Tray processing B/W - time between shuffle? Amount of sheets?

[ryanmills]

I did my first tray processing last night using HC-110 and HP5. I realized that i'm not quite sure I understand when to shuffle. When i dev for 5 mins at 68 degrees should I be going thru the stack fully once every thirty seconds? Does that mean if I divide 30 by the amount of sheets I can just slowly go thru that pace non stop? For example, 4 sheets is about 7.5 seconds. So if I take one off the bottom averaging 7.5 seconds is that right? Or should I be taking a break after the first min. waiting 30 seconds or longer between each 30 second shuffle. I assume part of that is up to me, but is there an average I should start with?


Where/how would I find out how much sheets I can I run thru my dev tray before I need to mix a new batch. I looked over the official docs and must have missed something. I was using about 25ml and I developed 12 equally poor shots and based on what I read on covingtoninnovations.com/hc110/ that my dev should have died in the middle. I had more volume in my tray than I needed, I think im going to go down to 600ml so around 18ml of dev for B. Should I just dump new developer every 4-8 sheets or is that overkill?

[Peter Lewin]

1) Shuffling is continuous, you are constantly moving sheets at your roughly 7-8 second interval until the time is up.
2) Looking at Kodak's own spec sheet, they say 10 sheets of 4x5 per quart or liter of working solution at dil. B. If you are going to use 600ml of working solution, that would be 6 sheets. After that you either replenish (which I have never tried with HC-110) or mix a new batch of developer. Since, as you know from a previous post, I use "too much" working solution, I have never worried about capacity. At most I do 6 to 8 sheets in a batch, wash and hang them up to dry, and if I am going to do a second batch, I start over with fresh developer.

[ryanmills]

Perfect, that's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks sir.

[Jerry Bodine]

For future use, Kodak's website provides much info for HC-110, e.g., capacity / mixing up working solutions from either stock or from concentrate (also probably in the dev data sheet) :

Capacity: http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/j24/j24.pdf

[Paul Hoyt]

The rule of thumb for 4X5 sheet film and HC-110 is 6ml of the concentrated syrup will develop 4 sheets of 4X5 film [80 square inches]. To develop 12 sheets you would need a minimum of 18ml of the syrup. If you have diluted the concentate to make a stock solution [1+3], you will need 75ml of the stock solution to develop 12 negatives. Dilution B from concentrate for 12 negatives; 20 ml of syrup + 620ml water. Dilution B from "stock"; 75ml of stock solution + 525ml of water.

[Peter Lewin]

The rule of thumb for 4X5 sheet film and HC-110 is 6ml of the concentrated syrup will develop 4 sheets of 4X5 film [80 square inches]. To develop 12 sheets you would need a minimum of 18ml of the syrup. If you have diluted the concentate to make a stock solution [1+3], you will need 75ml of the stock solution to develop 12 negatives. Dilution B from concentrate for 12 negatives; 20 ml of syrup + 620ml water. Dilution B from "stock"; 75ml of stock solution + 525ml of water.
I find this approach rather confusing, first because you have to "scale up" the data to working solution amounts, and second because I don't think it matches Kodak's own numbers. If you reference Kodak's recommendations (use the link Jerry Bodine posted above) Kodak gives different capacities for tray and tank processing. For trays, which is what Ryan was asking about, Kodak says 10 sheets of 8x10 per gallon of working solution at dilution B. So that's equivalent to 40 sheets of 4x5 per gallon, or 10 sheets per quart (or liter, which is almost the same). The recommendations for tank processing allow twice the number of sheets, which I think is what your rule of thumb works out to. So in Ryan's tray development case, I think the rule of thumb would suggest too many sheets of 4x5 per volume of developer, although I may be screwing up my math.