Harlequin565
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So after seeing a certain forum member's experience with DD-X I bit the bullet and ordered a bottle. Working on the basis that my HC-110 will last forever, I figured I could just use up the DD-X whilst I was shooting through my bulk roll of HP5.
I spent the latter part of 2018 and all of 2019 with Rodinal, and I made the descision to spend 2020 with HC-110, but to be honest, after my first few rolls, I found it delivered far superior results to Rodinal for the films I shot and the look I liked. HP5 in Rodinal looks terrible to my eye so it's not included here.
Pricewise DD-X is expensive. I'm going to quote price per film rather than price per bottle because dilutions etc will make a difference. Rodinal at 1+50 weighs in at 35p per 35mm film. HC-110 at 33p (1+31) and DD-X at a whopping £1.08 (1+4). That's triple the price of the cheap stuff and obviously would require more orders for the same volume of film, so you've got mopre postage to add onto that. Obviously it's still cheaper than B&W lab development, but it's the second most expensive liquid developer on the market. (Kodak TMAX wins).
This isn't a scientific experiment because I was dumb. I put rolls of HP5 into my Olympus 35RCs and set the ISO to 800. I have 2 of these, so figured that would be a good idea. Stupidly though, I didn't think that the meters would be slightly diffferent, and the RF patch is harder to spot on one. So both focussing and metering weren't exact.
Yeah. It doesn't say hello (badly) it says hc110... So my initial thought was that there really wasn't a lot in it. The HC-110 camera was probably exposing 1-2 stops under, whilst the DD-X camera was about half a stop under. I don't think this has helped the situation, but there were a couple of photos on the contact sheet where the HC-110 camera had obviously metered a bit brighter.
To start with, IMO, the DD-X isn't 3x better. It's not noticeably sharper (take my word for it because forum compression will kill these screenies) and whilst the grain is lessened, it's really only visible at 100% which as any pixel peeper will know isn't that useful.
However where the difference is clear is in what I'd call zone II to zone III shadows.
Above you can see the man in the moon thing that my wife loves is quite clear in the DD-X dev, whilst it's lost in the HC-110. Now this could be down to the fact that one camera is under-esposing, but the sofa and carpets (whilst less in the HC110 image) aren't that far out. Looking at the rest of the contact sheet, that gives me confidence to say that DD-X is likely to be able to pull more detail from the shadows. I also like the way it renders the texture too.
So will I continue to use it? The jury is still out. The shelf-life is (apparently) 3-6 months once opened which isn't great compared to the Kodak developer and Rodinal. A 1l bottle will also only develop 16 rolls of 35mm or 10 rolls of 120 which means lots of reordering (1l of HC-110 will do 106/64). I'm going to use the remainder on some more HP5 at 400 and 1600, as well as some P3200 which I roll out at this time of year. Lots of high speed stuff which Rodinal really hated, but HC-110 seems to deal with quite nicely.
Certainly, the developer is not hampering my capability as a photographer as I perhaps suspected. It must be something else
Do any of you have any thoughts on this?
I spent the latter part of 2018 and all of 2019 with Rodinal, and I made the descision to spend 2020 with HC-110, but to be honest, after my first few rolls, I found it delivered far superior results to Rodinal for the films I shot and the look I liked. HP5 in Rodinal looks terrible to my eye so it's not included here.
Pricewise DD-X is expensive. I'm going to quote price per film rather than price per bottle because dilutions etc will make a difference. Rodinal at 1+50 weighs in at 35p per 35mm film. HC-110 at 33p (1+31) and DD-X at a whopping £1.08 (1+4). That's triple the price of the cheap stuff and obviously would require more orders for the same volume of film, so you've got mopre postage to add onto that. Obviously it's still cheaper than B&W lab development, but it's the second most expensive liquid developer on the market. (Kodak TMAX wins).
This isn't a scientific experiment because I was dumb. I put rolls of HP5 into my Olympus 35RCs and set the ISO to 800. I have 2 of these, so figured that would be a good idea. Stupidly though, I didn't think that the meters would be slightly diffferent, and the RF patch is harder to spot on one. So both focussing and metering weren't exact.
Yeah. It doesn't say hello (badly) it says hc110... So my initial thought was that there really wasn't a lot in it. The HC-110 camera was probably exposing 1-2 stops under, whilst the DD-X camera was about half a stop under. I don't think this has helped the situation, but there were a couple of photos on the contact sheet where the HC-110 camera had obviously metered a bit brighter.
To start with, IMO, the DD-X isn't 3x better. It's not noticeably sharper (take my word for it because forum compression will kill these screenies) and whilst the grain is lessened, it's really only visible at 100% which as any pixel peeper will know isn't that useful.
However where the difference is clear is in what I'd call zone II to zone III shadows.
Above you can see the man in the moon thing that my wife loves is quite clear in the DD-X dev, whilst it's lost in the HC-110. Now this could be down to the fact that one camera is under-esposing, but the sofa and carpets (whilst less in the HC110 image) aren't that far out. Looking at the rest of the contact sheet, that gives me confidence to say that DD-X is likely to be able to pull more detail from the shadows. I also like the way it renders the texture too.
So will I continue to use it? The jury is still out. The shelf-life is (apparently) 3-6 months once opened which isn't great compared to the Kodak developer and Rodinal. A 1l bottle will also only develop 16 rolls of 35mm or 10 rolls of 120 which means lots of reordering (1l of HC-110 will do 106/64). I'm going to use the remainder on some more HP5 at 400 and 1600, as well as some P3200 which I roll out at this time of year. Lots of high speed stuff which Rodinal really hated, but HC-110 seems to deal with quite nicely.
Certainly, the developer is not hampering my capability as a photographer as I perhaps suspected. It must be something else
Do any of you have any thoughts on this?
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