Photo-Analogue: Eastman Double-X

In the three years since my post on Eastman Double-X film, observing interest online, the popularity of this motion picture film stock amongst still photographers has steadily increased. As a motion picture stock Eastman Kodak produce Double-X in 35mm and 16mm in bulk lengths, the minimum length being 100ft/33m in 16mm; since my previous post about Double-X, a number of companies now provide 35mm canisters ready loaded with the films for still photographers (I previously bought a 100ft roll of 35mm to load my own canisters); the film is marketed as CineStill BwXX, Film Photography Project's X2, as Double-X from Camera Film Photo, and Nik & Trick among others. My motivation for revisiting Double-X in this post came about through using the film with a different developer from those I'd used previously - D96. D96 is Kodak's recommended developer for black and white negative motion picture stock - which now comprises of just Double-X; comments on my original blog post recommended that I use D96 after my somewhat ambivalent conclusion to the film from using it in 35mm for the best part of a year. It didn't seem particularly fine-grained for its speed, and the speed itself didn't seem fast enough to make it a good all-round film in comparison with 400 ISO films on one side, or finer grained 100 speed films on the other.

Formulas for making D96 from its raw ingredients are readily available online, and it has also been available as a powder, but recently Bellini have produced a liquid version of D96. Evidently there are many advantages to the convenience of liquid developer, especially as a stock solution; my habitual developers are Rodinal/R09 and Ilfotec LC29, which I have used for a number of years: it makes sense, especially when starting out with developing black and white film, not to change too many variables at any point, one of these obviously being film developer. However, I recently shot two rolls of 2x8mm Double-X (reperforated for the format and repackaged by the Film Photography Project) in a Bolex ciné camera, and, wanting to develop the films myself, it seemed wise to try the manufacturer's recommended developer with the film, especially given the small size of the 8mm frame. The short film below was shot on 2x8mm Double-X and developed in D96; for reasons too complicated to detail here, I pushed the film three stops in development, which does account for the contrast, while the appearance of the grain is mostly down to the degree of enlargement necessary from the tiny 8mm frame.

Having used the D96 for a couple of rolls of 2x8mm Double-X, having a litre of D96, I wanted to test the film in 35mm with the developer and it seemed timely to revisit Double-X for a new blog post. For a first test with 35mm, I shot a roll with in a Canon A-1 SLR for a latitude test, rating the film at successive exposure indexes of 64, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000 for two sets of six exposures, as seen in the first and second rows below, and developed the film for 6 minutes in stock D96 at 21ºC.

Eastman Double-X latitude test, developed in D96

Eastman Double-X latitude test, developed in Ilfotec LC29

Comparison with the same film developed in Ilfotec LC29 (above) from my previous tests appears to show greater latitude when developed in D96, although the conditions with the Ilfotec LC29 were higher in contrast; the same film when developed in Ilfotec LC29 looks as though the shadow detail drops away faster. It's also possible that the test film developed in D96 is slightly underdeveloped: Kodak's published time for Double-X is 7 minutes at 21ºC (rather than the more usual 20ºC); my notes indicate I developed the film for just 6 minutes at 21ºC.

Double-X at EI 64 (two stops overexposed)

Double-X at EI 2000 (three stops underexposed)

I was a little surprised at the latitude range which this test demonstrated as evidenced in the two shots from either end of the scale above: scanning the film, I was able to pull out as much detail as possible from the negatives when underexposed. This was easier than the equivalent exposures with Ilfotec LC29. Overexposure did compress the tonal range from mid-tones to highlights, giving the images more of a flat look than the lighting alone. The latitude in this test is no doubt due in part to the diffused, low contrast lighting when I shot the the film to try D96, as well as the developer itself.

When I'd previously used the film, I did try pushing it one, two and three stops, with very uneven results at two and three stops. Published times for Double-X in D96 are very limited, but the Massive Dev Chart and Bellini's own data sheet give a time of 25 minutes at 20ºC when rated at 1600. I shot a roll at 1600 in (mostly) challenging lighting conditions. This test was possibly overdeveloped, using 21ºC for 25 minutes, rather than 20ºC.

