I am fairly new to LF photography (5 yrs), but coming from a design background I sometimes look at things from a fresh point of view. I have tried many ways to process sheet film – always with a fatality that would spur me to move on to another method. I’ve used the method I will call Softube processing for almost 2 years now without so much as a single mishap – no scratches, surge marks, uneven development or any other defects. Here it is in a nutshell: I use plastic window screen, available at any local Lowes / Home Depot, cut with scissors into sheets slightly larger in one dimension than the sheet film and sewn into “tubes” on my wife’s sewing machine. Film is rolled up and inserted into the tube “emulsion in”. When the film is released, it pops open to form a sturdy but soft tube. The ends of the film are held apart ¼ “or so by the outward force and never touch. They can then be packed and squished into most any daylight roll-film processing tank In my case, 8-10 sheets of 5x7 fit nicely around the center fill column of a 15” deep Patterson roll film tank. Here are some of the advantages. Cost is nil, less than a cup of Starbucks. I made enough softubes in a few minutes to last a lifetime. The screen goes through a sewing machine just like fabric. The plastic screen does not absorb chemicals. The mesh allows solutions to flow freely to both sides of the film. I can use the most vigorous inversion agitation, then the film sits absolutely still (unlike tray and any type of rotational processing) until the next agitation cycle. With daylight processing I can check small temp changes with a probe thermometer and adjust time to compensate. I can also answer the phone or carry on a conversation. A couple of notes: I found that I needed to invent an “inserter tool” to load the film into softubes quickly and keep the sharp corners of the film from hanging up on the screen mesh. I use an empty, straight-sided pill bottle. Film is rolled up and one end is placed into the “inserter”. It is then pushed into the tube and the inserter pulled off. The time it just took to read that sentence is how long it takes for the loading process. I have two sizes of softubes for my 5x7. One for film rolled on the 5” axis and another for film rolled on the 7” axis. I stack the softubes 3 or 4 to a layer in different capacity 120 roll film tanks and keep them under the solutions with an empty 120 reel on top. I know this would work for 4x5 even better than for 5x7. I can’t speak for sizes larger than 5x7 as obviously the outward force exerted by film on its softube would decrease as the size of the film increases.
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