Developing 4x5 in the Kitchen?

[barnacle]

Combiplan for me, usually. It eats 1050cc of chemistry to do six sheets, and it sometimes drips a bit, but once the film's in it in a changing bag it's daylight all the way.

Neil

[Old_Dick]

Homemade BTZS tubes. Must of cost me a couple bucks to make two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMXQO5ATgiY will give you a good idea.

[Tin Can]

Homemade BTZS tubes. Must of cost me a couple bucks to make two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMXQO5ATgiY will give you a good idea.

Fred's demo is what made me decide to not use tubes...

Trays in the bathroom was my first effort. Later I tried ziplock bags, put film in, add chems. close ziplock and have fun. Ziplocks do work.

Then I made a real darkroom.

[Eliverto]

This is my home made roller, from scrap wood. Fixed 4 polyurethane casters, and some pieces of carpet where the tank touches the base. Rather lousy, but works

[Luis-F-S]

Then I made a real darkroom.

#1! Unless you have a very very dark kitchen! L

[IanG]

I've developed a vast percentage of my 5x4 negatives either in my kitchen or bathroom. I've been using 2000 series Jobo tanks since 1976, bot take two reels of 6 sheets of film, I use inversion agitayion.

While living abroad I had no darkroom so the Kitchen or Bathroom was the only option, but in my previous house in the UK with no hot water in the darkroom it was easier to use the kitchen where I had ready access to hot water. Since moving 2 years ago I'm back to film processing in my new darkroom.

Ian

[Roger Thoms]

Fred's demo is what made me decide to not use tubes...

Care to elaborate, just curious, as I have processed thousands of sheets in BTZS tubes. Just processed some 4x5 today.

I have a combination of a blacked out closet and my kitchen. Load the film in the tubes and fill with water for a pre soak, and then replace the caps with chemistry filled ones in the closet. Then move to the kitchen and finish processing in daylight. Yes I un-cap the tubes and drop them in the stop bath tray in the daylight, and then remove the film and fix it in a tray in the daylight. Freaked me out when I saw Phil Davis do that in a workshop.

Lots of different methods, this is what works for me. One of these days I do hope to have a real darkroom.

Roger

[billie williams]

Combi-plan for me - all the way. It's so easy! And my tank doesn't drip at all. They are no longer manufactured but you can find them all the time either here or on flea-bay. Let me know if you have questions - I'd be happy to type to you about it.

[seezee]

I use a Combi-Plan, also, but I don't use it as a daylight tank — I find it fills & empties too slowly & I don't want to risk uneven development. But it's great in my darkened bathroom.

I do a modified 'dip & dunk' agitation, whereby I grasp the negative carrier by the film clip & gently move the carrier up and down, side to side, front to back, in a sort of 3-dimensional figure eight motion. But as long as you ensure the lid is snapped down tight, inversion works fine with no leaking. Just be sure you are tipping it along the narrow sides, not the wide sides, during inversion, or the surge may dislodge your film.

One more thing: I wound up removing the blue gaskets because I found my negs would often dislodge anyway. It seems the gap was a little too wide to hold them snugly, but removing the gaskets narrowed things nicely.

[Per Madsen]

I use the HP CombiPlan as a daylight tank with a pre-soak with water to avoid airbubbles and to give an even development.

I use Rodinal 1 to 100 so the development times are quite long (over 10 minutes):

I have two of them and essential spareparts for a third (filmclip and tank lid).