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ic-racer
15-Feb-2007, 14:06
Now that I think Rodinal is available I am getting back to some experiments with rotary processing in Rodinal. The ideas of edge effects and agitation with Rodinal have been discussed in length, however, I have not seen negatives for myself to support any claims either way.

My setup involves a Jobo processor with temp control and lift and a Jobo tempering box.

I created a spread sheet that does the calculations for me. Basically the input data is

nominal Rodinal dilution: (ie 1:100)
ml of Rodinal per roll: (ie 10)
number of rolls: (ie 4)
Volume for processor for those rolls: (ie 470cc)
Time: (ie 12 min)

The output from the spread sheet includes:

Actual total volume of chemistry: (ie 3290cc)
Actual volume of Rodinal: (ie 40cc)
Actual dilution: (ie 1:98)
Number of bottles of developer: (ie 7)
Timing interval: (ie 1min 47sec)
Complete list of change times:

The spread sheet is pretty sophistocated in that it figures out how many changes of chemistry are required so that a total volume of dilute developer is seen by the film. It rounds it out to an exact volume based on the Jobo tank information on rotary tank capacity. Due to this rounding the final dilution is not quite 1:100, but the spread sheet lets you know what the exact dilution wound up being.

The spread sheet also does the timing math so there is a printout of the times as they would come up on the Graylab timer so I know when to dump each segment of developer.

I am just starting the process of testing the films but so far my initial feelings are
1) Rodinal gives good even development with rotary procesisng
2) The images are sharper than T-max developer
3) There is more grain than T-max developer.

Based on these positive results I am going to continue testing with pictures and Wejex strips.

Clueless Winddancing
15-Feb-2007, 16:09
I will be following your progress. Rinses, stop, and fixer details will be useful to know too. Are you using any "special" water?

ic-racer
15-Feb-2007, 17:01
I will be following your progress. Rinses, stop, and fixer details will be useful to know too. Are you using any "special" water?
Back in the 80s I used to dilute all my 'one shot' developers with distilled water. I got lazy and for the last 10 years have been using tap water. Probably depends on where one lives and the quality of the tap water.

I used Kodak 'indicator' stop bath for 20 years then found some bluish stains in water dripping from some processed prints and switched to glacial acetic acid. I wear the respirator mask I use for spray painting when opening the concentrated bottle and make up 5 gal. of less concentrated solution which I dilute just before using.

For fixer I have been using Ilford Hypam or Rapid fixer 1:4 (no hardener). I use 5 or 6 minutes. I honestly don't know how long to use this stuff but after some 'double the clearing time' tests I did a few years ago I settled for 5 or 6 minutes.

Due to my irregular schedule of being in the darkroom, everything needs to be in concentrated 'long lasting' form that is diluted just prior to use. I have lots of pipets, medical hypodermics of various sizes and small graduates for measuring the small quantities.

I started rotary processing B&W in 1987 and have been perfecting and upgrading the system since then. I know that some developer/film combinations are no good and if one uses them they are just beating thier head against the wall to persist. One can talk all they want about various reels (metal/plastic) and rotation speeds and directions, however, certain film/developer combinations are very happy irrespective of all this. Tmax/Tmax is a good example. I can't say the t-structure or tonal scale is why I use it. I have used this combo since 1980s because it gives even development even at the edges of 120 film in the Jobo plastic reels with rotary processing.

I have a renewed interest in Rodinal lately because I think it also is a 'good guy' when it comes to rotary processing.

Why change? Why look for new solutions to old problems? Because I honestly don't know how much longer the T-max developer and or film will be available.

ic-racer
15-Feb-2007, 17:20
Here is a screen shot of the Rodinal worksheet. It does all the calculations so I can concentrate on the 'controversial' variables like how many ml of solution required per roll and which dilution is 'best.'

ic-racer
15-Feb-2007, 17:56
Here are some film curves showing TMY's response to Rodinal and T-max developers. Cruious how the Rodinal curve takes a downward dip with the highlights while the T-max can take an upward dip (though it shows up a little farther up the shoulder than indicated here).

BTW I use a Wejex sensitometer (that I restored and converted to close to 5500K with some filters) and a Tobias densitometer.

