Trius
Waiting on Maitani
So here's the thing ... Rodinal 1:100 develops to exhaustion and using stand development, while convenient, IMO isn't any better than the following:
The exception would be if the tonal scale is REALLY long, then stand development might give you some extra compensating effect and actually give some texture to areas that would have been above Zone VIII with the "normal" development.
I am willing to bet that pure stand at 20 minutes would produce the same results as 60 minutes for negatives with a "normal" tonal range. I could be wrong, but it would be an interesting test. The difference would (might?) be in grain and acutance. All things being equal, less wet time is better than longer. This is why some people like to process at 24C rather than 20C. With modern film stock, 24C does not pose any danger to the gelatin. 20C was original chosen because it was the highest "safe" temperature before unhardened gelatin began to reticulate or experience other damage through melting.
For very flat scenes, then 1:100 is not the best choice with Rodinal. 1:50 or even 1:25 is better, but then you are changing the grain characteristics. It's not a big problem with some films, especially slower films. But even with APX100, which is not particularly fine grained, you can see the difference. Another approach with flat scenes, especially with roll film where the tonal range varies with frames, is to give 1/2 to 1 stop more exposure for the flat scenes. This can help to improve contrast a bit for those shots.
There is nothing stopping someone from using other intermediate dilutions, however, such as 1:65, 1:75, etc. It's more difficult to calculate quantities, but that's why the deity invented calculators, eh?
- 30 sec. initial agitation by inversion (note: maybe 30 seconds is no different than 15 seconds, I haven't tested)
- 3 gentle inversions at 3 minute intervals thereafter
- fix w/ plain water, fix, wash, etc.
The exception would be if the tonal scale is REALLY long, then stand development might give you some extra compensating effect and actually give some texture to areas that would have been above Zone VIII with the "normal" development.
I am willing to bet that pure stand at 20 minutes would produce the same results as 60 minutes for negatives with a "normal" tonal range. I could be wrong, but it would be an interesting test. The difference would (might?) be in grain and acutance. All things being equal, less wet time is better than longer. This is why some people like to process at 24C rather than 20C. With modern film stock, 24C does not pose any danger to the gelatin. 20C was original chosen because it was the highest "safe" temperature before unhardened gelatin began to reticulate or experience other damage through melting.
For very flat scenes, then 1:100 is not the best choice with Rodinal. 1:50 or even 1:25 is better, but then you are changing the grain characteristics. It's not a big problem with some films, especially slower films. But even with APX100, which is not particularly fine grained, you can see the difference. Another approach with flat scenes, especially with roll film where the tonal range varies with frames, is to give 1/2 to 1 stop more exposure for the flat scenes. This can help to improve contrast a bit for those shots.
There is nothing stopping someone from using other intermediate dilutions, however, such as 1:65, 1:75, etc. It's more difficult to calculate quantities, but that's why the deity invented calculators, eh?
charjohncarter
Veteran
RE: Trius, I have 'played' with Rodinal mod SD and found that 30 minutes was not any different from 1.5 hours. I also agree that for flat scenes 1+100 doesn't give me what I want either (especially with TriX). So unless I have a whole roll of high contrast images I will use 1+50. Another observation is in my limited use with 1+100 if you overexpose a shot it is really flat and muddy.
Trius
Waiting on Maitani
Thanks for the feedback on the overexposure ... I was sorta guessing on that one, but it's good to have some empirical observation.