Mick Maguire wrote: > what I meant was that there was more grain > on my prints from my negs than my prints > from Adorama's lab's negs.
OK .. that's pretty much what I thought, so all the comments Aaron and I made are applicable to your situation. > When I developed the film I was meticulous > with the temperatures, That may be, but your temperatures may not be the same temperatures that the lab used. Remember, every setup has to be calibrated individually. So, while your temperature may have been the same for all the processing steps, it may have been higher than the temps used by the lab due to different equipment and the way that equipment is calibrated. In practice that means little, because over time you will adjust your exposure in the camera and the developing times to reflect what's going on in your situation. But, let's say your thermometer was reading 68-degrees, but in actuality the temperature was 70-degrees. By using the time for 68-degrees, your negs would then be over developed. > timing was a little more loose than it > should have been and I think I probably > developed the film for about 15-30 seconds > longer than I should have. Generally speaking, 15 seconds is no big deal, 30 seconds might be an issue depending on other factors, but since you're working in an uncalibrated darkroom, this is a small concern right now. You have to establish a standard set of repeatable procedures, and then make your adjustments in time, temperature, agitation, and even camera exposure. > Also being new to this I think it probably > took me too long to get the chemicals in > and out of the tank. I suspect that if it > say took me 10 secs to get the developer in > and another 5 to get it out that I have an extra > 15 second that I haven't accounted for too. > I think I need to work on this aspect first. > what do you do about this chemical change time? You just have to develop a standard procedure. I start timing as soon as the developer is poured into the tank, and I empty the tank when the timer chimes. I don't worry about how long it takes to fill or empty the tank because everything is standardized. It always takes X seconds to fill one tank, Y seconds to fill another, and so on for emptying the tanks. The time used for processing has been refined to consider these things, but I don't actually consider them specifically. I know that the negs look good with a certain time/temp/agitation cycle, and that included filling and emptying the tanks. > I was using tap water (I know I should > really use distilled and will shift to that) Good! -- Shel Belinkoff mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~belinkoff/ "If you are a bad technician, it doesn't matter how big your negs are." - W. Robb - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
