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Advice sought: Best developer for light leaky exposures?

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 6:38 am
by Simon Last
Hello Everybody,

I am hoping that I might get some opinion and or advice from you all to help me with a project.

//background//
I am relatively inexperienced in Darkroom process. I have around 20 B&W films to process, diverse in manufacturer and speed, but also (and this is in a way the key //background// to the question) they were shot using my own Frankenstein panoramic camera which is essentially two cameras I hacked together. The machine is full of light leaks and the shutter is about 100 years old and is a bit sketchy - What I am getting at is that the exposures are a mess. I have previously used Rodinal and got quite a specific grainy kind of outcome from that (some examples here http://simonlast.co.uk/sl/category/work ... -my-camera).

I would like to see if I can achieve something a little more nuanced, fine grained. Given that the negs are, shall we say, *diverse*, (QUESTION:) I wondered what developer people with experience would recommend, to try to pull a more fine grained neg from the material, or if they thought that is even possible, when working with this kind of equipment and lightleaky exposures?

All feedback and suggestions gratefully received.

Best,

Simon

Also, just in case it is useful info, these are the specific film types I need to process:

FOMAPAN 400 x3
FOMAPAN 200 x3
KENTMERE 400 x2
KODAK TRI-X 400 x2
FUJI NEOPAN 400 x1
FUJI NEOPAN 100 x2
ILFORD HP5 400 x1
ILFORD DELTA 3200 x1
ILFORD XP2 400 x1
AGFA APX 100 x1

Re: Advice sought: Best developer for light leaky exposures?

Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2015 7:12 pm
by pirateoversixty
For get the Ilford XP-2 unless you want to get into the wonderful world of c-41 processing.
As for the others Hc-110 should work fine .
I did go to your website. Umh....

Re: Advice sought: Best developer for light leaky exposures?

Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 2:53 am
by Simon Last
Thanks for the answer.

Is there any rationale behind your choice of HC-110?

Re: Advice sought: Best developer for light leaky exposures?

Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2015 10:41 am
by pirateoversixty
nope, other than it should work well with any of the "conventional" films you have. d-76/id-11 would also be suitable. don't try rodinal, as it will draw ornello's wrath.