I also consider tray development the straightest way, for that I use xtol 1:1 so it covers well the sheets without wasting developer (and one shot usage), I do development in darkness, then I move sheets to another tray with stop bath. Once sheets are in the stop bath for some 15 seconds you can open lights because development is stopped and later you can also fix also with lights open. By viewing the time fixer takes to clear the sheet you know how fresh fixer remains...
You can do that with 4x5 sized trays or use a 8x10 able tray to process 4 sheets at a time, in that case just use hot glue to place some sticks working as separators
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Attachment 172622
Of course if you want you can develop each of the 4 sheets with different time by dipping each particular sheet soon or later.
This would give you time to explore what daylight tank system you want (SP-445 looks nice), still that tray development is very flexible because you can process one sheet with N time and another one with N-2 time, because that I often use it, this is amazing ! Also you can process a TMX sheet at same time than an HP5 sheet because you may take off each sheet at the right time.
A problem with that is controlling times without throwing light on the sheets, I was using an old watch with phosphorescent clock hands.
A big improvement is using a "Doran" like "paper safe" as a tray, you can also glue the separator sticks there, and when you close the door you can open lights if you want.
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