Trying Reduced Salt

My film photography has been put on the back burner for a while as I came up with a project to fit a Sony Nex onto a Nikon FE as an "electric film" conversion. This has been very successful and a whole lot of fun adding new dimensions to my photography. See XOverCameras for details.

I returned from a holiday in the Grampians with two rolls of film to develop and decided to increase the iodised salt (bromide equivalent) to see if I could improve on my previous negs. But this really stuffed them up. The iodine content of McKenzies Iodised Salt is quite variable, so it must be stronger than what is recommended as the equivalent to Bromide, which is x10 times. My negs were really dark and over developed.

So I read up on the processing techniques for Agfa APX 100 and found a recipe where the Bromide was reduced and the time was reduced due to the increased temperature. The results were very pleasing and so I repeated the same recipe with the Ilford Pan 100. As the processing time is quicker than my previous 60mins @ 20c I will stick with this new recipe and try a few other rolls of film. Am wondering if it will be okay with the 400ASA films.

Camera :   Nikon FE2
Film:   Ilford Pan 100 and Agfa APX 100
ASA EI: 100
Developer: Caffenol C-L 20min @ 25c (reduced salt to 1.8g/350ml)
Agitation: Constant inversion for 1st minute then 1 inversion at 2, 4 and 8 minutes.
Scanner: Plustek 7400

Here are some of the resulting photos. Click to enlarge.