How do you agitate?

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Ravinder,

Kaiyen has it exactly, except for one additional factor: grain is also very dependent on developer choice.

Some devs give more speed and coarser grain (e.g. Ilford DDX, Microphen); others give finer grain but less speed (e.g. Ilford Perceptol). A few devs give low speed AND coarse grain (e.g. Rodinal).

Any dev claiming high speed and fine grain should be examined carefully to see what they mean by 'fine grain'. If they mean 'fine for the speed', that's one thing; if they mean 'finer than a non-speed-increasing developer, and higher speed too,' they're lying. If it were otherwise, everyone would use that dev.

'Cut back on development' can be done in lots of ways: weaker dev, lower temperature, shorter time, less agitation... It doesn't matter much which you use. Agitation is like bokeh; a fashionable topic for people who are more concerned with equipment and process than with pictures.

So, yes: keep exposure to a minimum, and development to a minimum, and you'll get fine-grain, easily scanned negatives. They may not be as tonally rich for wet printing, but if you're not wet printing, what do you care?

Cheers,

Roger

 

[santi-u]

Very interesting all this thread. I'm new on developing, recently got my first two Delta 400 rolls, developed with HC-110. I'm trying to learn all this personal way on doing it.
I'm happy with my results, very exciting but is difficult to take conclusions. I need to develope hundreds more to understand all this concepts.
My way was; continious during the first 30s, and 5s (3 inversions +-) every 30s till finish.
I'd liked how kaiyen explained it, maybe i'll try that way.
I learn many things here, thanks all.

Cheers
Santi