LF beginner needs processing advice (BTZS tubes)

[Jim Rice]

Silly Walter. ;-)

[J_Tardiff]

Wow, thanks guys, truly a wealth of info and experience weighing in on my concerns.

I actually went ahead and bought a set of BTZS tubes, though the Unicolor approach remains high on my list -- certainly wouldn't be expensive to give it a go at some point once I was happy with my times and conditions.

The ability to develop a workflow where I could modulate my developing via changing N in a single batch is intuitively pleasing (I'm a bench scientist in "real life") so the flexibility of the tubes appealed to me. Mark_S, I like your approach, can you share some details as a starting point?

I very much appreciate the developer-specific input, I had been concerned about exhausting hc-110 (and any suggested dilutions are appreciated). I am also very pleased to see that folks have used so many developers in this system as I had been toying with moving beyond hc-110. I feel much better about the presoak question as well-- , I was pretty concerned about that one.

My darkroom isn't miniscule, but it's in the attic with a sloping roof and a very old antique bathtub -- with a big piece of plywood I have plenty of working space, but the sloped roof makes it a bit "dangerous" to my head in complete darkness. I just took delivery of an old Omega D2V to refurb and use, this monster may finally push my husband to build me a proper darkroom in the basement!


One of the interesting aspects of LF (IMO) is that it seems like I could *read* about it forever. It's like when I used to train junior doctors to perform procedures -- some would show up having read everything in the known universe about an approach and then hesitate endlessly about applying their knowledge, while others would dive right in . I usually fall in the middle -- but 2 weeks ago decided to just buy a camera, decide on an initial developing choice and get to it.

I can see that I have found the right place to get help -- a virtual beer to all!

best,

JT

[jonsmith]

I tried many different methods (8x10) to process my sheets, and always got bad uniformity. Tray, dip & dunk tank, large drum, etc. Finally I tried a small drum (actually one of those stainless steel tanks) that, when the film is rolled up, leaves the ends nearly touching. That's important because it's the change in shape that leads to the poor uniformity at the edges. Once in the drum the shape is pretty much the same all around.

I bought some of the mesh that is made for drawer liner, I use it as a backing. I slide the rolled sheet with mesh backing into the tank, then process with a roller base. Great uniformity, no scratches, no disasters, couldn't be better.

I do use a pre-soak, I think it helps.