuts? __________________ My life is one of those 'you had to be there' jokes.