Double-X at EI 1600

Most of these shots were taken under artificial light, in a low-lit museum setting, with spot-lit displays creating inherently high contrast subjects, the above image being a good example; the Double-X rated 1600 did give relatively good results in these difficult circumstances. There were only a couple of shots that I took under daylight conditions, and these on a fairly dark day in February, not enough to draw any meaningful conclusions, but the results look good enough, as below; generally, daylight would of course give enough light to rate the film at 250. Although the times for push-processing Double-X in D96 are limited, it would be possible to make reasonable guesses for one and two stops, perhaps around 12 minutes to rate the film at 400 and 18 minutes for 800, although I haven't tested for these times.

Double-X at EI 1600

As well as trying 35mm Double-X with D96, I also wanted to see how it would perform in 16mm for various subminiature cameras, notably the Rollei 16 camera (this has reputedly one of the sharpest lenses on any subminiature camera). The results on this post are scanned from the negatives; printing in the darkroom, it might be possibly to resolve more detail from the 12x17mm negative. The best of the shots from the Rollei 16, such as that below, showed D96 to give fairly fine-grained development: with the negative very nearly a quarter of the size of a standard 35mm frame, at a modest enlargement, the quality does hold up (albeit perhaps suggesting the grain of a faster film, but I think the general point holds true).

Rollei 16 with Eastman Double-X

As a motion-picture negative developer, fine grain is paramount. Grain is inherent to the film's emulsion, but obviously, the appearance of the grain is affected by a number of factors. D96 contains sodium sulfite, which acts as a solvent (as well as a preservative), softening the look of the grain; equally, some of the fineness of the grain in my results may be in part due to the developer's low contrast, particularly on a micro level, smoothing out the look of the grain. This also makes it a good choice of developer for using Double-X in half-frame cameras, as well as subminiature cameras. I did shoot some Double-X in a couple of half-frame cameras for this post, but, again, under fairly poor lighting conditions, which perhaps didn't provide the best conditions for testing the film.

Olympus Pen EE3 (half-frame) with Eastman Double-X

Belomo Agat 18K (half-frame) with Eastman Double-X

I had been fairly ambivalent about Eastman Double-X prior to using it with D96: it almost felt like a different film, testing it again with a more sympathetic developer. The grain appears finer, the film does seem to have better latitude, and, on my limited tests, it pushes better, with more consistent results. However, a few further reflections on using D96 might be apposite here. The developers I have mostly used for black and white films - Rodinal and Ilfotec LC29 - I have treated as 'one-shot' developers, Rodinal, which I've generally used as Compard's R09 One Shot clearly being so, but also Ilfotec LC29, which Ilford recommend using as a one-shot developer when diluted 1+29, or indeed for best results. At lower dilutions, 1+9 or 1+19, I've tended to use it for just one session, but have developed a number of rolls of film, one after the other. Using a stock solution such as D96 does provide some consideration, namely around temperature and exhaustion. With a highly concentrated one-shot solution, I get the water to dilute the film developer up to temperature simply by adding hot and cold together until these reach 20ºC, then add the concentrated developer. Even if this is cold, adding one 30th part at 15ºC for example, 12ml to 300ml, will not significantly alter the temperature. With D96, I found warming the bottle of stock solution took more care, especially when using this early in the year, when the stock solution might be at less than 10ºC off the shelf. Plunging this into a jug of water somewhat warmer than 20 or 21ºC to bring it up to a working temperature more quickly often meant it would get too warm, and then would need to cool before use. The other consideration, exhaustion, was more difficult to calculate. I bought my bottle of Bellini D96 from Nik & Trick; on their website, the suggestion is that a litre of D96 will process "about 100ft". Presumably this is 35mm film. I developed two lengths of 25ft 2x8mm film, 16mm wide, which probably equates to 25ft of 35mm; I also shot four rolls of 27-exposure 35mm film, and some 16mm film with both the Rollei 16 and Mamiya 16 subminiature cameras. In addition, I used the D96 for some Plus-X too, and the FP4 Plus that I'd shot in the Bolex. With the FP4 film, I developed half the film and the negatives were very thin. This might be partly due to user error of course - most of the roll of Double-X I shot with the Agat 18K produced thin negatives, but this was one of the first rolls of film I developed in D96. Returning to comments earlier in this post about not changing too many variables, obviously, using several different cameras, with different metering systems or none, and also developing different emulsions with the same stock solution of D96 made it more difficult to see when the developer was beginning to exhaust: the last films I was developing with the D96, I found myself having to double their published times in order to get good results - clearly, accurate record keeping would have helped here. Comments about developer exhaustion notwithstanding, using Eastman Double-X film with D96 has lead me to reappraise this film stock - and understand the enthusiasm that still photographers do have for it.