You are right, except that I'm not so sure that I can walk either.
I understand that "stand" development with Rodinal alone is counter-productive with fast films. I also know that adding Rodinal increases grain and apparent sharpness/acutance compared to other developers such as Xtol. I haven't read a single book on developers and my only chemistry was undergraduate school many years ago. What I do have is more money than time and poor results are my method of learning. I have fallen for Google search and the recommendations of others and then I try to piece things together after the fact. I was aware of the shortcomings of this combination prior to pouring the developer, but my source, as sited elsewhere, didn't seem to make the distinction between ascorbate and ascorbic acid and I haven't a clue as to how each class of developers work.
Your suggestion of reading a book prior to experimenting is certainly valid and would have been my only choice prior to the Internet.
I'll take your slap-down as good direction to turn in that you have spent a very long time educating folks on these very same subjects.
If you would be so kind as to suggest a current book of moderate cost addressing these topics, I would be interested in ordering it. Amazon didn't have anything in print by Glafkides and used works by Haist were close to $200. My comments regarding more money than time don't extend to two-hundred dollar books.... thanks again .. Gary
Dear Gary,
I am very glad that you did not take my 'slap down' (as you put it) the wrong way. I thought for some time before making the point.
Try an inter-library loan on Glafkides or Haist. Alternatively look for L.P. Clerc, or Jack Coote's
Ilford Monochrome Practice, or Sheppard & Mees,
The Photographic Process, or Neblette,
Photography, Its Principles and Practice or John & Field,
Textbook of Photographic Chemistry. None is recent: the technology is pretty mature.
They're all (with the possible exception of Coote) pretty chewy but they'll revive your undergraduate chemistry and demonstrate that a lot of the so-called modern technical books on developer formulation are, shall we say, empirical at best.
Also, a lot of people see what they want to see: neg/pos B+W photography is an extraordinarily flexible process and you can get away with all kinds of things that are theoretically undesirable, such as pre-washes/pre-soaks.
It's worth knowing too that even the Great Names don't agree. I have had the privilege of meeting some of them, and while Grant Haist has his doubts about using more than a single developing agent, Geoffrey Crawley cheerfully uses three.
The reason I've never tried to do a book on this is that (a) it's bloody difficult to do properly and (b) I don't want to assemble a populist but fundamentally ill-informed (and sometimes ill-copied) collection of formulae: it's difficut to copy-type formulae accurately. For that matter (c) no-one would read it: there's an awful lot of "My mind is made up. Do not confuse me with the facts."
@ Turtle. I know I have a talent for writing the exact opposite of what I mean to say, and having to correct myself afterwards, but no, on this occasion, on re-reading it, I find I was the right way around: more agitation = more toe speed for ISO standard contrast. Note 'ISO standard contrast', however. Compensating effects are another can of worms entirely -- and again, sometimes owe as much to what people want to see as to what is sensitometrically there.
Cheers,
R.
