Rodinal Stand Development -- Push?

[ColSebastianMoran]

After reading here, I decided to give it a try.

35mm 36 exp Tri-X, shot at ASA 400.
4ml Rodinal in 400 ml water. 70 degrees.
Initial agitation 30 secs.
One more agitation at 10 minutes.
Let stand for to a total of 60 minutes.

For those with experience, will this be right for box speed? Or is this a push development, and if so, how much?

Reason I ask: negatives look rich, but much more dense than I expected. Edge printing doesn't show signs of overdevelopment. I'm waiting for scans from Precision, but judging the negatives by eye, either I over-exposed or the process above is one or two stops push development.

Can anyone illuminate?

Added: I developed one roll in a two-roll tank, with a spacer.

 

[mathomas]

After reading here, I decided to give it a try.

35mm 36 exp Tri-X, shot at ASA 400.
4ml Rodinal in 400 ml water. 70 degrees.
Initial agitation 30 secs.
One more agitation at 10 minutes.
Let stand for to a total of 60 minutes.

For those with experience, will this be right for box speed? Or is this a push development, and if so, how much?

Reason I ask: negatives look rich, but much more dense than I expected. Edge printing doesn't show signs of overdevelopment. I'm waiting for scans from Precision, but judging the negatives by eye, either I over-exposed or the process above is one or two stops push development.

Can anyone illuminate?

Added: I developed one roll in a two-roll tank, with a spacer.

Maybe the extra agitation accounts for slight overdevelopment (?). When I'm doing stand with Rodinal, I only agitate at the beginning, then leave it alone completely (that's why they call it "stand" ).

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

mathomas, thanks. Semi-stand was the idea I had in mind. Reading here, several people said they agitate after 30 minutes; that would seem to undo the whole idea of stand development. I decided if I was going to agitate a second time, it should be very early, hence at 10 min out of the 60 minute process.

Unless my exposure was off, it appears my agitation at 10 minutes resulted in a lot more development. I think it might be useful as a way to Push (N+1).

For those who do pure stand development, is this lower-contrast (N-1) development, so if you are using an averaging or evaluative meter, you would reduce ISO from box speed?

 

[mathomas]

I think those that do semi-stand do it for a shorter timeframe. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I have done quite a bit of stand dev, both 120 and 135. At the time I was experimenting with it a lot, I exposed at box speed. On the other hand, I almost always meter incident.

Here is a flickr search of my photostream for those photos derived from stand dev:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=76198982@N00&q=rodinal stand

Of course, they've been scanned and adjusted, so I'm not sure how helpful it is. Part of the reason I like stand is to get the lower-contrast neg, because I scan.

However, lately, I've been doing the overexpose/underdevelop thing, at least in sunny conditions. I do it pretty conservatively. I overexpose by one stop (from box speed) and reduce dev time by 20% (after taking into account temps). I most often (or always?) do this with Rodinal 1+50. Again, I do incident metering the majority of the time.

I'm happier with my sunny negs/scans than ever before, using this regime. Tri-X and Plus-X look beautiful (to my eye) when approached this way. It's something to consider. Most anything recent in my flickr stream was done with this technique.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

After reading here, I decided to give it a try.

35mm 36 exp Tri-X, shot at ASA 400.
4ml Rodinal in 400 ml water. 70 degrees.
Initial agitation 30 secs.
One more agitation at 10 minutes.
Let stand for to a total of 60 minutes.

For those with experience, will this be right for box speed? Or is this a push development, and if so, how much?

Reason I ask: negatives look rich, but much more dense than I expected. Edge printing doesn't show signs of overdevelopment. I'm waiting for scans from Precision, but judging the negatives by eye, either I over-exposed or the process above is one or two stops push development.

Can anyone illuminate?

Added: I developed one roll in a two-roll tank, with a spacer.

Consider this: usual times for developing normally exposed Tri-X are a very small part of those 60 minutes... An hour of Rodinal on well exposed highlights is a lot... A long stand development is a push development that gives just a bit less contrast because of lack of agitation, but those long times require underexposure... Stand is best for ISO1600, and its limit is IMO 3200... For ISO400 there's no reason to use stand, as the desired degree of contrast -from low to high- is easily controllable with development time, using in all cases constant (every minute) agitation...

Cheers,

Juan

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Thanks, Juan, Mike, and JSU. Very much appreciated.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

I think your method would be about right for my version of EI 1200 - 1600.

Consider 3ml per roll / reel with sufficient water to fill the tank. Moderate agitation for one minute. Let sit untouched until finished. 45 minutes should be close for EI 400, one hour for EI 800, with Tri-X or Arista Premium 400.

I go to 5ml per roll / reel for an hour when I want to get to EI 1600 and 90 minutes with additional agitation, one gentle inversion, at 30 & 60 minutes, for EI 3200.

Interesting data! Thanks for sharing!

Cheers,

Juan

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Some Samples -- Rodinal Stand Development

Some Samples -- Rodinal Stand Development

For what it's worth, here are some samples for this stand process. Shot on different film vs. my original post. Here are the specifics:

The processing is:
35mm LegacyPro 100 shot at box speed.
4ml Rodinal in 400 ml water. 70 degrees.
Initial agitation for 30 secs.
One more agitation at 10 minutes.
Let stand for to a total of 60 minutes.

The negatives are quite dense. The light was full sunlight/shadow and the scans from Precision are pretty contrasty, as you would expect. I like the gritty feel of these, but this is obviously getting pretty stylized.

