Semi Stand Question For Those With Experience

[IanBarber]

When developing with extended times (18-30 minutes) with say HC110 diluted to 1:119 with Minimal agitation at set intervals like 1 inversion every 5 minutes, apart from reducing the contrast in the highlights and maybe increasing shadow detail, what would one expect it to do to the mid tones ?

Reason I ask is that recently, I made an exposure of a church on 4x5, the highlights certainly looked as though they were not as bright and retained detail, the mid-tones however looked a little flat in contrast

[interneg]

There comes a point where any sort of extreme 'n-' development will be begin to flatten the midtones, no matter what agitation technique/ developer you use. If you're printing in the darkroom, unsharp masking is the only really effective answer, allowing you to develop for the midtones you prefer, while adjusting the highlights to taste afterwards. There's a whole lot more to register masking, but it is a vastly more powerful tool than the relatively simple techniques of n+ & n-. In BW work it's very much an extended technique & really only needs used if you've failed to solve the problem by other means.

If you're scanning, process fairly normally & get a scan done on a high end flatbed or drum scanner - denser highlights on BW will not be an issue for them.

[IanBarber]

There comes a point where any sort of extreme 'n-' development will be begin to flatten the midtones, no matter what agitation technique/ developer you use.

Thanks, this has confirmed my theory

[Michael Kadillak]

There comes a point where any sort of extreme 'n-' development will be begin to flatten the midtones, no matter what agitation technique/ developer you use. If you're printing in the darkroom, unsharp masking is the only really effective answer, allowing you to develop for the midtones you prefer, while adjusting the highlights to taste afterwards. There's a whole lot more to register masking, but it is a vastly more powerful tool than the relatively simple techniques of n+ & n-. In BW work it's very much an extended technique & really only needs used if you've failed to solve the problem by other means.

If you're scanning, process fairly normally & get a scan done on a high end flatbed or drum scanner - denser highlights on BW will not be an issue for them.

I respectfully disagree with this generic assessment that N- development destroys vibrant mid tones and that unsharp masking is the only answer to a vibrant expressive resulting print. Absolutely not the case at all and I have both seen and made the straight prints myself to the contrary simply and efficiently without jumping through the masking iterations.

Steve Sherman's RAD (reduced agitation development) including Semi Stand and Extreme Minimal Agitation using Pyrocat gets it done to the nines. Thankfully all of that masking time and effort can (and IMHO should) be spent more productively in the field making photographs. But that is just my observations as to alternatives. Sometimes photographers feel comfortable doing what they do and that is just fine with me. For the purpose of future readers I just wanted to provide a vibrant and expressive alternative that you can do your own research if you so choose.

[IanBarber]

Steve Sherman's RAD (reduced agitation development) including Semi Stand and Extreme Minimal Agitation using Pyrocat gets it done to the nines.

Thanks for the reply Michael.

This Pyrocat does seem to very well regarded, Steve Sherman also ppointed me to a vide where he compared HC110 and Pyro and I was amazed at the difference in sharpness, it was like chalk and cheese.

I am in 2 minds whether to bite the bullet and order his Premium Video but as I only scan and do not do any darkroom processing or printing, Steve was unable to confirm if the contents of the video would benefit my digital type workflow

[jose angel]

I have a batch of HC110 bottles, and started to use it. After a few films, I decided to return to my good old D76 processing which seem to me sharper and more appealing, so I can understand that HC110 compared to Pyrocat is like "chalk and cheese" (long ago I tried some homemade pyrogallol developers, and thought it was the best developing agent ever... but I don`t use it because its toxicity).

[Andrew O'Neill]

If you want to explore stand/semi-stand development, use Pyrocat-HD. I've tried MANY developers, and this one is the best.

[interneg]

I respectfully disagree with this generic assessment that N- development destroys vibrant mid tones and that unsharp masking is the only answer to a vibrant expressive resulting print. Absolutely not the case at all and I have both seen and made the straight prints myself to the contrary simply and efficiently without jumping through the masking iterations.

Steve Sherman's RAD (reduced agitation development) including Semi Stand and Extreme Minimal Agitation using Pyrocat gets it done to the nines. Thankfully all of that masking time and effort can (and IMHO should) be spent more productively in the field making photographs. But that is just my observations as to alternatives. Sometimes photographers feel comfortable doing what they do and that is just fine with me. For the purpose of future readers I just wanted to provide a vibrant and expressive alternative that you can do your own research if you so choose.

There are many routes to a nice print, it's all a question of how much time you've got to spend on it. USM's are relatively quick to do if you have to print a really awkward contrast range & everything easier is not playing along.

I also tend to cleave to the view that severely underdeveloping modern films is not a terribly great idea. Better to give an exposure keyed to the shadows & take 10-20% off the 0.55CI dev time & leave it at that.

[esearing]

Diluted HC110 works fine to separate mid tones when there is a low contrast scene and your details are situated between zones 4-7. It does ok at compressing highlights for scenes where highlights are in Zones 10 and 11 and doesn't do much at all to the mid tones in zones 5-7. With HC110 You can go too far timewise and lose highlight details, whereas Pyrocat takes much longer.

For me - Delta lost too much highlight detail when extending time. FP4 did much better.