CineStill Df96 Developer vs Rodinal with Kodak Tri-X

I wanted to compare the new CineStill Df96 monobath developer against the tried and true Rodinal to see which was best, or if Df96 could even hold its own.Two rolls of Kodak Tri-X, one Nikon F2, no mercy.

This is a long video, but worth it!

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[MaxLamdin]

holy shit the first Americans to pronounce Nikon properly!

[edlewis]

Having coffee at 7pm won’t help you sleep!

[jllanesphoto]

Great video. Will definetly give it a try. Thanks much for your time and help.

[AiricLenz]

I like that you pronounce Nikon like it is said where it originally comes from - Japan :)

[puddlesdamien]

Randomly happened onto one of your videos from the recommendation engine. Ended up binge watching 6 or 8 videos and subbed. Love your style, can't wait to watch more.

[TheMistermike]

Going through the images at the end of the video I tried to not look at the developers below. Every time I thought it was one developer, it turned out to be the other lol. I shoot a lot of bnw and it looks great to me. Thanks for the vid!

[MrNotSelc]

Most underrated photography channel on YouTube

[randallstewart]

A long term review of the Cinestill heater would be helpful. It is a bit more costly than the food prep heaters on which it is based, but it added features helpful in the darkroom to compensate. However, in the photo forums, it is rapidly developing a reputation for problems new out of the box and short term failures, mostly electrical, and with a response from Cinestill which could be be described as "lazy". How about a full review on yours, for better or worse, in about 6 months?

[CineStillFilm]

Great comparison! I’m glad I subbed across it. If you change the title to “Df96” more people will be able to find it. Pronounce it however you want. ;-) Potato potato...

[AleksUsovich]

Fantastic video with some solid photos showing the comparison! I've used 2 bottles of DF96 for about 17 rolls each both with 120 and 35mm and have had mixed results. Tri-X and Arista Edu films worked fantastic with the developer. T-Max was decent when the time for development was doubled. Ilford HP5 and FP4 turned out pink no matter how I developed it even developing it 3 times as long.The pink color faded after leaving the negatives taped to a window for a few days. Ilford Delta was completely unusable with DF96 in my opinion having little sharpness and horrible looking grain. Out of the other BW developers that I have used, I always get what looks like surging or bromide drag (visible lines appearing to come from sprocket holes). The more that I use the developer the more that it occurs. Agitation is 1 turn revolution per second and 4 revolutions per minute. Could be possible that I bought two bad batches or (most likely) exhausted developer or (even more likely) user error.

[Zapruderfilm]

Excellent review and comparison!
Subscribed!👍

[mkshffr]

Very interesting, thx. I would be interested to see how it does with Delta 100.

Also do they provide instructions on pull processing? It would be nice to be able to run Tri-X at 100.

[diegogarciamedina]

hi, monobath is a process that fixes negatives for archival many years or traditional is the best? thanks

[AnthonyPond]

Just stumbled onto this video. Interesting test. I wouldn't think a monobath could yield such results. I'm curious as to what dilution you used for your Rodinal soup. I generally dilute at 1+50 with Rodinal for Tri-X. A little less grain than 1+25, which works great for slower films. Also, how are you scanning your negs?

[tychomagneticanomaly]

Very convincing, I will give it a try for sure, using Tri-X with HC110 right now. Really I like your jacket, wasn't aware that Levis still does the laser thing. And while I don't mind people, including Simon and Garfunkel, calling it naɪkɒn, I'll stick with nɪkɒn too ;))

[doyoudevelop]

Hats off to pronouncing Nikon correctly. Seriously. Also great video :)

[karlwalden]

Thx for this test ! I am curiously tempted to say that there is more sharpness in Rodinal than Df96 on your stills ?
Maybe it's a question of scanning or maybe it's only me.

[skitzhills]

Love how you pronounce Nikon m8. Also great video!

[Toastybunzz]

They both came out nice but I like the Rodinal ones more. Btw if you shoot some canned air into your bottle it'll help displace the oxygen since it's heavier and it helps to keep the chemicals from oxidizing as fast.

[Thejohnventura]

I'm having problems processing 400 HP5 plus and its coming out really dark. Tri-X came out perfect so I don't know what's going on. Help?