Hi Tom. Thanks for sharing your development procedures. I should clarify my position; I too have had success with reduced agitation, and even stand development, but I don't consider Pyrocat HD a good developer for stand development, and have seen all manner of development defects with this developer when agitation is inadequate. Sandy King has related similar experience, and has warned against stand development with his developer, due to the high rate of failure.My results speak for themselves - a lot of other photographers obtain excellent results with minimum agitation techniques - and there are others who do not.
JayKing:
Unfortunately this method of development is fraught with dangers and in practice it will be found that some films, especially high-speed films, are poor candidates for this type of development. And even when the procedure works well for a particular roll of film there will often be one or more frames that are ruined because of an air-bubble, bromide drag, or one of a number of other development artifacts that can plague this method of development. For this reason it is essential to test your film thoroughly, and to always make two or more back-up shots of important scenes when using stand development.
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