Rodinal problem

Fotohuis said:
Your Rodinal will be OK. I did some densitometer tests with old and new Rodinal (over 4.y.o.) and the difference was almost in the accuracy of my densitometer (Heiland TRD-Z).

Something must be happened during your developing process so only a check with a new PAN F film can solve your problem.
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Thanks, I have now basically concluded that I must have developed these rolls with just plain water, or only a residual amount of developer. Seems crazy but it is the only explanation I can come up with that explains the result I had on the film rolls and the fact that my tests on the leaders were fine.

I only used 5ml per roll, but that should have been enough to get a least some density. My results were extremely faint.
 
For Rodinal there is no need for using an anti-oxidation gas in the plastic (Silar (TM) ) bottle. Normally Protectan (Tetenal) can be used to prevent oxidation of your developer. It's a mixture of Argon and Butane gas.

As already said due to the fact the pH of Rodinal is very high due to the high NaOH concentration in the content the buffering and pH will not be changed when using CO2. A 1+50 dilution is not critical for Rodinal, even not in worse tap water.

What you must not do with Rodinal is re-using it or making a dilution and not use it immediately for development.

Rodinal needs slow agitation to keep the grain as small as possible, you can not have bromide drag with this developer and therefore it's also used in 1+100 or even 1+200 dilution for semi-stand development. Above 1+25 it's a surface developer where the active para-amino phenol compound gives high sharpness, high acutance but some pronounced grain and there in fact suitable for slow and medium speed B&W films. Keep the developer temperature also under 20 degrees C for the best finer grain results. On of the best combinations is Rodinal - APX 100/Rollei Retro 100 (E.I. 80) in the 1+50 dilution.

You can even use Rodinal as paper developer in the 1+10-1+20 dilution.

An example of Rodinal 1+50 and APX 100-Rollei Retro 100

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Rodinal Ph Sensitive

Rodinal Ph Sensitive

The only bad experiences that I had with Rodinal were when I was living in a city where the water came from a limestone acquifer. The water chemistry in that city was just wrong for that developer and my negs were very thin. I switched to Diafine and all was well. I have made other bone-headed errors in the darkroom (poured in fixer first, poured in stop bath first, accidentally stop the timer in the middle of a development run, forget to make sure that the temperature probe on my timer was immersed etc. etc.). If your subsequent rolls have come out well, just assume that you won't easily re-create the problem.

Ben Marks
 
I have founds lots of those tips in old photo books, but I learned this one from the Bottom-feeder master himself. ImageMaker/SilentObserver

look for the ones before 1960 and you'll find amazing things.
charjohncarter said:
titrisol, that is a bottom feeder idea. I'm printing it now to put in the notebook of things you don't learn. Great, do you have any more?
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Sometime around the time when Agfa went under, I saw a post or two claiming that the Rodinal formula had been changed. It was said that Rodinal no longer had the keeping properties of the original formula. I don't want to present this as fact, since it may well be an internet myth. I haven't seen anyone repeat this in quite a while. No one else offered this as an explanation in this thread. However, it has been on my mind for a while now. This seemed like a good time to air this particular worry. Does anyone have any knowledge of this?

Edit: OK I found it. It is not a post, it is an article by our own Tom Abrahamssohn. It's in the Viewfinder, Volume 36, Number 4 (Third Quarter, 2003, p. 51). Tom wrote: "Agfa did change its formula a couple of years ago and the current Rodinal will go bad in a half empty bottle after a couple of months."

Tom said it, so it's no myth!

So I am wondering if this could have been the problem in this case? Sean did say the bottle had been opened, and was about 6 months old.
 
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