I decided to go crazy and push a roll of Kentmere 100 to 1600iso.
It took a while to decide which development time I should go for. Kodak, Ilford, Adox and various forums all suggest different timings. I was reading from one commenter to double the timings plus 20%. The Massive DevChart has a rough guide on how to work out timings when pushing however did not extend to four stops. I decided on Rodinol 1+100 at 120 minutes, 20ºc. The first 5 minutes I agitated the soup every 30s for 15s. After 30 minutes I agitated for 15s.
Full development stats:
- Rodinol 1+100, 20ºc. 120 minutes. Agitate every 30s for 15s for 5 minutes. Stand for 30m, agitate 15s, stand.
- Ilford Stop Bath 1+9 for 1 minute constant agitation
- Ilford Fixer 1+4 for 12 minutes
- Wash for 10 minutes
- Tetanol Wetting agent 1+400 in deionised water for 1m. Gentle agitation.
I must admit when I pulled the negative out of the soup I was expecting a series of black frames from either the contrast going crazy or from over developing. I peeled back the first few frames to check the fix and to my surprise saw some well developed shots!
Kentmere 100 is rated best between 50-200 ISO….. so I was expecting a lot of grain….once I dried and scanned the negative I was blown away how detailed the shots are. The grain is fairly small and overall contrast not as intense as I expected. The night time/darker photos are when I was drunk on a night out and was underexposing instead of overexposing. The daytime photographs on the street I overexposed by at least a stop.
There is change in the contrast levels of each photo, some pictures (such as the swimming pool shot) have a lot of grey tone without much highlight and shadow whereas other pictures are more contrasty.
I will push this film beyond four stops in the future to see how far it will go and still give me useable shots.