Help with Rodinal development please...

[MVCG]

Hi guys, so I wanted to try the stand development process with a couple of rolls of TMax and thought I'd double check with you wise ones...

2 X 135 36exp ASA 100 Tmax (exposed at 100)
6ml Rodinal, 600ml of water
1 X Paterson twin tank

Can I use just 6ml of Rodinal for these 2 films at 1:100 stand?

I was going to water bath the films for 2 minutes
Add dev solution
1 minuter of slow inversions
4-6 hard thumps for air bubbles
Leave for 59min
Water bath with Stop solution
Fix for 5mins
Rinse
Add wetting agent

Dry.....

Does this all sound right???

Thank you!

 

[certifiable]

That's almost what I do, I put evey film in it's container, but still a 1:100 dillution.
So sounds right(or I'm doing itwrong too)

 

[MVCG]

When you say in its container, do you mean 1 film in 2 separate containers?

I am talking about putting the 2 film reels in the 1 tank with the 600ml solution?

 

[Disaster_Area]

Hi there,

I actually wrote an extensive blog post about this last year:

J B Hildebrand Photography - Stand Development With Rodinal

Hope this helps

 

[ferider]

Sounds almost perfect.

Three refinements:

- You might want to invert once at half time.
- you can stop with water only.
- use distilled water for the final wash with wetting agent.

 

[Tom A]

The thickness of the Paterson reel can give some "glare" at the edges of the film. I would recommend an inversion and a "thump" at 30 minutes to avoid it.
Prewash is not necessary - the film is in the "bath" long enough and residual water in the film base dilutes the developer even further.
I have used Rodinal 1:100 at 25 minutes with Tmax, one inversion every 5 minutes with good results too. It is rather boring trying to keep track of 30 minute intervals. The 3 ml/roll is just about the lowest dilution you can use. Anything less than that you can get uneven, or too little activity.
Be prepared for what will look like a bit "flatter" contrast negative - but they print and scan well.
Avoid stop-bath with this combination. The shock of the acid can create pinhole, particularly with thin emulsions like Tmax. The dilution is high enough that at the end of the 60 min. the developer is exhausted anyway. Just run two washes through it and then fix.

 

[certifiable]

When you say in its container, do you mean 1 film in 2 separate containers?

I am talking about putting the 2 film reels in the 1 tank with the 600ml solution?

If I do 2 films, I use 2 containers, 300ml for each container/film combo.

 

[mbdiesel]

I don't want to start a controversy, but many articles I have read from various forums suggest pre-soaking for 5min. I have done stand dev with rodinal and I pre-soaked. I can not say, from my experience, that pre-soaking is a must.

Check out Holden Richards Flickr steam. Most of his work is stand dev.

 

[MVCG]

Ok, so I developed according to my initial plan with an additional inversion and thump at 30 mins and no chemical stop bath as per Tom A's suggestion, thank u Tom!!! Tell you what - amazing negs!!! They are scanning with a dynamicness I have never seen before. I think I have found my new preferred dev process 🙂

Thank you all!!!

 

[brainwood]

Thanks for the link to your site disaster area . I will have give stand development a try

Chris

 

[Disaster_Area]

Thanks for the link to your site disaster area . I will have give stand development a try

Chris

No problem, glad you found it helpful... Rodinal Stand is about the only method I use nowadays... like I state, it's not always the BEST method... but I'm lazy, and it always gives consistent results. I can live with reduced constrast and a bit of dynamic range compression if it means I don't have to worry that the roll is going to come out way under/overexposed. And I love the flexibility it gives me to push/pull on the fly.

 

[f16sunshine]

Jesse

Very nicely written blog post. I like your style. Gives readers great confidence in the method. Good on you!

 

[burancap]

No problem, glad you found it helpful..

And very timely!

I have a bug to get back in the dark room after nearly 30 years. I have purchased pretty much everything I need short of chems and while researching them stumbled upon this thread.

For a whole bunch of reasons, I am very intrigued by this "stand" technique, not least of which is KISS. I find that nearly all of my processed film needs some degree of post process after scanning anyway -so this may work a treat.

I am curious... after the stand process, there is no stop bath as the developer has effectively stopped or exhausted itself. What about fixing and/or wetting agents? Anything I am missing?

 

[Disaster_Area]

I had to do a double check, I was pretty sure I covered that, and yeah, it's in there, just one sentence 🙂 I didn't go into too much detail as it's pretty much same as usual. After development I do a water stop bath (like you said, there's hardly any developer left so a chemical stop bath isn't necessary. Fill with water, 6-12 inversions, repeat untill what you pour out is clear, usually 2-3 times. Some films will discolor the developer alot, it's just the film base die leaking out, no cause to panic) Then fix, rinse, photoflo (optional) just like you usually would.

 

[amyukie]

I just did a 1+100 1-hour standing development without pre-soaking for Arista 400 Prem yesterday. Gonna shoot a roll today and do it again with pre-soaking. I'll post the pictures later. Thanks for insights, guys.

 

[Disaster_Area]

I think the reason there's such mixed feelings about pre-soaking is that it depends on the film as to whether it's useful or not, there's no universal answer as to whether you should bother or not.

 

[mlu19]

Hi all, I am just getting into developing my own b&w film at home and read about the rodinal stand development process. I think I will start with the stand dev since it sounds like it's very fool proof.

I am curious to see what the 'minimum' equipment is needed for such process.

So far I have..

paterson tank system 4
changing bag
syringe
rodinal developer
fixer

What other stuff would I need for the stand dev?

Thanks!
Mark

 

[Benjamin Marks]

I used the info at Disaster Area's link yesterday for the first time. To my shock and surprise it worked really well. There's nothing like empirical experience! Here are two shots from the test roll (with which I did a pre-soak . . . just force of habit). One with a 21/5.6 C-Biogon on an M2:

And one with a 35/2 Biogon at about 5.6.

Even with Neopan 400 I found the grain reasonably well controlled. Oddly, the grain was more of an issue in large expanses of the same tone. For instance:

Note on the test shot: the grey rectangle is an 18% grey card taped to a piece of white painted plywood. Light was heavily overcast. f:5.6 at about 1/250. The grey card looks reasonably grey. The wood grain is clearly visible on the white painted plywood, indicating that the highlights haven't been blown out. Maybe I just got lucky on the first try with this developing technique, but for this kind of even exposure, it worked out well. Note in the last test picture film grain is clearly visible at this magnification. I would note that I rarely enlarged 35mm negatives to over 9x12 inches on an 11x14 sheet of paper. There was less "grain-peeping" in those days.

I would like to try it with a nice slow film, like Acros or TMax 100.

 

[Benjamin Marks]

Also note that the above pix are severely down-res'd for posting to the Internet. It is one of the things that makes it difficult to show absolute quality differences on a place like RFF. These files are approx. 700K jpgs. Original files at 4000 dpi and 16 bits are approximately 100 MB in size. So there is a lot of processing between the neg and the image on RFF.