Well, I wanted to give it a try again almost 1 year later. I learned how to develop my own film last year, September on the Labour Day weekend, by my friend John Meadows.
That same day I went to Henry's to purchase the bare necessities to develop film, such as Developer, Fixer, Cylinders, Thermometer, and some containers. Well, the Containers ended up being purchased from Walmart instead, which were just 4L jugs of Distilled Water (tasted pretty damn good too!). For $1.49, for a 4L resealable jug, and distilled water, which tastes great, I couldn't go wrong. Considering the Datatainers are $6.99 for a 1L container, or $11.99 for a collapsible, it was a little more than I was going to spend for initial investment.
Well, that same night I developed my first films, Arista Premium 400 (Tri-X) and some Polypan F 50, and my choice of developer was TMAX Developer. I didn't know any better, and honestly, I wasn't very good at using it at first.
Now, after a nearly year long hiatus from that Developer I decided to try it again. First film to try it on, was Fomapan 100 film. A film I had never used before, but wanted to get the chance to try something that no one else had yet done, at least, not published that I could find.
One of the dilutions for TMAX Developer is 1+4, which is to make a STOCK solution.
Personally, I do not do this, and mix it 1+9 instead from the Syrup to make a one-shot developer. I am not worried about taking a longer time to develop, considering I have pushed 50ISO film to 800ISO with actually alright results.
Well, since I was in near uncharted territory, I had to figure out what would be the best time to develop the film, and so I decided to go ahead and try some test strips. Unfortunately, this also ended up causing me to cut out a frame of film, not the end of the world though.
So I mixed up the solution of 28mL of TMAX Developer, and 222mL of water for a working solution of 1+9 @ 250mL 20°C.
I took my test strip and began to submerge it into the developer, 2cm at a time, and every minute dipped it further and further into the developer.
Once I was out of my film test strip, it had about 11 minutes worth of information on it, which showed that the best times were in between 8 minutes and 9 minutes. 10 and 11 minutes showed that I would be getting too much in the way of dense negatives, where as 6 and 7 minutes would end up with the negatives being a little too thin. So after a little bit of deliberation, I decided on aiming for 8:15.
Sure enough, after the session was over, and the film was in its washing stage, I decided to have a peak at the negatives. I was nothing short of impressed with what I saw.
But I think I'll let you be the judge of that......
Rusted Chainguard
Kodak Signet 35C Rangefinder - Kodak 44mm ƒ/3.5 Ektar Lens
Fomapan 100 @ EI 100 - Developed in Kodak TMAX Developer 1+9 8:15 @ 20°C
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