Some Darkroom Data

by M. Feuerbacher 2003.

Why all this? How the photographic process works...

Film development times

Ilford Delta 100 / 400 professional at 20°C in Ilford standard developers. Detailed informations are provided on the Ilford website downloadable as pdf-file. There you find much more than I present here. However, I have added some times wich I have obtained by extrapolation. They yield negatives of normal contrast.

		Delta 100 Professional 35mm, Rollfilm, Planfilm			Delta 400 Professional 35mm				Delta 400 Professional Rollfilm, Planfilm
		EI 50	EI 100	EI 200	EI 200	EI 400	EI 800	EI 1600	EI 200	EI 400	EI 800	EI 1600
ID-11	Stock	7	8.5	10.5	6	7	9	12.5	6.5	7.5	10	14
	1+1	10	11	13	9	10.5	12.5	18	10	11.5	14	-
	1+3	15	20	-	-	18	20	-	-	20	-	-
Perceptol	Stock	12	15	-	10	13	-	-	11	14.5	-	-
	1+1	13	17	-	14	18	-	-	15.5	20	-	-
	1+3	16	22	-	-	22	-	-	-	24	-	-

For development in a drum Ilford recommends to turn four times during the first 10 seconds of every minute of the development time.
All times are in minutes

Kodak TMax 100 / 400 / 3200 professional at 20°C in XTOL.

		TMax 100 Professional					TMax 400 Professional
		EI 25/50	EI 100	EI 200	EI 400	EI 800	EI 100/200	EI 400	EI 800	EI 1600	EI 3200
135 format	1+1	8	9.25	10.25	12.5	14.5	8	8.75	9.5	10.75	12.5
	1+2	11.5	12.5	13.75	15.75	18	9.5	10.5	12.25	13.75	16
	1+3	14.5	16	18.25	20.5	23	12.25	13.5	15	17	20
120 200 format	1+1	8.75	10	11	12.75	15.25	8	8.75	9.25	10.75	12.5
	1+2	11.75	13	14.5	16.75	19	11	12.5	14.25	16.5	19.25
	1+3	15	16.75	18.75	21	23.5	13.37	15.5	17.25	19.5	22.75

		TMax 3200 Professional
		EI 1600	EI 3200	EI 6400	EI 12500	EI 25000
135 format	1+1	14	16.5	19.5	22.5	26
	1+2	19	22	26.5	-	-
	1+3	23	27	-	-	-

Kodak Technical Pan at 21°C in XTOL.

		Technical Pan
		EI 4	EI 8	EI 12.5	EI 25
135 format	1+2	6	-	-	-
	1+3	-	8	-	-
	1+4	-	-	10.5	-
	1+5	-	-	-	12.5

For development in a drum Kodak recommends to turn four times during the first 30 seconds and the first 5 seconds of every half minute of the development time.
All times are in minutes

Note: Although Kodak gives development instructions for Ilford films in XTOL. I strongly recommend not to try this. To my experience you get much better results if you do not mix Ilford and Kodak products.

Fixation film clearing times

Fixation times for films are mostly not given by the film manufacturers. Usually they write that the film should be fixed twice the time it needs to get clear. But how do you know how long the film needs to get clear ? You can find the answer by a simple test. Cut off a small piece of film (it makes no difference if it is exposed or not) and throw it into a small amount of fixer at daylight. Then watch the occurring transparency of the film. It continuously gets clearer until it has the same color and transparency as the film carrier. The time needed for this process is the clearing time. Use twice this time for the fixation of your film. It is important not to fix the film too long, since oxidation of the silver during the fixation process reduces the image sharpness.

Below, I have listed some times for fixation in Agfa Agefix at 20 °C.

Film	time / Min
Kodak TMax 100	2.5 - 3
Kodak TMax 400	3.5
Kodak TMax 3200	4.5
Kodak Technical Pan	1
Ilford Delta 100	2.5
Ilford Delta 400	3.5

Printing data form

When I make prints I write down all parameters such as distance, multigrade filtering, aperture and exposure time. It is much easier not to forget some parameters if you use a fill-in form. I have made a form for my purposes, which you can download here in pdf- or winword format.

Darkroom form (pdf-format. 12kb)

Darkroom form (word-format 9kb)

Links

Richly detailed and competent photocourse by Agfa