Favorite films in Rodinal?

S

Stephanie Brim

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I'm new to Rodinal. Never used it. I know I'll be using lots of Tri-X, but is there anything else that I should look into using with Rodinal?

Make your case well as I know this is purely a matter of opinion...I just want opinions other than my own. :p
 
Having been warned off 400 speed films in Rodinal... I tried HP5+ and Neopan 400.

I like them both rather a lot, although I'd probably stop short of using them as a regular combo.

There's samples in my Flickr stream (Hoegaarden glass, and rice bowl).
 
Delta 100 works nicely in Rodinal.
Rodinal 1:50, 14 minutes, constant agitation for the first minute and 1 inversion every 30 seconds after that.

Peter
 
The ones I think get the best out in Rodinal are:
EFKE 25 (1+100 for about 10 minutes),
EFKE 100, APX100, FP4+ (1+25 7-8 minutes and 1+50 13-15 minutes, 1+50+C 7-8 minutes)
Neopan 100/Acros gives beautiful resutls, can;t recall times tough.

TriX and HP5 can get decent results, I like the graininess you get out of them.
 
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Pan F+

No competition!

HP5+ usually gets pretty messy in Rodinal.. Never liked the results. Delta 100 is very nice in Rodinal, and so is Tri-X but only if grain is your 'thing'. Pan F is just.. waw!
 
I read somewhere an interesting soup with acros.. rodinol 1:100 for 18 minutes, 15s of agitation on the minute for 3 minutes, then one inversion every 3 minutes through the end.. the results were beautiful.

I don't have rodinol yet, don't know where to buy it! ??
 
The efke films do come out beautifully in Rodinal. I recently did a roll of 120 Across, too, and the sharpness was visible in the negs.

It's also my soup of choice for FP4.

allan
 
You can either buy it, or "cook" your own.
If you can;t find Rodinal per se, get Calbe R09 from Freestyle or JandC.

You can make Rodinal out of Acetaminophen tablets, as per Donald Qualls recipe:

DonaldQualls said:
30 tablets @ 500 mg generic acetaminophen (crushed -- I used an 8 ounce hammer with the tablets in a postal envelope)
50 g sodium sulfite
20 g sodium hydroxide
water to make 250 ml

Start with about 150 ml room temp water. Stir in the acetaminophen and sulfite (I used sodium sulfite stock solution I already had); solution will be nearly opaque and white. Don't worry about the little rags and tags of tableting material; they don't seem to affect anything. Add the sodium hydroxide, stir, seal, and let stand for at least 24 hours; activity may continue increasing (as the reaction converting acetaminophen to p-aminophenol proceeds) for up to 48 hours from mixing. If the solution isn't as dark as weak tea with milk, at a minimum, it needs to stand longer.

As solution ages, you may note a layer of less opaque, darker colored solution floating on the denser, chalky looking portion; stir this together before using. After about a week, clear needle-like crystals will precipitate; leave these in the solution and stir before drawing off concentrate for use. Color will continue to darken from tan, to pink, to brown; as with Rodinal, this does no harm.

Dilute like Rodinal, use Rodinal times, though use of the sodium salts instead of corresponding potassium compounds in formulation is said to result in "softer working" developer, so if you're already a Rodinal user you might find you need to adjust times slightly to keep the same contrast. Don't attempt to use 1:100 until the solution is at least pink.

This formula originally comes from a discussion thread on rec.photo.darkroom newsgroup about two years ago, BTW, though the poster then cited another worker whose work I haven't seen. I'm sold; if you buy the acetaminophen at Costco, use Red Devil brand lye, pay $5/lb for your sulfite, and buy distilled water at 97 cents a gallon, this developer costs about 55 cents for the above quantity, which will develop about 50 rolls at 1:50 (35 mm or 2x120 on a 220 reel). Use of distilled water for dilution will, of course, increase cost per roll for the working solution, but it's still around 25 cents a roll; I usually factor out the distilled water, since it's essentially a constant for a given amount of film. Fomapan 100 gives *excellent* results in this soup; TX and Classic 400 in 120 are pretty nice, too, though the grain might be objectionable in 35 mm. I've been using it at 1:50 with reduced agitation, adding 50% to published Rodinal 1:50 times to account for agitating every 3rd minute.
Click to expand...

Donald also reported that the developer is still working after 3+ months and it looks like Coca-Cola (just like the real Rodinal)
 
jano: You can still get some at J&C

It's hard to find until the German firm that bought rights to it from Agfa starts manufacturing it. Substitutes are available from Photographers' Formulary, Calbe, and maybe some others, though the formulae are slightly different, from what I understand.
 
It's good to see that Acros comes out nicely.. what with APX going the way of the do-do and all that. Acros, while I've used it before, is extremely nice in D-76 and such... but seeing as how I have bottles of ROdinal waiting to be used . . . :)

Dave
 
Here's an example of Delta 100 in Rodinal.
This is a straight scan, no manipulation other than changing image size.
100% detail example added.
Peter
 
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Interestingly enough the Dltas/TMaxes benefit from the developer characteristics of rodinal and give beautiful results.
Delta400 is a very special animal in it, unfortunately ran out of D400 and only tested 1 roll in Rodinal.


And a detail (scanned at 2400 dpi)
 
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titrisol said:
Interestingly enough the Dltas/TMaxes benefit from the developer characteristics of rodinal and give beautiful results.
Click to expand...
I was surprised by this when I tried Delta in Rodinal. I'd heard only bad things about souping the new emulsions in the old school developer.
However, my experience has been that these problems (grain clumping, muddy highlights etc.) only seem to show up at the 1:25 dilution. Once you move to the 1:50, 1:75 or 1:100 dilutions, the results are fantastic.
Another thing to try is pulling 400 speed films to about 200 in 1:100 Rodinal.
The attached example is an unmanipulated scan of Agfa APX 400 pulled to 200 (1:100 for 15 minutes).
100% detail.

Peter
 
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True, Rodinal is the only developer I know of that gets smaller grain at higher dilutions.
I love it at 1+50 as my standard, and at 1+100 or even 1+200
TriX in Rodinal 1+50 is not bad either
 
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titrisol said:
TriX in Rodinal 1+50 is not bad either
Click to expand...
That worked surprisingly well.
I've generally not been 100% happy using higher speed (400+) films at full speed in Rodinal. However, the pull processing results have been very impressive.

Peter
 
I'll eventually be doing the big push to 12,800. I think I'm going to try it at 1:100 or 1:200 instead of 1:50 when I do that, especially if you say that higher dilutions mean less grain. Course, it'll give me a two hour dev time, but it'll be okay if I'm doing semi-stand development anyway.
 
Are you going for some very particular effect? Rodinal really, really isn't a good developer for push processing. There are speed enhancing developers (Rodinal) that will do a much better job. Unless a contracted contrast range and golfball-grain are what you're looking for, if so, ignore this post...
 
APX100 is very nice in Rodinal. Too bad it's gone now, too. :(

An aside - I once posed a very similar question in Usenet.
Nearly all replies were critical of the very question;
I was accused of "putting the cart before the horse".
So either Stephanie phrased it better, you folks understood it
better, or this is just a nicer bunch here. Maybe all three... ;)

"Excelsior, you fathead!"
-Chris-
 
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