stand development, rodinal and 120 medium format film ...

[meer berlin]

hello everybody,

i'm writing this here because i really like stand development with rodinal, because of its simplicity and results. i have it working very well for me so far for 135/35mm film, but i'm consistently having problems with uneven development with 120/medium format film. the problem is that the film on one side always gets overdeveloped, which means on the top or bottom end of the spool in the tank (film running rolleiflex/hasselblad style through the camera - so upwards and not from one side to the other) - i did not yet check exactly if it is top or bottom (i think it is the bottom - but i might be wrong here). i searched the net a lot about this and also found some other people who seemed to have a similar problem, but so far none of the solutions mentioned worked well for me. what i can rule out as possible reasons are: light leaks, shutter- or other problems with the camera - happens with different cameras, even leaf-shutter ones, temperature drifts - everything used during the whole development procedure is stored at rom temperature at which also everything happens, bad agitation scheme - if i develop a film with normal agitation it works fine and gives evenly developed results, specific film problems - tried it with lots of films: hp5+, tri-x, fp4+, rollei retro 80s, rollei superpan 200, lucky 100 and more - same problem with all of them, bad developer - the same developer works fine for 35mm, badly mixed developer - i'm mixing it very carefully, scanning problem - no, one can also see it on the negs themself.

i'm basically following the recipie from lynn p. miller from the rangefinderforum, which worked perfectly for 35mm for me too:

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1068940&postcount=162

i'm using jobo tanks - tried one or two films in a 1520 tank (6ml rodinal to 600ml water) and also 2 films in a 1510+1530 tank (8ml rodinal to 1l water) with an empty 35mm spool above and below - neither worked. i'm always presoaking the films for about 5min. usual times for box speed are: 1min about 20 inversions and then stand for 1 hour, but also tried for instance 30sec inversions (about 10) at the beginning and then 5 inversions every 10 minutes for 40 minutes - always the same problem. i'm out of ideas now. the problem mostly manifests on large areas of bright sky etc., but looking carefully it is always present and the overdevelopement seems to always be only on one side and as it looks like always on the same.

a sample scan of such a 120 film (shot with a bronica s2a) can be found at

http://meer-berlin.org/tmp/uneven.jpg

my questions now are: did anyone else face the same problems? do you have any suggestions, ideas or solutions for this problem? i'm open for everything which basically gives the usual stand development characteristics, so i'm also fine with semi stand strategies. if i do not find any solution for this problem, i might have to go back to normal development with medium format film, which i do not really want.

a lot of thanks in advance and best wishes from berlin - thomas

 

[P. Lynn Miller]

Thomas,

Uneven development can be a problem with 120, I solved it by using a 1520 tank, suspend the single reel in the middle of the tank(I used a tank clip), fill the tank completely full, no air. Push the lid into the tank so that some of the develop flows out. My tanks do not leak even when upside, so every 30 minutes or so, I simply turn the tank over. Start with tank right-side-up, then up-side-down, and so on, until the time time is up.

You can give the tank one slight bump to ensure that you do not get any trapped air bubbles, but I could see no real difference in times or developed with this method, it simply prevents the developer from accumulating in the bottom of the tank.

This worked for me, but I cannot promise that it will work for you.

 

[meer berlin]

hi lynn,

i assume you only develop one roll in the 1520 then? what exactly do you mean by "suspend the single reel in the middle of the tank"? i think in the jobo it should already be suspended in a way by the spindle or not?

best wishes - thomas

 

[gho]

Hi Thomas,

I am facing exactly the same problems with stand development and Rodinal, even with 135 film. I attribute it to an uneven temperature gradient (fluid-dynamical flow due to uneven temperature) in the tank and have not found out yet, if the overdevelopment happens at the bottom or the top, but I suspect that it is the bottom.

Solutions I would like to try next time
1. Prewashing with 20 C warm water to get it up or down to temperature.

2. Placing the tank itself into a 20 C warm water bath in such a way, that the bottom does not touch a colder or warmer surface. The best solution should be to immerse the tank totally into the bath and to let it sit on an inverted bowl or something like that.

With 35mm film rolls a solution may be to place the reel in the middle of the tank, not at the bottom.

I will report my results as soon as I have tried it out and hey, I am in Berlin too.


P.Lynn: This method also sounds promising, if it is developer accumulating at the bottom, turning over the tank after the first half of the development time should help. And by the way, your previeous stand development posts are really helpful and informative.

 

[meer berlin]

small world 🙂

i think your points 1 & 2 will not help much - at least due to my experience: i do everything at room temperature with all the liquids (even for pre soak) being also at room temperature. so there should be no temperature gradients, aside from maybe ones generated by the development process itself.

putting the spindle in the middle did not help at all at my yesterdays 120 test with the long (1510+1530) tank and the empty 135 spindle above and below. but maybe you will get better results.

i think also turning the tank upside down might give a similar uneven development on both sides and a lower unevenness overall, but at the end it will most probably be still uneven after all (center vs. border) i assume.

lets see what results you will get

best wishes from berlin too 🙂 - thomas

 

[meer berlin]

btw. i had problems with 35mm too before i started to have everything at room temperature and i think also 5min presoak is essential ... this way i got it working relatively well with 35mm (3+300 in a jobo 1510 or 6+600 for two films in a 1520) - not perfect, but much better than 120 and definitely useable ... but maybe it simply is more obvious on 120 ...

best wishes - thomas

 

[morback]

I had the same problem in 120. Flipping the can halfway through or agitating/rotating did not help at all. I went back to regular development for 120.

