Silvermax + Kentmere

wosis123 · 2013-02-05T14:31:57+00:00

Hallo, ich habe mir gedacht, mich bei 10er bzw. 400er KB Filmen auf Silvermax und Kentmere 400 zu konzentrieren. Wie entwickle ich die jetzt? Macht es Sin...

wosis123

Hello, I was thinking of focusing on Silvermax and Kentmere 400 for 10mm and 400 ISO films. How should I develop them? Does it make sense to use Kentmere 400 with Silvermax developer? What are the development times? Or is ADX a better option? How does Silvermax film behave in ADX? Are the development times the same as for APX100? Regards, Hendrik

Olivinyl

Hello Hendrik, Unfortunately, I can’t say anything about the Sivermax or the developer, but I’ve also opted for the Kentmere 400. I’ve developed and tested the 400 film in Xtol 1+1 (320 ISO) and Rodinal 1+50 (250 ISO). I prefer the prints on Kentmere’s gradient 3 paper developed in Rodinal to those in Xtol. The grain is slightly coarser with Rodinal, but in my opinion the print has nicer grey tones and has more sharpness. With cropped enlargements, I don’t find the Kentmere 400/Rodinal grain distracting. I’d also be interested to know how Silvermax developers perform with Kentmere 400 and what results Silvermax film yields in Rodinal. Every user simply has different preferences regarding how the final image should look and how much ‘grain’ is acceptable. For example, I would prefer any ‘classic’ 100 ASA film to the Tmax 100 or the Delta 100; they’re simply too ‘smooth’ for my liking. Best regards, Oliver

pittyman

Hi Hendrick, What made you decide to focus on Silvermax & Kentmere when you aren’t yet familiar with the development process? The best way to learn is by doing! Once you’ve done that, you’ll have the developed film – or better still, prints of it – right in front of you, and those will tell you far more than our subjective impressions ever could. If you ask 10 people, you’ll get 10 different impressions :spudnikwhat: and end up just as clueless as before. You can find development times for specific film/developer combinations here in raw figures and here with visual examples. (Caution: likely to have been digitally edited) Dirk

Olivinyl

I have to agree wholeheartedly with Dirk; the problem with the times given by DigitalTruth is that they sometimes vary considerably. I’ve usually just used them as a rough guide and worked out my own times. Users agitate their films differently during development. It makes a huge difference whether you agitate a film with 250 ml in a large or small tank. If you’re working in a hybrid process (developing & scanning), you need a low gamma value, i.e. a ‘soft’ negative. Depending on the type of enlargement, you do need to develop it a bit harder, and that’s where your own subjective impression comes into play again. On Filmdev, there are lots of great sample images to be seen, but very rarely any indication of whether they were scanned from a negative or a print. But here you can already see that there are very different times for a given film and developer type. Unfortunately, I too fell for the ‘instructions’, development tips and later the data online. A classic beginner’s mistake that happened to me as well. AGFA APX 100 in Rodinal 1+50, 17 minutes. Back in my school days in the darkroom in the late 80s. Oh, how great those first negatives looked. Almost 20 years later, after a long break, the same old rubbish, because the scans were far too harsh and the prints at grade 3 weren’t really great – far too harsh! Overexposure and overdevelopment. I looked it up and realised – exposing at 160 ASA and developing for 17 minutes was rubbish too. Far too harsh! I checked again: 100 ASA and 13 minutes, and the result looked much better. Nowadays I make test negatives and determine the gamma value. My perfect APX 100 in Rodinal 1+50 is 80 ISO, developed for 13 minutes, with continuous agitation for the first 30 seconds and agitated twice every 30 seconds. The negatives have a gamma of 0.62 and are perfect for my purposes. Best regards, Oliver

wosis123

Yes, I’m already familiar with the DigitalTruth figures; so far I’ve developed APX 100 and Kentmere 400 in AM74/Rollei RHS. As I’m slowly running out of APX and I like the reviews of Silvermax, I’d like to switch to that. As I don’t shoot that many rolls of film, I’d prefer to use just one developer, ideally the Silvermax developer, as I use more 100-speed film than 400-speed.

piu58

Silvermax is essentially APX 100, so you can continue to use your existing times.

wosis123

OK, so what advantages does the Silvermax developer offer over ADX/Rodinal or AM74?