This looks to me to be at least N+1 development. I might use this at 2x box speed to increase contrast or as a two stop push.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

And, FWIW, here are two 100% crops from the Precision scans.

I should have mentioned that I worked all these a bit in Lightroom, basic adjustments.

 

[Freakscene]

What you're doing is developing to exhaustion of the developer. You need to match the volume of Rodinal you use to the exposure. You are likely using too much. Agitation will have only avery small effect. Anything more than 20 minutes is probably too long and anything more than 30 minutes is certainly too long. You can check remaining activity by removing some solution at 15, 20, 25 and 30 minutes and putting drops onto a film leader for varying amounts of time.

Experiment and figure out what is right for you. There is a lot of voodoo and (luckily not very harmful) untruth about this circulating on the internet.

Marty

 

[charjohncarter]

After reading here, I decided to give it a try.

35mm 36 exp Tri-X, shot at ASA 400.
4ml Rodinal in 400 ml water. 70 degrees.
Initial agitation 30 secs.
One more agitation at 10 minutes.
Let stand for to a total of 60 minutes.

For those with experience, will this be right for box speed? Or is this a push development, and if so, how much?

Reason I ask: negatives look rich, but much more dense than I expected. Edge printing doesn't show signs of overdevelopment. I'm waiting for scans from Precision, but judging the negatives by eye, either I over-exposed or the process above is one or two stops push development.

Can anyone illuminate?

Added: I developed one roll in a two-roll tank, with a spacer.

I don't like stand development as a general development only as a high contrast scene development. But I agree when I have tried to do it with Rodinal and with Rodinal's tendency to uneven development plus surge streaks, I have done more agitation to combat this and ended with overdevelopment. So now if I use Rodinal for general development I just find a time that is good with 1+100 and develop for a specific time (18-21 minutes for Trix) with normal or less agitation (but still enough to not get stand problems). With high contrast scenes I use a different developer; one that I have a better rapport with for stand.

 

[timor]

Anything more than 20 minutes is probably too long and anything more than 30 minutes is certainly too long.

I would agree with that. My time for Agfa APX400 was 24 min. but with this concentrations (1:100) and long times there is a lot of factors to consider. Anyway after 30 min. silver solved in solution may start to redeposit on the negative and build up the density.

 

[Freakscene]

I would agree with that. My time for Agfa APX400 was 24 min. but with this concentrations (1:100) and long times there is a lot of factors to consider. Anyway after 30 min. silver solved in solution may start to redeposit on the negative and build up the density.

You're referring to physical or "plating out" development. This doesn't really occur with modern materials, because there isn't enough silver mobilised by modern developers - and even if there was, emulsions are formulated to prevent redeposition of silver.

Older reference books that look seriously at physical development mention developers that include silver nitrate and involve an up to 8 stop loss of speed.

This is different to the "solvent effect" of sulfite in developers. 1L of Rodinal 1+100 has the equivalent in sulfite ions of about 2.5g of sodium sulfite, formed by the reaction of hydroxide and metabisulfite: this has an effect on development, and influences the granularity and the look of edges on the image, but probably not through the solvent effect. The sulfite aids in preventing oxidation of the p-aminophenol - Rodinal home made without any sulfite or sulfite forming compounds exhausts much more quickly than the commercial variety. Mackie lines/adjacency effects then occur with less dilution. In developers that rely on regeneration of a primary developer by a secondary developer, sulfite facilitates regenerating the primary developer, but this doesn't apply to Rodinal. This is similar to what happens with FX2 as described in this thread at photo.net.

Marty

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Thanks for the comments. Yes, it is clear that this is higher than normal contrast development, probably N+1 or more, and I may use it for this purpose.

 

[timor]

You're referring to physical or "plating out" development. This doesn't really occur with modern materials, because there isn't enough silver mobilised by modern developers - and even if there was, emulsions are formulated to prevent redeposition of silver.

I am thinking of just redeposition of metallic silver.
Well, Tri-X has quite silver rich emulsion and Rodinal is not that modern formula. Anyway today's developers from Ilford and Kodak still contain sequestering agents. Maybe they do not consider their emulsions that much resistant to silver redeposition after all.
But maybe you are right and increase in density is caused by prolonged action of p-aminofenol. In that case composition of used water will have much to do with Rodinal activity. Question to OP. What water did you use ?

 

[ferider]

Stand-development is based on exhaustion. Meaning dilution doesn't matter, instead quantity of developer does. By using 4ml instead of the usual 3ml per roll, you push by maybe around a stop or so (compared to the effective film speed).

Saying "stand development in 1:100" is meaningless, unless you specify the amount of water. For most of us, this will be 300ml per roll, matching the 3ml per roll Rodinal you need for nominal speed.

Roland.

 

[Trius]

Someone needs to do the following experiment:

• 1 roll of 36 or 1 sheet of 8x10/4 4x5 in 1:100, 4ml of Rodinal
• 1 roll of 36 or 1 sheet of 8x10/4 4x5 in 1:100, 8ml of Rodinal
• Identical subject, lighting and exposures for all film(s)

Stand development for both configurations

Measure densities and dMax

Personally, I doubt you'd see much difference, but I could be wrong.

 

[Coldkennels]

I was under the understanding that 3ml wasn't enough for a roll of film; someone recommended to me 6ml per film, so that's what I've been using (at 1:100) for stand development of XP2 shot at box speed. Seems to do the job.

 

[Trius]

Why are you developing XP2 in Rodinal? Just curious.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Question to OP. What water did you use ?

Which water? Boston city water, filtered through a Brita filter, let stand in a closed container for several days.