Diafine drag

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itf

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Just used diafine for the first time and I'm quite impressed except for one thing; bromide drag! Aaargh! I followed everything to a T. I was towards the upper end of the suggested temperature range (80-82ish) and agitated gently for 5 seconds each minute for three minutes in each bath. Dirty bromide drag.

A quick search revealed what I suspected; the suggestions are a bit short. What would you diafine devotees suggest? Increase agitation, decrease temperature, both? Or should I just go back to D76?

To be honest, I (stupidly) hadn't even considered the possibility of drag. It seems such a short time (obviously its not a normal dev though), and I vaguely remembered reading some hardly agitate. Anyway...
 
Hopefully my Diafine Guru will be along shortly...

In the meantime, there are rumors of folks doing some or all of the following:

1. Pre-rinse, 3-4 minutes.
2. 4 minutes in each solution instead of 3.
3. Using both solutions diluted 1:1 in the 4 minute range and discarded after processing.
4. Go back to D-76 😉😀😎 Or Xtol. 😎

YMMV
 
I reccommend step 4. 😉

Mix your Diafine with distilled water rather than tap water. I didn't have any drag problems with mine. That being said, agitate more. You get drag when things just sit around. I know you're not supposed to agitate it so much, but whatever.

I agitated for the first 30 seconds with solution A and then 10 seconds on the minute in A. I did four-5 minutes in solution A. B always went for 3 minutes.

In solution B I just did 10 seconds of agitation (four inversions, I guess is my method) on the minute.

Clean water is the key. Never trust your tap water since it varies by city.
 
I've found that a presoak helps, particularly with T-grain films like Delta 400. That said, these films aren't great in Diafine anyway.

You can also try using normal instead of the normally recommended gentle agitation. It doesn't some to incur any ill effects.
 
Why, oh why would anyone pre rinse films to be developed in Diafine? The whole point of the first agent (the developer) is to soak into the emulsion fully. If you presoak the film with water, how, then is the developer supposed to miraculously soak in? This is precisely what the Diafine instructions say NOT to do.

BTW, after many dozens of rolls of film developed in Diafine, I have never managed to produce bromide drag.
 
i have used diafine about 15 times in the past couple years and have never seen any drag.

for what it's worth, i agitate as suggested, keep temp around the mid 70's, NO presoak, but i DO use distilled water when mixing all my chemicals.

- chris
 
I used commercial purified water that has worked with XTOL for me (even with XTOL sitting for 4 months in it). I use tap water for all other devs without a problem. I'm going to agitate more next time. It was with Arista Edu Ultra as well as Tri-X, and both had problems. Not major but visible in the sky.

I think agitating more might solve it, I was being very careful to keep agitation down. I won't be diluting it for use as a one shot, I have to order it from the US.
 
My experiance is similar to most here. Use distilled water. DO NOT PRE-SOAK! Do not bother with T-grain films or use an EI of 1/2 of the box ISO. Leave each solution on 4 to 6 minutes. Agitate by 2-3 inversions once a minute. Rinse with water & fix.

The best films for this developer, I feel, are Kodak Plus-X @ EI400 & Tri-X @ EI1600. Arista.Edu Ultra/Fomapan 100 @ EI200 is nice too.

The negatives contrast will be less than you may be used to but they will scan wonderfully.

William
 
'Why, oh why would anyone pre rinse films to be developed in Diafine?'

If you believe what you read on the internet, presoaking swells the emulsion, thereby encouraging faster and more even absorption of the developer. Not sure if that's true, but it seems likely and it does work, not just with diafine but with other low agitation regimes as well. If it is true, it probably has less to do with bromide drag and more to do with uneven absorption of the developer. If I understand bromide drag right, it shouldn't come into play until bath 2, in which case, a pre-soak would seem irrelevant.

The Diafine box doesn't say why you shouldn't pre-soak, just that you shouldn't, which may just mean that they think it isn't necessary. Not necessary and deleterious are two different things.

FWIW, I've developed many, many rolls in Diafine, and the only films for which I've found a presoak to be beneficial were the Delta films, which aren't great in Diafine anyway, so that's sort of a dead end.
 
