Stand development in the fridge

[jumanji]

I'm about to experiment with this. Pyro HD 1:1.5:200, pre wash then put it in the fridge (likely 4-6 deg celsius), agitate twice a day (each 12 hours). Anyone tried this before may give me a starting point how many days should I leave it in the fridge? Film is Ultrafine 400 in 135.

[Cor]

My guess is that you'll produce a blank negative, most if not all developing agents are temperature sensitive, and already below 17-16degC or so, they will only have a fraction of their full activity..my guess there is a almost total stop at 4degC..have no access to my literature right now so I might be wrong..

Best,

Cor

[j.e.simmons]

Mortensen wrote about doing this. I believe he used a glycin developer. Let us know if you get anything useful.

[bigdog]

Why?

[jnantz]

make sure you take the bulb out.

[Nigel Smith]

won't the fridge motor coming on agitate it?

[koraks]

Mortensen wrote about doing this. I believe he used a glycin developer. Let us know if you get anything useful.

That was my initial thought as well. I've read some things about him and his development methods online recently; google should turn one or two things up. I don't think I came across specific developer recipes and development times. I do remember, however, reading about him leaving film in the developer for hours (put them in int he morning and take them out after lunch) or sometimes even days. This, as far as I know, was all at room temperature, and under his approach of 'exposing for the highlights and developing to completion'.

I agree with Cor that bringing down developer temperature to a few degrees above freezing will all but stall development. I'd guesstimate that you'd be looking at development times in the order of magnitude of a week. This introduces the issue of developer oxidation, which may (even at these temperatures) outpace the rate of development.

I wouldn't be surprised that after a period of experimentation, one would reach the conclusion that in order to make this work reliably, extensive adjustments to exposure as well as developer chemistry need to be made. Which poses the question that bigdog asked: why? And would it be worth the hassle?

In the toolbox of development methods, I wonder if there are benefits to be found that outweigh the inconvenience of such a long processing time, risks of uneven development and total failure due to inactive and/or oxidized developer chemistry. Not to mention emulsion defects resulting from leaving a fragile gelatin emulsion in a highly alkaline (depending on the developer used) environment for such an extended period of time.

[LabRat]

John is right, Mortensen did publish his method in one of his books...

Some chems become inactive at lowered temps... (Hydroquonine becomes inactive at about 63deg F, so that's why your cold night/cold tray prints have no contrast...)

Also, if you dig through the Kodak special formulas, they had a very cold weather formula... I remember that there was the addition of glycol to prevent freezing <0 degree...

But a highly diluted developer very cold sure will take a while...

Steve K

[jumanji]

The reason is simple: why not? It's fun, and I'm after some special effects, like very high acutance or strange tonality... due to the staining effect.
In my theory low temperature + high diluted developer is to slow down the oxidization process and prevent uneven development. Yes I worry about the developer become inactive, but this need an experiment anw.
Still waiting for someone who tried this before to chime in :rolleyes:

[Jim Noel]

I see no valid reason for putting the developer and film in the refrigerator. I have often used Mortensen's method of total development when called for. The best developer I know of for this is well used, 100+ sheets of 4x5, D-23. I could explain when and why it works, but I'll leave it to you to read Mortensen's books. It does not work well with fresh developer,or fast acting ones.

[jnantz]

The reason is simple: why not? It's fun, and I'm after some special effects, like very high acutance or strange tonality... due to the staining effect.
In my theory low temperature + high diluted developer is to slow down the oxidization process and prevent uneven development. Yes I worry about the developer become inactive, but this need an experiment anw.
Still waiting for someone who tried this before to chime in :rolleyes:

i think its a great idea :)

nigel mentioned a ligitimate concern, you might not want to call it stand development
if the motor turns on it will end up being "semi stand" development ;)

[koraks]

You're absolutely right and you should by no means feel discouraged by my inunformed response! Definitely go ahead and post your experiences here. After all, regardless if someone with experience chimes in, would it stop you one way or the other? I sure hope not ;)

[jumanji]

Yes I would try it anyway :D The roll film I intended to play with is not really important, but it's all portrait for a friend and I dont want to tell her to have a shooting again, so I will just develop it normally. I will experiment with Pyro HD and Mortensen's developer and post the result back here in future. Thanks all for chiming in.

[Neal Chaves]

Mortensen's book "On the Negative" is excellent. I'm very glad I saw and studied it it before being exposed to Adams, Minor White, Fred Picker, Phil Davis or other "gurus". Mortensen describes a very straight forward "ring around method" to obtain an optimum negative, and also how to "read" a previously processed negative.

Years ago I learned the method to find the correct developing time and EI for any film. The source was an article by William Mortensen. Mortensen wrote some excellent books and articles about basic sensitometry. The last time I did this test was when I abandoned Tri-X and switched to HP5+ due to cost about five years ago. I proceed as follows.

I set up my trays with my favorite developer HC110B (1:31). I pull out a sheet from the package in the dark. and then when the package is sealed again I turn on the room lights. This part of the test is done under the lights. I cut the sheet into five strips and mark them 1-5 by punching holes with a paper punch. Lets say the recommended time is 5:00. I want to see 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00 and 7:00, so I throw all the strips into the developer and agitate as usual until 3:00 when I move the No.1 strip over to the stop bath. Then I pull No.2 at 4:00, No.3 at 5:00, etc. I fix, wash and dry the strips as usual. What we are looking for is the best usable film DMax value. Obviously the film has been fully exposed! When strips dry lay down a page of news print on a table in good light. Find the strip through which the news print is barely visible. That's your developing time. Now to find the film speed.

Go outside in unchanging light conditions and expose five sheets and expose one at the manufacturers rating and then the other four at one half a stop and one stop less and one half a stop and one stop more. In the dark, develop them all together for your newly derived time. Contact print them together exposing and developing the paper for maximum usable paper DMax value. Pick out the best-looking contact print and you have your film speed.

Because my 7:00 negative looked the best on the first test, I did the test again with 7:00 as the central developing time and found that 8:00 was indeed too dense. This HP5+ time was the same as the as the developing time I had been using for Tri-X and film speed was also the same, EI400.

Many of the last generation of B&W gurus favored a development time of 5:00 for Tri-X and suggested an EI of 64-100. You can do the above test backwards, developing for 5:00 minutes and finding the film speed. I like 100. The difference between negatives exposed at 100 and developed for 5:00 is quite subtle. Both could be considered "normal" or N negatives. The 100 negative has slightly greater shadow and highlight detail that only a careful, knowledgeable viewer could detect. This slight improvement might not be worthwhile trading for two stops in the field. I do routinely rate HP5+ at 100 under powerful strobe light in the studio and it produces beautiful skin tones.

From here, if you are still with me, you can derive expansion and contraction schemes for both the 100 and 400 "normal negs". I do this by changing dilution rather than time. Make sure you have at least 1 oz. of the concentrated sauce for each 8X10 sheet or equivalent. For expansion I found that 3/4 oz. concentrate to 31 1/4 ozs. H20 yields an N-1 neg at a one stop loss in film speed and 1/2 oz. concentrate to 31 1/2 ozs. H20 yields an N-2 neg at a two stop loss in film speed. For contractions, 1 1/4 oz. of concentrate to 30 3/4 ozs. H20 yields an N+1 neg at a one stop gain in speed and 1 1/2 ozs. concentrate to 30 1/2 ozs. H20 produces an N+2 negative with a two stop gain in speed.

If you look at the chart of Tri-X film speed in Phil Davis' BTZS book you can easily pick out the film speed in HC110B 5:00 as EI 64.