In 35mm only fast films are causing problems. By problems I mean uneven development as described by you. Here too, flipping, rotating, agitating would not help.

Everything was done at rom temp.

 

[Pico]

I do stand development of Agfa APX 100, 1:150 for 45 minutes (nothing more happens after that time. In fact, you can probably stop at 30 minutes.)

No uneven development. That's why I like it so much. Nice even skies.

With thicker and faster films, you might get uneven results because the chemistry
drags down the film. (Bromide Drag is a term they used.)

When I was more insecure with the practice, I used big fat 220 reels (not the 220 reels that fit 120 tanks). The Nikkor tank for these reels is a tiny bit taller than their 4x5 reel tank. This separated the film well, and allowed enough dilute developer so that the developer did not completely expire too early.

 

[oftheherd]

I did my first stand development with Rodinal using LF film; http://www.flickr.com/photos/45551180@N06/4853351057/ where you can see at the top something similar to what you are talking about.

Bromide drag. I remember reading about that 35 years ago. I didn't pay a lot of attention as it wasn't anything happening to me. Perhaps I'd better lookl that up as well. In the meantime, I think I will hold off on stand development except for experimentation.

I hope anyone else who had the problem and cured it will post, as I have seen some very good photos from negatives souped in Rodinal and stand development.

 

[gho]

What puzzles me is that sometimes it does occur and another time the negatives are just fine. I have not determined yet what makes the difference and I have become reluctant to apply the stand development technique. Though, if it works, the results are very fine. I used it mainly for pushing Tri-X 2-3 stops. Once I tried pulling one stop (20-30 min) with very nice results. I will give it some more tries.

 

[shadowfox]

First of all, are you guys sure that with 120 (big area, less perceived grain anyways) we can tell the difference between 1+50 for 14 minutes vs 1-hour stand?

I find it hard to believe if we could. I hardly agitate when using 1+50 and already I don't want my 120 negatives to be smoother.

 

[meer berlin]

i think bromide drag does not exist with rodinal, because no bromides are involved ... so this is out of the game

the reason for why it worked for pico might be: he is using stainless steel tanks i think and most people with problems use plastic reel tanks (jobo, paterson, ap, ...) which have much less space for the fluids diffuse their concentrations maybe?

shadowfox's point might have something to it as well - did anyone do 1:1 comparisons between stand and normal for 120? for 135 it is worth it alone for the extra in tonality and low grain plus the good pushability for films like tri-x. but in 120 there is already better tonality and (relative to size) less grain anyway ...

best wishes - thomas

 

[Pico]

Here are a couple of images from 6x6cm. Agfa 100. Stand processed Rodinal 1:100. Not remarkable images, but they do show even development.

Please keep in mind that my scanner (and my scanning skill) is not very good.

First, a small image: Winona Bridge Below

And a large (2mb) image for pixel-peeping: Winona Bridge Sign
(The dots in the sky are flying pigeons)

 

[meer berlin]

something must be going on with gravity of fresh vs. expired developer here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/meerberlin/4869197035/

look above the shoes - you can clearly see how the fresh developer from the dark shoes falls down down to the top of the image and overdevelops it a bit (the top of the image this time was at the bottom of the tank)

this time i tried to play with a few things: i used the agitation scheme described here

http://figitalrevolution.com/2009/08/04/stand-development-part-2/

i used one 120 film alone in a jobo 1520 with 4-600ml, lifted the spool a little bit from its lowest position and i did another 5 gentle inversions after about half an hour. at least this time there is not such a strong overdevelopment of the bottom (but it would be harder to see in this image anyway)

i'm very close to giving up stand and semi stand with 120 film - maybe mixing the best of it with normal dev and agitating 5 times in the range of every 5min for half an hour - anybody every tried something like this?

best wishes - thomas

 

[meer berlin]

btw. something similar can also be seen here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/meerberlin/4401514023/

looks like here also the top of the image was the bottom in the tank - the image was shot with a holga, so the direction is correct (top/bottom for holga/psix vs. left right for rollei/hasselbald style transport)

 

[Pico]

, but i'm consistently having problems with uneven development with 120/medium format film.

Always with the same camera? Could be a problem with the camera.

 

[FrozenInTime]

I was seeing problems, so tried inverting the tank more vigorously each time I developed a film.

This turned out to be the completely wrong thing to do :bang:

I asked on the photo.net darkroom forum, and was told that this was a result of bubbles forming during agitation.
I've since been extremely gentle with inversions and then tap the tank to dislodge any bubbles.

I'm now streak and blob free 🙂

Donald.

 

[ChrisN]

I gave up on stand development with little or no agitation because of inconsistent results and the problems mentioned above. I have found that I can use 1+100 dilutions of Rodinal (for economy) with times in the 15 to 25 minutes range, with four standard inversions every five minutes. I prefer to be slightly generous with the level of developer in the tank.

 

[P. Lynn Miller]

Stand-development is a very temperamental method of developing, it will work for one person and not the next even though both persons are using supposed identical methods. I have developed hundreds of rolls of 135 and 120/220 film with consistent and amazing results.

That is why I always recommend stand-development with a caution.

Just as note of information... I am only using stand-development at this point for pushing film, especially 120/220 or when I need the flexibility. I am now experimenting with low dilution Rodinal, >1:25, with low speed films. You can see some of my current results in these discussions, Rodinal Revisited..., the first post of this thread - You Could Feel It In Your Bones...., and The Voigtländer Nokton 50mm f1.1 Revisited. The development information is listed below each image.

 

[Pico]

I have never, ever found that one can push using stand processing. How do you do it?