One of the claimed advantages of the Spursinn HCD two bath developer is its ability to push films to high EV levels. So I thought I would try this out and loaded a small length of Fuji Neopan 400 from my bulk roll (actually its Legacy Pro 400 but apparently its really rebranded Fuji). I tried it out at EI 12,800 - pushed 5 stops. I used my Olympus OM1 and manually checked the exposure using my old Weston Mast V light meter (The OM-1 meter only goes to 1600 and its broken anyway)
The literature that comes with HCD gives a development time of 3 mins (as always) in HCD-S and 24 mins in HCD-2.
Results? Not very good, the negatives are very thin and underexposed. I'm not sure if my meter works well at this high EI value. Maybe not.
These two are the only ones I could scan, and even then, they have quite a lot of work in Photoshop.
This one is a banana, in case you are wondering. If my meter does not work well at these speeds, I'm not sure I can get the advantage of pushing the films, although the results are not as grainy as you might imagine.
Your Weston Master V is a selenium cell based meter. While they are nice for lacking the need for a battery, they are not really suitable for low light because of less sensitivity. That is likely to be your problem.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Jan. Yes I'm sure your are right. It a pretty old meter anyway so I'm not convinced its very accurate even in good light.
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