FX55 Diluted - A Wow Moment!

hello and welcome to victorial Planet my name is John Finch these last few weeks we've been looking at fx55 looking more deeply at that developer we've looked at using it straight we've looked at using it as a compensation developer as a two bath and this week we're going to look at it diluted and see if there are any changes to its characteristics so I've done that work this week and I want to bring it to you now but first of all let's just talk about why does someone even want to dilute a developer in the first place yes why dilute a developer at all looking at many developers they come with different dilutions and people learn to have different preferences for developers look at d76 and X apart from using them neat 1+0 we can also dilute them 1 plus one 1+ 2 and so on and people get to like certain dilutions many people say that d76 and even exol is better diluted 1+ one 510 pyro very popular developer and rightly so and it can be diluted from one plus 100 100 which is its normal dilution if you like right up to 1 plus 500 I mean it goes on and on and on it's an amazing versatile developer craw his own developers FX4 fx15 they too came with different dilutions there's more that I don't even note here that came with different dilutions but they were very similar um in dilutions to d76 with their 1+ 1 1 plus to and so on and in fact fx15 which is one of my favorite of the solvent developers um I often use it at OnePlus One it's a lovely developer at that dilution let's just talk a minute about the effects of dilution when you dilute what effect is that going to have and there are many but the basic bottom line is that when you dilute a developer differently from its normal in inverted commas uh dilution it changes the character of the developer uh it might change its solvency U for instance d76 and exol have high sulfite levels so they're solvent developers they produce fine grain through the solvent action of sodium sulfite but when you dilute them their character changes cuz no longer are they a solvent developer and they become a different type of developer and the grain will change and the sharpness will change because of that of course when you dilute a developer it changes its activity level as well you usually have to develop for longer because the the dilute developer is slower acting or softer working slower working and so you develop longer but this has Side Effects by developing longer you might increase acutance because of the more dilute developer over a longer period of time starts to change the way it develops edges hard edges within your negatives and the compensation and we've looked at that briefly last week when we looked at two bath development trying to create some kind of compensation to bring highlights that can easily be burned out in certain situations to bring them under control so it makes them easier to print easier to scan and easier to make a nice photograph of so these are just some of the things that change because of the effects of dilution what am I expecting then when we dilute fx55 what am I looking for well first of all I'm going to be looking at grain is it going to be finer usually if you lower the activity of a developer the grain can become finer now I'm not saying that happens every time but in my experience a more dilute developer tends towards giving finer grain so that's one thing I'll be looking for what about sharpness am I going to get better sharpness because of enhanced acutance now fx55 is already an acutance developer and so this will be interesting to see if that increases and compensation by diluting it down let's just see if we get any kind of better compensation from this developer and there're just three things I'll be looking at also maybe we'll just see some pictorial quality improvements or not it might actually degrade it might go down pictorially so this is all interesting stuff I don't know of many people that even talk about diluting fx55 so this was a very interesting experiment for me to do for you guys and to show you what results I get so let's crack on I've got the negatives already developed let's put them on the light table here are the negatives we've been looking at these last few weeks the bottom two are the new ones this is 1 + 1 11 minutes that's about 50% increase in developer time and this is 1+ 1 14 minutes which is a 100% increase in developer time you can see the difference there in the contrast of these two um and in fact the 1 +14 minutes is looking very similar to the original uh 7 minutes straight fx55 negatives isn't it it's very close to that so it's pretty close to the right uh time but we'll talk about that when I show you the prints so there they are it this is beginning to it's a little bit thin in the middle but you know what thin is not necessarily bad and I know a lot of people like thick negatives they're so used to seeing thick negatives but don't forget Crawley himself liked thin negatives and preferred them he said the grain was finer and they could be sharper um and we saw with this compensation development last week that it was sharp and the grain is is very fine so it's pretty true what he was saying um and they scan really well when they're thinner and um they print really well if you've got an enlarger that gives you extra density if you can dial in density I know some enlargers don't have dialing density and then the the period of time for exposure would be very short for this kind of negative but I don't have a problem with the Magneta 4 because it dials in density and I can control how long long the exposure is for printing but that's by the by these are the two we're focusing on 1 + 1 so I diluted the developer in half and uh saw what I could get and they're actually very good let's look at the negatives after they've been scanned these are the scans uh on the left hand side is the regular 7 Minute fx55 fp4 was my film and I ran it through at 160 ISO I nominally get 200 ISO from it but I like at that third of a stop of extra Shadow detail just for me um your mileage may vary now on the right hand side we're looking at last week's um two bath development with Metabo rate 1% solution and that was 5 minutes plus 5 minutes and if you look at them they're very similar aren't they um there is more compensation here we discussed that I'll just click here just zoom into that we discussed there was more compensation on the wall especially obvious in the actual prints themselves so we'll just go back out now looking on the right hand side I'm now looking at the 1 + 1 11 minutes that's a 50% increase in my personal development time so whatever your personal development time is ADD 50% uh for this effect whatever we're going to see here so let's zoom in on this and remember these are scanned very flat and no enhancements at all I haven't done any manipulation and I think I can see more sharpness on the OnePlus One at 11 minut it's definitely sharper and it if it's not sharper it's because there's some compensation and I'm seeing more uh detail in this harling which is very nice over here this is the side I'm looking at I go up here and look at the chimney and again I think I'm getting more detail more nuances more tonality so there's an improvement we're actually seeing an improvement in the scanned negative which is nice to see I didn't know if I was going to get one so that is nice let's have a look at