I bought these items recently for one reason: uncertainty in film availability.

It works like this
1) spend 20 or so years getting good photographs and finding good developer/film/development time/exposure data through trial and error.
2) worry about one's favorite materials becoming extinct
3) buy sensitometer and densitometer and 'reverse engineer' curves from favorite combinations
4) use this information to test new materials so one does not have to spend another 20 years of trial and error with the new materials

So, here is an example of comparing a 'known' to an 'unknown'

I have used the T-max developer at 5.5 to 6 minutes for many years and it works well with my enlarger/enlarging lens/printing paper combination.

My first test with the Rodinal and a time I guessed at (11 minutes) shows less contrast than what I am used to. So i'll bump up the time a little for the next test.

(The X-axis says "Wejex Exposure" but it is supposed to be the inverse of that. The X-axis numbers are the transmission densities of the Wejex's step wege. The actual 'exposure' would be the inverse of this)

ic-racer
20-Feb-2007, 13:25
Experimentation held up a while as I ran out of my Rodinal. I am waiting for two large bottles from Freestyle.

When I had started thinking about using the Rodinal again I thought I needed to go back to a conventional grain film. I am finding that the T-max films seem to work well (that is they have the added sharpness I am looking for). This is good because I already have all my exposure data for T-max films.

Another 'introductory' point is that I have gotten so used to using the 'sharpen' image transformation in Photoshop to make up for the crummy lens on my digital point and shoot that I wanted to use the 'edge effect' of Rodinal with my Horseman lenses to do the same thing. Years ago while at the NIH I wrote a image processing program (based somewhat on the pre-existing "NIH Image" (now antique) Macintosh program). I wrote the code for the sharpen and blur filters and they act just like the chemical edge effects caused by Rodinal.

Having been a Rolleiflex user for 20 or so years I am used to the contrast and sharpness of the Zeiss lenses. Now that I have a Horseman VH-R with 8 of the original lenes I can tell that they do not have the same contrast or sharpness. Is this bad? NO! These are awesome lenses, I just want to fine tune my film processing to get more illusion of sharpness.

I am very realistic about this. There is no way I expect my 90mm Horseman lens with it's 150mm coverage to be as sharp as my 80mm Zeiss Planar. Because I am shooting 6x9, it does not have to be as sharp because for the same size print, the magnification is less.

ic-racer
24-Feb-2007, 16:14
Here is the Jobo tempering box in action. The tempering box holds all the dilute developer. Depending on the concentration and the number of rolls to process there would be from 4 to 10 bottles or changes of developer.

The Rodinal is carefully measured into each bottle with the correct amount of tap water.

The Jobo processor holds the rest of the chemistry in its 6 bottles as follows:

Bottle 1: Developer (not used when processing Rodinal)
Bottle 2: Acetic acid
Bottle 3: Ammonia thiosulfate fixer
Bottle 4: Water (prewash for the Permawash)
Bottle 5: Permawash
Bottle 6: one liter of water to flush the lift

ic-racer
24-Feb-2007, 16:35
Originally I was looking for an old beat up sensitometer so that I could modify it to accept a xenon flash and some ND filters.

The Wejex that I wound up getting from e-bay was actually quite nice. Too nice to tear apart and modify. Inside the box the mechanism was perfect and had no signs of being tampered.
I took it all apart and cleaned and checked everything. While apart I was able to measure each step of the step-wedge with my densitometer. This gave me exact numbers for my x-axis of the H-D curves. This also was nice because I used the same densitometer I will be using to check the film.

My Wejex came with a filter drawer, and I put an 80A filter in there.

On the bottom there are two sockets for the probes of an AC voltmeter to kind of calibrate the light intensity with the built in variable resistor. Before doing test strips I check the voltage to see if there is any drift. I have it set at about 5.5 AC volts. Obviously aging changes in the bulb are not accounted for. (I'm not trying to duplicate ISO standard here, I'm more interested in the slope of the H-D curves rather than the displacement of the curves along the X-axis.)

ic-racer
24-Feb-2007, 17:11
Incidentally, when looking for a sensitometer I inquired about the Agfa sensitometer (http://www.agfa.com/docs/sp/aerial/avisense2000_2004-06-15_en.pdf) and got this response:

"The price of the Avisense 2000 is $26,801.90 for the basic sensitometer including one filter insert. With this filter insert the daylight flash of 1/1000 sec is generating a light quantum of 1 Lxs or 1mcs.
Additional filters are $219.29 ea."

