Battered and Beaten - Minus Development in D23 two bath.

The contrast of a Black and White negative is partially dependent upon how long it is developed.  When I refer to "Normal" development, it is negatives that are developed to provide a normal contrast range.  This is usually a subject brightness range of about six stops.  Plus development is when a negative is given extra time to increase the contrast.  This is usually reserved for images shot when lighting is rather flat.  Minus development is when a negative is given less development, in an attempt to hold down the highlights.  I have never had much luck with minus development, and largely ignored it in recent years.  I found that although it held the highlights reasonably well, the mid tones and low values looked really flat and muddy.

A photographer on Flickr recently shared with me his technique for minus development with Kodak Tri-X Pan film.  I saw some examples of his work and was quite impressed with the mid tone contrast.  The process uses a two bath developer.  The first bath is Kodak D23.  This is an old and well know Kodak formula, but it was never offered as a prepackaged developer.  You have to make it yourself from Metol and Sodium Sulfite.  Most of the development occurs in this D23.  It is a soft acting developer that reduces grain size.  After several minutes in this developer, the film is moved to a second bath of Borax.  This second bath is highly alkaline.  The film has absorbed the developer in the first bath.  The alkaline bath acts as an accelarator, causing the development to continue.  It is quickly exhausted in areas where there is a lot of exposed silver to develop (the highlights), but continues working for some time in areas where there is less silver (the midtones and shadows).

The result is that the negatives demonstrates full contrast and in the middle and lower values, while the highlights are restrained from being blown out.

I thought I would give this a try, so through the summer and fall of 2025, whenever I ran across a contrasty scene where the highlights needed to be tamed a little, I shot a sheet of film and set it aside.  Finally I accumulated a number of sheets and set about giving this development a try.  I mixed up the chemistry and ran twelve 4" x 5" sheets of Kodak Tri-X Pan 320.  In most instances I slightly overexposed the film to make sure the shadows had adequate exposure.  This was achieved by rating the film at 250iso.

This particular shot was taken last fall when the Monochrome Guild was out on our annual fall trip.  We found a number of old vehicles abandoned in a coulee in the badlands.  The low fall light was creating harsh highlights on the old car, but I wanted to retain adequate contrast in the mid tones and shadow areas.  The two bath technique seemed to work really well.

I took this photograph with my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a 250mm lens.  It was taken on October 22nd 2025 at about 2:30PM.  The exposure was for 1/30 second at F25.0, with the film rated at 320 iso.

Two Bath Compensating development, first in D23 stock for 6:00 minutes, then moved to second bath in Borax accelerator for 4:00 minutes.  All at 24C.