Hmm, gotta say its very frustrating that it seems the norm to have no problems with Diafine. The water I used is not distilled but it is highly filtered and pure according to the analysis on the box. I tend to believe that, especially given my experience with it and XTOL (which is pretty sensitive to water quality). Also, surely any failure due to water quality would be more general than bromide drags coming off the top edge, no? I don't know, I've never had bromide drags from a straightforward process.
 
presoaking:

If you recall correctly, the MAIN ingredient of Solution A is... water.

Trust me, the developer will find its way into the emulsion, presoak or not.

I don't presoak anything and have never suffered any consequences, I might add though.

The main discrepency for me is that I am rather rigorous in my inversion practices compared to most of what I read about Diafine and people being very delicate with it. I like analog film grain though, so it doesn't bother me to see grain show up in the prints. Try a roll where you do inversions on every minute. Don't be afraid to let the film sit in A and B more than four minutes. It won't overdevelop.

I've always used my chemicals at room temperature. The whole point of Diafine is to be painfully simple with no need for careful consistency in your methods. Once I got the hang of developing film, I moved on to other developers.

I got great results with Diafine though! But it felt like training wheels as far as the joy of bathroom photo science was concerned 😉 I wanted more contrast and different subtle looks, so I moved on. I ruined my Diafine last year in a bonehead move where I poured stop bath into Solution B. Otherwise, I bet it'd still work 3 years later!
 
The only times (twice) that I can recall in about 4 years of using Diafine was from insufficent agitation. It doesn't need as much as some but it does need some and I have found that the film needs to be fully turned upside down - not just wiggle the tank around a bit.

William
 
OK, thinking about it, it would make sense to me that seeing as I was working towards the upper end of the suggested temperature range while also giving it very gentle agitations for fear of overdoing it has resulted in the bromide drag. A higher temperature would result in the developer doing its thing quicker, thus creating developing byproducts quicker which are not being dispersed soon enough because of a lack of agitation. I'll see how it goes...
 
I would not call myself a "guru", but i never had such problems with Diafine.
I have it around 19-21 degrees (C), i mixed it a year ago (or more?) with distilled water, both solutions have residual stuff on the bottom which i try not to put in the tank but i don't worry too much about...
Three to four minutes in A and in B; short agitation/tapping only in the beginning in sol. A, and ~30 sec agitation in B first minute, then two slow inversions every minute.
That's it.
No stop bath, only water from the tap at approx same temperature as developer.
 
I'm sure it's nothing to do with the water or lack of pre-soak. It is definitely to do with agitation & perhaps temp. The first roll I ever did in Diafine had bromide drag & I had done everything by the book. For the next roll I agitated differently - 15 seconds to start & then 5 seconds every 30. Each agitation was just a complete inversion & then upright again, no twist. No more bromide drag. I've done 70 or more rolls since then with no problems.
A good idea if you want to test for bromide drag is to leave one blank frame somewhere on the roll. Any marks will stand out clearly in this area, whereas sometimes they get hidden in denser sections of the neg.

I mostly do Fuji Neopan 1600 at 1600 which gives true speed, fine grain & nice tonality. Also had good results with Plus-X at 400, must get around to doing more of that. Many people rate Tri-X at 1600 but in my admittedly limited testing it was best at 800.
 
I gave up on diafine after trying a number of different temperatures and agitation regimes. Whatever I did I just ended up with uneven development (on rolls of 120), or bromide drag around the sprocket holes on 35mm. I really wanted it to work, and spent a lot of rolls trying, but for whatever reason it just didn't. No loss, I've moved on and since realised that controlling temperature isn't hard really, and I like the look of other devs better. That said, if you can get it to work for you then that's great, because it certainly would be handy at times, for its unique characteristics.
 
The problems that I've had with Diafine seem to abate when I increase agitation of the B part.

What I'd see was patterns or streaks from the sprocket holes. When I didn't spare the agitation, the problem cleared up.

I use plastic reels during processing and vigorous agitation works for me.

However, I've heard that folks using metal reels do not have this problem or have problems when they vigorously agitate the B part of Diafine. I can not speak to these experiences as I have not often used metal reels and tanks.
 
fwiw (likely not much):
never had bromide drag in a steel tank with steel reels
had drag in plastic tank
likely coincidental...
 
OK, thanks everyone. I did a test roll today and just finished processing it. The temperature was significantly lower and I agitated more, and more briskly. It hasn't dried yet, so I haven't checked under the loupe, but it looks like it's drag free this time. Very happy about that!
 
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