kodak 400tx. df96. seattle. august 19.

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After shooting a roll of Cinestill BwXX, I loaded the camera (Nikon FM3a) with Kodak 400TX.

I shot the film at box speed, EI 400. And I developed the film with Df96.

I used either the Nikkor 50mm 1:1.2 or the Voigtlander Color-Skopar 28mm F2.8 Lenses.

I scanned the negatives with the PrimeFilmXEs using VueScan. I am not going to compare whether I think Cinestill’s BwXX is better than Kodak 400TX. With our dark winters I can push the Kodak product to EI 1600, something that cannot be done with BwXX. Both are great products that I can use according to circumstances.

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Published by seatacphoto1951

4 Replies to “kodak 400tx. df96. seattle. august 19.”

  1. I’ve pushed Double-X to 1600, and developed it in both HC-110 (1+50) and Caffenol-CL (semi-stand). It can certainly be done, and I honestly don’t think the shadow detail loss is noticeably worse than modern Tri-X. And I like the grain of Double-X *much* better. Regarding Kodak stocks, TMY pushed to 1600 does the best in my experience in this speed category. I think in most developers TMY’s true ISO is closer to 640 than the box-label value of 400. Of course, TMZ or Ilford Delta 3200 do best in low light (obviously).

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      1. It’s been a number of years since I did it and, unfortunately, for reasons I won’t get into, I lost all my development records/notes (and other stuff) from that time period and nearly everything prior — very painful. Let’s just say that storing things digitally and not writing things down for real in a well-protected notebook was a serious mistake…

        That said, if my memory serves me correctly, the time or two I shot Double-X at EI 1600-ish and push-processed it in HC-110 at 1+50 and got results I was pleased with, I think I did so at ~68 degrees, agitating continuously for the first minute (gentle inversions) and then for ~10 seconds (again, gently) every two minutes (or it might have been every three) thereafter, for a total of ~25 minutes. That seems like what I ultimately landed on.

        I think I originally tried more of a semi-stand method with HC-110 at 1+50, extending the development time to around 35 minutes with just one or two inversions every five minutes, but I don’t think that worked well. It seems like I ended up with pretty bad bromide drag, which led me to instead arrive at what I described.

        I truly wish I could remember all the details with 100% certainty, but I apologize — I can’t.

        What I am certain about is that I would have been using a two-reel metal tank (for a single roll of film; otherwise, developer exhaustion becomes a very real risk), agitating by inversion as mentioned, and I would have mixed 10 mL of HC-110 (or, likely, LegacyPro’s clone, L110) in 500 mL of distilled water just beforehand to ensure the developer wasn’t too diluted/weak and didn’t die prematurely.

        All that said, if you still want to try this, since I lost my records and can’t guarantee anything, I’d recommend you shoot a number of test shots and develop that short strip with my method as a starting point, and then make adjustments from there before taking photos you’d be upset about losing. That will also give you an idea about whether Double-X’s grain when shot/developed in such a manner is tolerable to you (I actually like it), along with the elevated contrast and tonal extremes. I’d hate for you to shoot a whole roll and it turn out terribly using my above-described method. I’d feel awful.

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      2. I decided to check CineStill’s site to see if they had developing times for higher EIs. They do, for a variety of developers:

        https://cinestillfilm.com/pages/bwxx-dev-times

        From their chart, 20 minutes in HC-110 1+31 (Dilution B) seems awfully long to me, even for an EI of 1600, especially since I’m assuming that’s with a standard agitation regimen. But who knows? Maybe that’s better than my method…

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