Is Pre-Soak Needed with Small tanks?

[Bob Kerner]

I skipped the pre-soak on my first batch. No amount of pre-soaking would have fixed whatever I fouled up in the process.

[JohnN]

Standard 2 minute soak to bring roll tank up (or down) to temperature.

Take two rolls of the same film. Do a presoak with one; the other, no presoak. Print. See what the difference is.

[Brian Ellis]

I haven't read the rest of the thread, I assume there's the usual arguments about the benefits if any of presoaking. FWIW, I stopped pre-soaking anything - roll film, 4x5, 8x10, nothing - about 15 years ago and never saw any difference or had any problems compared to the days when I presoaked everything. I did briefly presoak when I was starting out with pyro because Gordon Hutchings book said to presoak. But after a while I decided to see what would happen if I didn't presoak so I tried it and nothing happened, everything looked just the same even with pyro. So I went back to no presoaking. As far as I'm concerned presoaking just adds an unnecessary 2-5 minutes of standing around in the darkroom. But I know some people swear by it.