Developing @ 20C°vs 24C°

[totifoto]

I was just wondering. I have always developed at 20C° (68f). Is there much of a difference if I develope @ 24C° (75f) ?

I know the time will be shorter and shadow details will be less and all that but what about grain? Any difference there? or sharpness?

Best Regards.

 

[Goldorak]

Supposed to have more grain. Theoretically, the difference will be visible at a higher temperature. At 24 the difference is almost invisible.

 

[Chuck Albertson]

Why do you think shadow detail would be reduced? That's more a function of exposure than development.

 

[charjohncarter]

John Sexton uses 24 degrees for all his images. When asked 'why' he responded that he can't get the water at his house to 20 degrees during the Summer. As he is a master printer and photographer, I think I'll go with him.

 

[vieri]

I develop both at 20 or 24 adjusting the timing accordingly, and I cannot say I have seen much difference in my results if any at all. In summer, my cold water comes out at 24; in spring & autumn, at 20; in winter, it comes out at about 13 to 15 degrees, and I find it very easy to mix it to 24 degrees: 2/3 of cold water, 1/3 of hot water from my tap get it perfectly to 24 - as if the plumber & the city did some team work to make my development easy 😀

I wouldn't worry about such small difference, provided you adjust your timing of course.

 

[Al Kaplan]

My normal summer tap water temperature here in Miami is about 84 f. I usually process in the 75 to 80 f degree range. Never had a problem.

 

[Chris101]

I store my deionized water that I mix my chemistry from in jugs in my developing/bath room. As I tend to keep it rather cool in my house (64-76F, depending on the season) I usually just convert my times to the ambient temperature. I do not notice any systematic difference the tone curve with respect to temperature, but I keep it in a small (12 degree) range. That and all my other errors swamp any delta-T effects! 😱

 

[craygc]

My tap water is 29 degrees (Celsius) all year. Trying to maintain it to 20 degrees is a waste of time. I always work at 25 degrees with the appropriate time adjustments. The only time I will lower the temperature more is with films like Neopan 1600 where 25 degrees would require a development time less than 5 minutes

 

[Trius]

Theoretically shorter wet time would mitigate any potential issue with grain clumping due to gelatin swell, etc. I think it might take very close examination with modern emulsions to detect a difference, but I would go for higher temp/shorter time UNLESS it meant the dev time was so short that errors of a few seconds are significant. I.e., < 4 or 4.5 minutes is too short for me.