the 14 minutes so right hand side is now 14 minutes 1 + 1 zoom into that and again there's more detail more compensation and it's sharper than the left hand side let's go up to the chimney that's the same so very similar to the 11 minutes in the scan very nice just run along here you see these nuances on the slates of the cottage there's more tonality in this roof than this one in scan let's look at the door and I think you can see there's a little more contrast in the door little more tonality and it's a bit sharper looking at this bush here it just looks like there's a bit more contrast so maybe the 14 minutes has added a little contrast but it's also got better tonality I'm seeing a lot more tones in the chimney here so that is an interesting result that I honestly wasn't expecting I thought they'd be pretty much the same and maybe I'd see some compensation but to actually see better midtones is a pleasant surprise now 14 minutes that's a long development time but it would be worth it if I wanted that extra tonality especially medium format so look here's the 11 minute that's the 50% increase diluting the developer in half 1 + 1 and there's more tonality now which is better let me just switch the left one to the 14 minutes so the left is 14 the right is 11 and the 11 looks a bit better let's go over here let's have a look at this I'm quite can you tell I'm a little bit excited here I don't often get surprised but this is a lovely surprise um the 11 is better it's sharper and there's more tonality so there that is an interesting result I used 500 m of developer but this was a snip so I'd have to try this with a full film to make sure that there's enough developing agent in there to give me the same result however I'm pleased with that result I'm going to print these and have a look here's the original uh fx55 straight and it's a lovely print there's that cloud I was looking at and so on it's it's a great developer for skies I like the skies in this developer it seems to I don't know how it does it but it just makes nice Skies now here is the 1+ one 11 minutes so let's just have a look at that it's a really nice print it's some lovely detail and it has compensated let's just compare the two there is the regular looking at this area here have a good look at that and then here and I think you'll agree there's more detail in there it's a little bit sharper now these were both grade 2 and A2 they're very similar at grade 2 and A2 um let's look at the chimneys compare those so if I can just get them in there very similar if anything I think the OnePlus One is a little bit better at 11 minutes now let me bring in the 14 minute 1pl one now this I had to print at grade two so this is half a grade more contrasty however what I'm getting look at these chimneys here is a lot more tonality look at that chimney there is a lot more tones in there and detail look at that detail wow and that's micro contrast and I think we're getting more acutance and better micro contrast I am surprised I really didn't expect that now here is that wall again and again you're getting a lot of detail in that wall so I could have maybe even gone it's a little bit lower from grade two maybe grade 1 and a half which is saying to me that maybe it's a little bit too long that my development time should be somewhere between 11 minutes and 14 minutes because if I'm starting to go below grade two and this is potentially getting below grade two it's it's a little bit black and white uh I think I would lower the dev time so I would maybe cut that in half maybe 12 and 1 half minutes like that look at the sky though isn't that lovely just a blue sky and it's really and no filter fp4 fx55 great Skies really impressed very sharp look at the tree I think that's the sharpest I've seen that tree this is a very interesting developer and it does show some enhancement with dilution let's just do a summary of what we've learned over the last few weeks it's been an interesting few weeks for me as I've died deeply into this fx55 developer and learn more about what its capabilities are first and foremost just straight at its regular dilution FX 5 has given me some really nice negatives to work with so I'm very impressed as a developer in and of itself it's very good we tried Tu bath we tried Crawley's Tu bath that he was using with fx50 and we also tried the kind of generic to Bath that we can use with many other developers which is using in a separate Alkali bath to finish development off and I found that five plus five minutes worked quite nicely it improved the compensation and brought the highlights down and made them a little bit more principle the fine grain too the the grain is already fine with fx55 it's already A fine grain developer but the uh metaborate 1% bath 2 really seemed to help bring the grain down even finer it was quite hard to focus the enlarger the grain was so five we're talking about grain the size of pan F and that's impressive and then this week looking at diluting the developer now I've only diluted it 1+ one I haven't gone any further than that because I think that the development times would start to get longer and longer and even if it worked so at least for now I'm stopping there at that much dilution and maybe in the next uh month or two I'll look at maybe 1 plus 2 or even 1+ 3 just to see if it's feasible with fx55 but 1+ one has given us some lovely negatives especially the slightly longer than 50% so we're looking at maybe your personal development time plus 75% would be about right to get enhanced tonality sharper negatives and some compensation thrown in free of charge so I'm actually surprised I didn't expect to get that when I first looked at the scans for the negatives I thought there's actually not that much difference I don't know if I'm even going to recommend this to people but on deeper looking at those negatives and then printing them out and looking very carefully I am seeing an improvement a measurable visual Improvement that can't be bad so it's worth the effort uh I'm glad I did it I'm glad I've done these tests it's not black it's not black and white I was going to say it's not you know completely different it not as much as d76 when you start to dilute that there is a substantial change with that when you dilute it from straight to 1+ one with fx55 it's a lot more subtle but that subtlety is nice there is some enhancements that are nice and in medium format I imagine it could be very nice and that's what I'm going to be using next before I go I just want to let you know I'm going to take a couple of weeks off and take a breather before I restart my videos so forgive me for that but I do need a break every so often um and I'll be getting on with other stuff I need to go to Copenhagen so that'll be nice and I'm going to take my camera and get some photographs and hopefully show you guys uh some shots from that beautiful city in Denmark so thanks very much for watching everybody please give me a thumbs up subscribe to my channel if you don't subscribe already and I will see you in uh in 3 weeks time I think with my next video thanks again thank you to my patrons thank you all for buying my book I'm so appreciative I really am goodbye for now [Music]

Channel: Pictorial Planet

Views: 2,610

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Id: DrpvFQ4GScQ

Length: 21min 28sec (1288 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024