Wow!

Anyway I paid about $100 for my Wejex on ebay.

ic-racer
3-Mar-2007, 05:33
I was able to process 6 rolls of 120 in dilute Rodinal (about 98:1) in the 1500 series tanks. All the film came out OK except one roll which had greater density on one edge. Unfortunatly I don't know where in the tank this roll had been placed (ie near the filling end, or near the middle, etc). I was able to make a good print from this roll but it required burning in the right hand edge of the print. Since the other rolls were OK I will continue onward. I have not really sat down with the loupe and the negatives to check for sarpness between the tmy in Rodinal vs the tmy in T-max developer.

Clueless Winddancing
10-Mar-2007, 22:34
Please explain the fancy (to me) pipette. Where, who, what, and how much? TIA Nice detailed images.

ic-racer
12-Mar-2007, 21:29
Please explain the fancy (to me) pipette. Where, who, what, and how much? TIA Nice detailed images.

The pipette is called a Mohr type and I have the 10ml and 2 ml in glass and some disposable 1 ml also. I got the glass pipette and rubber bulb from a scientific supply company many years ago. I had been thinking about getting a spare, in case of a break. I found this link but have not purchased from them. They have the Mohr pipette and the rubber bulb.

http://www.pelletlab.com/lab_supplies_pipettes.htm

$3.55 for the glass 10cc Mohr pipette. I remember paying much more, this seems like a really good deal. The rubber bulb is $9.95

ic-racer
23-Mar-2007, 08:02
I have done about 20 or so rolls of film and only have had one roll that had uneven development on one edge. Perhaps it was not a processing error, and something else caused it. I was able to print images from the roll OK but it was tedious burning in the Right edge of the frame to get it too look like it was not burned in.

So I have used TMX and TMY in both 120 and 35mm all with the Jobo Plastic reels, and 1500 series tanks. Doing up to eight 35mm rolls at a time with nominal 1:100 Rodinal dilution. Overall there has been excellent evenness of development.

I know from experience and common sense that a single 12" 35mm sensitometer test strip processed solo will have much more density than the same sensitometer exposure included on a 12" segment of an exposed whole 36 exposure roll.

What I also noticed was less density (less slope) of the sensitometer exposure when eight 36 exposure rolls are processed vs a single 36 exposure roll. Since the amount of Rodial per roll does not change (always 10cc per roll) I think it is the cumulative time to fill and empty the tank that leads to the discrepency.

A single roll uses 140ml which empties and fills quite quickly. Processing 8 rolls requires 900ml and over the course of about 7 or 8 changes of developer the fill/empty time adds up. I have been just letting the Graylab timer just run as I fill and empty. I think I will keep doing it this way and just increase my total development time and re-check the sensitometer strips because I almost NEVER process 1 or 2 rolls at a time. I keep all the film frozen and when I get 8 or 10 rolls shot I get out the processor and spend a day just processing film.

ic-racer
23-Mar-2007, 08:11
I know this is the "Large Format" forum but one of the reasons I am interested in eveness of development is that I want to start processing 4x5s in the plastic reels, the theory being that if I have optimized 120 film processing to minimize or eliminate excess density at the edges etc, the 4x5 film may respond well also.

I know the "expert" drums are supposed to be better but they hold less film and are very expensive. The goal is to cram as many 4x5s into the 2400 series reels as possible and still get excellent processing. If they don't come out perfect I will have to go to the expert drum.

Ted Harris
23-Mar-2007, 09:11
I gave up on the smaller drums years ago. Just not worthe the time it took me to load them and the possibility of edge issues.

BTW, I have been developing B&W in Rodinal for some 30+ years. Currently I use an ATL 2300. My standard processing for Acros 100 rated at 100 is 20 degrees C. for 6 minutes and 10 seconds with 25 rotations per minute.

ic-racer
24-Mar-2007, 07:12
I gave up on the smaller drums years ago. Just not worthe the time it took me to load them and the possibility of edge issues.

