Stand development in the fridge

[jnantz]

The reason is simple: why not? It's fun, and I'm after some special effects, like very high acutance or strange tonality... due to the staining effect.
In my theory low temperature + high diluted developer is to slow down the oxidization process and prevent uneven development. Yes I worry about the developer become inactive, but this need an experiment anw.
Still waiting for someone who tried this before to chime in

i think its a great idea

nigel mentioned a ligitimate concern, you might not want to call it stand development
if the motor turns on it will end up being "semi stand" development

[koraks]

You're absolutely right and you should by no means feel discouraged by my inunformed response! Definitely go ahead and post your experiences here. After all, regardless if someone with experience chimes in, would it stop you one way or the other? I sure hope not

[jumanji]

Yes I would try it anyway The roll film I intended to play with is not really important, but it's all portrait for a friend and I dont want to tell her to have a shooting again, so I will just develop it normally. I will experiment with Pyro HD and Mortensen's developer and post the result back here in future. Thanks all for chiming in.

[Neal Chaves]

Mortensen's book "On the Negative" is excellent. I'm very glad I saw and studied it it before being exposed to Adams, Minor White, Fred Picker, Phil Davis or other "gurus". Mortensen describes a very straight forward "ring around method" to obtain an optimum negative, and also how to "read" a previously processed negative.

Years ago I learned the method to find the correct developing time and EI for any film. The source was an article by William Mortensen. Mortensen wrote some excellent books and articles about basic sensitometry. The last time I did this test was when I abandoned Tri-X and switched to HP5+ due to cost about five years ago. I proceed as follows.

I set up my trays with my favorite developer HC110B (1:31). I pull out a sheet from the package in the dark. and then when the package is sealed again I turn on the room lights. This part of the test is done under the lights. I cut the sheet into five strips and mark them 1-5 by punching holes with a paper punch. Lets say the recommended time is 5:00. I want to see 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00 and 7:00, so I throw all the strips into the developer and agitate as usual until 3:00 when I move the No.1 strip over to the stop bath. Then I pull No.2 at 4:00, No.3 at 5:00, etc. I fix, wash and dry the strips as usual. What we are looking for is the best usable film DMax value. Obviously the film has been fully exposed! When strips dry lay down a page of news print on a table in good light. Find the strip through which the news print is barely visible. That's your developing time. Now to find the film speed.

Go outside in unchanging light conditions and expose five sheets and expose one at the manufacturers rating and then the other four at one half a stop and one stop less and one half a stop and one stop more. In the dark, develop them all together for your newly derived time. Contact print them together exposing and developing the paper for maximum usable paper DMax value. Pick out the best-looking contact print and you have your film speed.

Because my 7:00 negative looked the best on the first test, I did the test again with 7:00 as the central developing time and found that 8:00 was indeed too dense. This HP5+ time was the same as the as the developing time I had been using for Tri-X and film speed was also the same, EI400.

Many of the last generation of B&W gurus favored a development time of 5:00 for Tri-X and suggested an EI of 64-100. You can do the above test backwards, developing for 5:00 minutes and finding the film speed. I like 100. The difference between negatives exposed at 100 and developed for 5:00 is quite subtle. Both could be considered "normal" or N negatives. The 100 negative has slightly greater shadow and highlight detail that only a careful, knowledgeable viewer could detect. This slight improvement might not be worthwhile trading for two stops in the field. I do routinely rate HP5+ at 100 under powerful strobe light in the studio and it produces beautiful skin tones.

From here, if you are still with me, you can derive expansion and contraction schemes for both the 100 and 400 "normal negs". I do this by changing dilution rather than time. Make sure you have at least 1 oz. of the concentrated sauce for each 8X10 sheet or equivalent. For expansion I found that 3/4 oz. concentrate to 31 1/4 ozs. H20 yields an N-1 neg at a one stop loss in film speed and 1/2 oz. concentrate to 31 1/2 ozs. H20 yields an N-2 neg at a two stop loss in film speed. For contractions, 1 1/4 oz. of concentrate to 30 3/4 ozs. H20 yields an N+1 neg at a one stop gain in speed and 1 1/2 ozs. concentrate to 30 1/2 ozs. H20 produces an N+2 negative with a two stop gain in speed.

If you look at the chart of Tri-X film speed in Phil Davis' BTZS book you can easily pick out the film speed in HC110B 5:00 as EI 64.