Yesterday I have preview scanned two rolls of
Fomapan 200 Creative
exposed at 100 ASA in my Nikon F100. These are my preliminary notes and
thoughts about this. I need to make more experiments and develop more films
to get final feeling abut
Fotospeed FD10 and on developing Foma 200
at 100 ASA. So please take following lines as real life example based on my
results and not as scientific test.
I developed each roll in separate tank as only roll in it. I used 300ml of
developer in Paterson Tank where one can fit two 35mm rolls. Time for both
developers was 6:00 min and nonstop inversions in 15 second of first minute
and than at beginning of each following minute one inversion of the tank. I
try to keep 20C temperature so I prepare liquid on 19C and tank on 19C
before I start development. Than after 3 minutes I measured temperature of
developer in the tank. In case of
Paterson Aculux II it was exactly
20C in case of FD10 temperature was kept at 19-19.5C. This is rather
important with connection to the results and conclusions.
When I scanned both films yesterday I did scan then with lower resolution
to only get feeling of overall contrast and density. Today I will do detail
scan on few selected pictures from both rolls and will extend this
information with those findings.
I am going to described properties of each image from positive view so
highlights are white and blacks are dark :-)
Roll developed in Aculux seems to have higher contrast. Highlights
are nice white, where expected with details in them and blacks are nice
deep black. I am very satisfied with it. Overall image has that nice
feeling of properly exposed and developed film. One can also feel that film
was pulled, so exposed on lower ISO than suggested. I like that special
look of the film, it reminds me old photographs look.
Roll developed in FD10 has lower contrast. Highlights are not white
enough, they are kind of shade but also blacks are not deep enough.
Negative itself is not bad, but is not as good as the one developed in
Aculux. This has to be taken with huge reserve as I develop in FD10 first
time and also I exposed Foma 200 at 100 first time, so in this case we have
two unknown factors while in case of Aculux II I knew developer quite well.
Now what needs to be done to make results better. As the highlights are not
white enough one would expect to increase a time. But with increasing time
I will get also more development in shadow. That means I will not get
shadows darker but just opposite. I can increase number of inversions and
invert tank every 30 second while keeping development time the same. If I
assume that highlights are not developed enough because developer was
exhausted that this will help and will not effect developing of shadows.
How to make shadows more black? Well by shortening developing time even
more. But I was already at six minutes which is almost border when any
error, delay will be very visible. Other option is to use more dilution
1:14 in that case I can use 9:00 minutes developing time which I can
shorter to 8:00 with increased inverting every 30 sec. Now I need to
remember that I develop roll with FD10 at lower temperature. as in the
middle of development time it was around 19-19.5C It means when I started
it could be as low as 18C. That would indicate that I didn't develop long
enough. But why shadows are overdeveloped? Well I need to check this fact
with details scan today evening and than make decision.
So for now this is all. I guess I will provide some images from these two
rolls also today evening and if time allows I will also do some
development. We have hot summer now. Day before yesterday when I developed
these rolls temperature in the room as as high as 27C even was almost 22:00
evening. Now we have got some thunderstorms and temperature dropped to 22C
at highest. So it is a good chance to keep temperature of the developer at
20C constant.
And the reason why I try new developer? Well read more about it in my
journal about
Paterson stopping production of
photo chemicals.