BTW, I have been developing B&W in Rodinal for some 30+ years. Currently I use an ATL 2300. My standard processing for Acros 100 rated at 100 is 20 degrees C. for 6 minutes and 10 seconds with 25 rotations per minute.


I have never felt it was a problem to have TOO much Jobo equipment, so I will probably end up with a 2500 drum and an expert drum.

BTW: How does one WASH the negatives when using the expert drum? I suspect they need to be removed from the drum to make shure any residual is removed from the back side of the negative. So I might need some kind of sheet film washer?

Ted Harris
24-Mar-2007, 12:35
Since you have space for six processes I wash the film three times after fixing it in the drom and that works fine. If you want to you can go the next step and use some sort of an archival washer although a tray with a hose attached works fine too.

Brian C. Miller
25-Mar-2007, 19:40
BTW: How does one WASH the negatives when using the expert drum?
I do it by simply filling the drum, rotating it a while, and then changing the water. Repeat as necessary. I fill up the drum so its about half-full, and then listen to the KA-SHLOOSH-KA-SHLOOSH-KA-SHLOOSH sound it makes.

ic-racer
26-Mar-2007, 09:07
After convincing myself that it is POSSIBLE to rotary process the T-max films in dilute Rodinal with very even development, I should commnet on the pictoral quality of the negatives (6x9cm and 6x6cm).

I am very pleased with the tonal scale, it is a change from the T-max I am used to. I printed quite a few negatives of snow scenes and the tonal scale was unique. I suspect this may be from the little dip near the shoulder on the film curve. The snow, in some scenes, almost looked like chrome when the negatives were printed to show density in the snow. I suspect the actual exposure would dictate where the dip was having its effect on the scene. I don't have sensitometric data of my snow scenes to say if the snow highlights or snow textures, or which part of the snow was falling on the dip in the characteristic curve. Anyway the pictures look great, I like the look.

In terms of sharpness, there is no question there is a precieved increase in sharpness (just by comparing negatives side by side with an 8x loupe) I don't get into film resolution tests. If it "looks sharper" to me then it "looks sharper." Thats all I can say. It looks sharper, I can see a difference.

In terms of 'edge effects' I will say, I don't know. First I want to define what I mean by 'edge effects' because I may not be seeing the right thing.

I have never actually SEEN an actual photograph by Faye Godwin, however, I love the reproductions in her book "Land." The reporoductions in this book have a special quality (that I don't see as much in her later books). All the little blades of grass seem to stand out with exceptional razor sharp detail; more than I would expect from just the optical properties of her Zeiss lenses. I have used those same Zeiss lenses (probably 40, 50, 80 and 120?) for years and my grass does not look like that with the Tmax dev/Tmax film combo. (Of course the grass in England may be different than the grass in Ohio :))

The repoductions of Godwins pictures have a great "Sense of Sharpness" that I want to duplicate. I, unfortunatly, don't know anything about how she processed her film (I need to explore this thread though http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=18258&highlight=godwin) but I have read Barry Thorton's book "Edge of Darkness..." and comparing his annotated photographs to those in Godwin's book I came to the conclusion that edge effects are why Godwin's work has that great look. After reading all Thorton has to say about developers, it seems that good old Rodinal can do just about the same thing as all those developers that need to be mixed from powder (dilute Perceptol, DiXactol, etc).

Now I am probably getting back to the argument that I don't want to get into: Edge effects with Rodinal, are they from intra-emulsion diffusion or extra-emulsion diffusion or both? Do you need to do stand deveopment or will rotary give the same effect?

I guess, without wanting to neccessarily be in this position, I can make a conclusion about the above statements by just 'stand developing' a few rolls and giving the negatives the eyeball test with the loupe. I mean, if "I CANT SEE A DIFFERENCE" then there is no difference that matters to me.

Jac@stafford.net
10-May-2016, 15:04
[... snip excellent article ...] In terms of sharpness, there is no question there is a precieved increase in sharpness (just by comparing negatives side by side with an 8x loupe) I don't get into film resolution tests. If it "looks sharper" to me then it "looks sharper." Thats all I can say. It looks sharper, I can see a difference.

