[_Ben]

Shoot your film with purpose of a subject you enjoy. Follow the directions of the manufacturers when it comes to chemicals. Do this a bunch. Gain confidence and experience. Find out what other s do and begin to build on your growing skill set. There's no need to run a dozen "what if" scenarios in your head before your camera even arrives. You should be thinking about composition of black and white photography. If you can make tea, you can process film.

[ChrisPlatt]

What do you consider "extremes" in this case? Certainly some warn against developing film even in the high twenties degrees.

If you are comfortable in shirtsleeves in your processing location you can develop at ambient temperature.
No water bath is required. Consult developing charts for suggested times at various temperatures.

Chris

[elvinhaak]

If you are comfortable in shirtsleeves in your processing location you can develop at ambient temperature.
No water bath is required. Consult developing charts for suggested times at various temperatures.

Chris

At least if you leave the water for the developer to rest in the same room (to get to the ambient temperature).
If the tapwater at your place is like 5 degrees celcius and the room you are in is at 25 degrees celcius, it needs to get close to the room-temperature before using. This also applies to your rinsing-water.
Not to make it complicated but I learned the real hard way to use waterbaths to make this proces simple.
With water of 5 degrees celcius, there appears almost nothing on the film with a developer that needs to be 20 degrees celcius.... 5 degrees rinsing-water after 20 degrees fixer is giving a very special effect to the negatives due to the fast cooling.
And for 5 or 11 degrees celcius there are no developing charts...

[ChrisPlatt]

I use Kodak HC110, a concentrated syrup developer. I mix it with distilled water (which I buy in gallon jugs and store at room temperature) immediately before use.

If you use a powdered developer (and/or fixer) mix your stock solution a day in advance and it will be at room temperature when needed.
If you deem the water from your tap too cold for the stop or rinse adjust the temperature by opening the hot tap as needed.

IMO you are making a mountain out of a molehill.
Based on my experience temperature control is simply not so critical for BW film development.

Chris

[JelleSE]

Ok, so now I've shot and developed 3 rolls of Tri-X in HC-110. The results are ok, but I they do spark some followup questions.

The process:
My bathroom was about 23-24°C but the chemicals were about 21°C. I developed in HC-110 dilution H for 9 minutes. Agitating for 5 seconds every 30 seconds (Kodak method). Then Ilford stop bath for 30 seconds, constantly agitating followed by Ilford fixer for 3,5 minutes, agitating 5 seconds every 30 seconds, like the HC-110. Washing 3 times with 5, 10 and 20 'agitations' (Ilford method?) and finally a rinse with 'battery/ironing' water and Photo-flo. (Battery water is the best I could find, results seem fine). Hang to dry over night.

The results
I've made my own light table solution for scanning the negatives with my Sony A7 and Tamron 90/2.8 macro. Seems to work fine.
But the resulting images have a very compressed histogram, very low contrast, and I presume thats because of some fault in my developing process. Most of them are fixable in Lightroom, but they need to be pushed to the max and this increases the visibility of the noise, which looks awesome, but might not always be welcome. I even need to take some images into Nik Silver Effex Pro and give them the 'Tri-X 400' look to get there haha.

Some samples:

Very narrow histogram and low contrast


Here I've about maxed out everything to get some contrast in the image.

Any ideas as to why my images are so low in contrast?

_____________

I've also discovered something that I guess is a problem with the camera where some part of the shutter can't keep up with high shutter speeds (I think only the highest, 1/1000, currently testing). This ruined quite a few shots since I like to shoot with a wide aperture. Any ideas about this? The MX shows the current chosen shutter speed on a dial in the viewfinder, but mine shows one speed faster then the dial on top of the camera. I don't suppose that is related, but who knows...

Sample:




_____________


I've also learned to expose for the shadows more.... Many underexposed shots

_____________


Some more samples (These highly compressed by PentaxForums samples don't really do the images justice...)





Thanks!

[LesDMess]

I can't see the pics?


Is the MX new to you and previously untested?

[JelleSE]

I can't see the pics?


Is the MX new to you and previously untested?

Images should be visible now. Guess something went wrong.

The MX is new to me but seems to be in pristine condition, both inside and out.

[JelleSE]

Ok, so I've shot a new roll of Tri-X while paying more attention to expose for the shadows, or overexpose a bit. I'm not sure what the exposure lights in the MX viewfinder represent, but I don't think it's full stops per light. I'll develop the roll tonight for 12 minutes instead of 9. Should give more contrast. I'll update with the results hopefully tomorrow.

[LesDMess]

The first image of the little girl is correctly exposed by the MX whose meter is center-bottom weighted. That it is DSLR scanned with a very narrow histogram and low contrast maybe attributable to some underexposure by the MX and your DSLR capture. You should be able to judge your b&w film directly with some experience.

The second image - dark on the right side, looks like shutter capping. Something that may be corrected with a CLA (clean-lube-adjust) service.

Third image maybe again be attributable to the MX's metering mode, possible underexposure and again your DSLR scan that you can better judge on the frame of film.

Fourth looks perfect!

---------- Post added 06-05-16 at 01:23 PM ----------

If it helps, here is an exposure test that I did with Kodak TRI-X 400 processed with XTOL.

[JelleSE]

It has definitely something to do with the development because the newly developed negatives @12 minutes look much more contrasty than the earlier rolls. I'll scan them tomorrow when they are dry to get a better look.

Going in the right direction, so much fun!

[_Ben]

We had a practice at school using D-76 of adding 20% Dev time that increased contrast. It also increased grain. I tried the same with Ilford ilfosol3 and got to much grain. Be sure to only change one variable at a time.

[JelleSE]

Alright, as already visible on the developed negatives, the scans show it as well. Way better contrast at 12 minutes development instead of 9 minutes. The histogram in Lightroom now has a much wider spread, not perfect yet, but much better. I still have to pull the histogram out to get black blacks and white whites, which is fine when scanning the negatives and working them in Lightroom, but I do want to chase 'perfect' negatives for an easier workflow and better possibilities of one day developing in a darkroom. Pulling the histogram less on this roll gave milder grain as well.

So I'm thinking of trying even longer development, or, since I'm arriving at quite long development times, switching from dilution H to B at maybe 7 minutes. Will try that on the next roll

I've also tested the camera for the issue with half dark frames and I can confirm it is shutter capping at 1/1000. So when the next roll is full I'll take it out, connect the Winder MX and continuously fire the shutter at 1/1000 for some time to 'exercise' it. See if that does anything since the camera has not been used for quite some years before I got it. Otherwise I'll just stick to a max of 1/500 using my variable ND.

__________________________________
Some (edited) samples from the latest roll:









Thanks!

[tuco]

Ok, so now I've shot and developed 3 rolls of Tri-X in HC-110. The results are ok, but I they do spark some followup questions.

...
Any ideas as to why my images are so low in contrast?
...

You really can't judge your development contrast from a picture of a picture. You need to look at the negative ( an eye tempered with experience), measure the density range of the negative or print in on grade 2 or 3 paper the old-school way. With scanning, you don't have to target paper contrast indexes with your negatives so you have a lot more exposure range to work with.