In terms of 'edge effects' I will say, I don't know. First I want to define what I mean by 'edge effects' because I may not be seeing the right thing. [... snip more good stuff ...] Barry Thorton's book "Edge of Darkness..." and comparing his annotated photographs to those in Godwin's book I came to the conclusion that edge effects [...]

I am involved by the phenomena of acutance. You might be referring to page 24 of Barry Thornton's Edge of Darkness, which is quite good and if I were not so skeptical of web-presented images I would offer my own images.

I think we are seeing the kind of effect which causes grain clusters to empathize abrupt, in-focus detail; not real edge-effect as I imagine. We remain, I think, on the same quest.

Thanks for the engaging post.
--
Jac

ic-racer
29-Dec-2017, 19:57
173170173171

The pictures for this thread are long gone. I found some of them on my hard drive.

This is the tempering bath for the dilute Rodinal, divided between 5 or 6 liter bottles.

ic-racer
29-Dec-2017, 19:58
173172
This is a screen shot of the worksheet to calculate the processing volumes:

Jimi
30-Dec-2017, 08:04
Nice thread - do I understand it correctly that you got sharp(er) negatives using rotary processing? T-grain film and Rodinal is an interesting combination - I've only did some few Tmax films in Rodinal and never got around to really nail it down.

Sorry if I am opening the ol' can o' worms ...

faberryman
30-Dec-2017, 08:32
Have you considered Ilford DDX. It is their recommended developer for Delta (tabular grain) films. It might be a good replacement for TMax developer. It seems that by choosing Rodinal you are going in completely the opposite direction.

ic-racer
30-Dec-2017, 09:11
Nice thread - do I understand it correctly that you got sharp(er) negatives using rotary processing? T-grain film and Rodinal is an interesting combination - I've only did some few Tmax films in Rodinal and never got around to really nail it down.

Sorry if I am opening the ol' can o' worms ...

The thing that got me re-interested in this is Steve Sherman's work looks like the film curve is altered in an aesthetic way. The sharpness issue is probably of less concern with large format and more of a discussion with small format.

So, the question to answer for myself is how very dilute developer affects 8x10 sheet film in this process and how that might be different or similar to what Steve Sherman has posted with is developing tubes.

Again, this is a really old thread and the pictures are gone, but I don't think that I ever checked the resulting film curves with my senitometric equipment.

Greg
30-Dec-2017, 14:52
I'd like to pass on some books that might be if interest to members who have followed this thread:

PHOTOGRAPHIC DENSITOMETRY the study of tone reproduction by Hollis Todd and Richard Zakia. Morgan & Morgan. Studied under Hollis when I was at RIT. A classic.

DEVELOPING by C I Jacobson & R E Jacobson. Focal Press. Another classic covering probably everything you ever wanted to know about developing film

The Photographic Negative by W H Burbank 1888 reprinted by Lindsay Publications. Lot of historical info on developing.

EDGE OF DARKNESS by Barry Thornton. Amphoto Books "The art, craft, and power of the high-definition monochrome photography"

chapter on Formulae for Colour and Black and White Processing from the British Journal of Photography Annual 1972 great source of info. Also in the 1960s, tThe British Journal of Photography published a 7 part series of articles titled Notes on Present Day Monochromatic Emulsions and their Development. The British Journal of Photography has been digitized. The digital archive is currently available to colleges, universities and institutional subscribers via Proquest.

Perhaps other forum members can add on other reference books on Developing.

Greg
6-Jan-2018, 11:02
I am involved by the phenomena of acutance. You might be referring to page 24 of Barry Thornton's Edge of Darkness, which is quite good and if I were not so skeptical of web-presented images I would offer my own images.

I think we are seeing the kind of effect which causes grain clusters to empathize abrupt, in-focus detail; not real edge-effect as I imagine. We remain, I think, on the same quest.

Thanks for the engaging post.
--
Jac

In my copy of the book picture 4 is definitely looks to be more sharper the Picture 5, but Picture 4 looks like it was printed on a grade harder paper. Since he states that both negatives were printed with the same settings, I think the difference has more to do with Picture 4's negative's higher gamma. In any case this thread encouraged me to pick up the Edge of Darkness and read it once again... thanks