It helps to practice a few times with the lights on using voided film and plain water, so you can see how much rough solution agitation versus smooth processing is actually going on. A good pre-wetting step is also important, prior to development.
It helps to practice a few times with the lights on using voided film and plain water, so you can see how much rough solution agitation versus smooth processing is actually going on. A good pre-wetting step is also important, prior to development.
Balazs,
Do those vertical bands correspond to the grooves on your tray?
If not, I would be willing to bet they are your scanner. My V800 does that. Here is a scan of a perfectly blank (unexposed and fixed out) sheet of 8x10 x-ray film from my scanner:
The rest of the light/dark areas on your scan look like chemical flow issues to me. I don't understand the moon surface texture thing you're seeing.
Appreciate the shoutout Greg, this online article I wrote for UnblinkingEye is much more up to date on how I manage the EMA technique of film processing https://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/RASS/rass.htmlOriginally Posted by Greg
Uneven development is almost always due to developer strength is too weak, in conjunction with infrequent agitation (that's the biggest culprit). Lastly, the first initial agitation needs to be fairly vigorous in nature.
Rather than turning the stack of film 90 or 180 degrees, turn the tray and leave the film in its position and simply agitate the same way followed after turning the tray, less chance of damage. Whatever you decide on do it the same way each time and forget about various suggestions. Consistency to a fault is the key to film photography !!Thank you both for your input, a lot of helpful tips from both sides, really.
Drew
I have nice big trays but with grooves instead of dimples, however it seems I need to rotate more frequently and the 90 degrees swishing the stack through the developer sounds interesting, I'll definitely give it a try. Also moving the neg around immediately after adding it to the developer sounds like a great idea.
I don't intend to overdo it with too many sheets at once, I would be more than happy with 3 or 4 at a time to shorten the time spent in the darkroom.
Doremus,
I used 4 litres of soup to give myself room get the bottom sheet out from the stack, but it may have been an overkill and a waste of chemistry. I bought my paterson trays as 11x14 but they're actually 12x16 ( or so it's written at the bottom ) and naturally they even bigger to accomodate bigger film. Might need smaller trays.. My thought was that the grooves of the tray eat up quite a bit of volume, reducing the useful depth to spearate the bottom sheet, although the grooves themselves do help. At the same time having to push through more volume means I have to do it quicker to keep up the pace and so increases the chance of surges, as you say. Is half an inch depth an overkill ?
I will try 2 litres and play around a bit with some already fixed and wasted film, trying to push film down with the very tips of my hands, and do the tickling bit in the middle. When you say rocking you mean you move the film slightly front-back left-right while pushing it down?
From now on I'll give the sheets a turn every time I shuffle through the stack.
Once again, thank you so much for the tips, I will report back with my findings.
Balazs
Good point, but I think I can see the streaks on the negative, although very faintly and I have to admit I might be seeing them even if they're not there sometimes. I'm not sure though as I recall having one perfect neg with a large area of very clear skies (zone 7) that had none of the above issues. That neg was brush processed as single, but even with the same process I can't seem to achieve the same results.Balazs,
Do those vertical bands correspond to the grooves on your tray?
If not, I would be willing to bet they are your scanner. My V800 does that. Here is a scan of a perfectly blank (unexposed and fixed out) sheet of 8x10 x-ray film from my scanner:
The rest of the light/dark areas on your scan look like chemical flow issues to me. I don't understand the moon surface texture thing you're seeing.
The moon surface texture is an old white wall I've photographed purely for testing purpose
Steve,
Thank you very much for your advice.
This was indeed quite diluted and although agitation was continuous it was shuffling so maybe it still wasn't enough, and the initial agitation probably wasn't too vigorous either.
I usually process sheets as singles in Pyrocat HD at 1+1+100 using brush development these days, but I struggle getting consistent results, so I thought I'd give a shuffling one more try, given that my results were inconsistent and the time spent doing one sheet at a time was significant. Maybe this change was me asking for trouble and I should instead stick to just one method.
After reading your article posted above, I understand my pyrocat hd processing method might be flawed because I try doing RA in trays. I had one difficult neg come out perfectly so far with this method and that was with brush development, but even using the same technique I can't seem to repeat the results. I often get acceptable results but the goal would be to get consistently perfect negatives.
Before settling on the brush method, I tried paterson tank with spiral for 2 sheets. I used these tanks with success for everything up to and including 4x5 sheets, but my 8x10 negs were riddled with surgemarks and underdeveloped areas. No matter how I adjusted my agitation or the setup, these were consistently near the bits that hold the film and also near the top and bottom of the spiral that are practically circular discs with holes. I even tried loading in dark with no centre column as I concluded it reduced developer flow greatly as I could hear big bubbles with an uneven flow inside the tank with the inversions.
This was the only tank I was able to get apart from jobo that I'm not interested in.
I then bought and tried the sp810 daylight tray doing one sheet at a time and I also couldn't get it to work no matter how carefully I agitated. I find this tray brilliant for pre soaking and removing the anti halation layer.
On the advice that it was probably too small at least for me to consistently get good results processing 8x10 film without surgemarks or washbacks from the sides I went for the large trays I now use. So far these were the least expensive and most useful addition.
I tried shuffling or processing singles with these and then settled with the brush method I have used for a while now as this is so far what got me closest to my goal, but my hands shake a bit and I suspect this can be a problem when one is touching slowly stroking a negative with a brush.
A bit frustrated but I'm determined to learn from my mistakes as well as listening to others.
I also discovered recently that I probably shouldn't just do RA for all negatives, at least not with negatives this big and I now understand I have to adjust my process to suit the neg more closely. I was probably being ignorant because up until going 8x10 I got away without much trouble.
When things go reasonably well, I find the results rather rewarding.
I'd like to thank everyone else as well who offered me their insight and shared valuable tips here.
Oh, and also Happy Holidays
Balazs
I believe this problem is because you are using too little developer which leads to unevenness when combined with rotating a stack of sheets. I suspect the developer is so dilute that it is exhausting unevenly between the sheets before the next rotation. If you insist on using Rodinal (which I dislike immensely) than use the recommended dilution of 1:50 or 1:25. If you are developing one or two sheets at a time, you do not need more than 1 liter of developer, so you are still using the same amount of Rodinal and not wasting developer needlessly.
I no longer develop 8x10 sheets in a stack. I will do two sheets at most, but prefer one at a time, for consistency sake. Once the sheet is in the developer, I do not lift it out of the tray until development is complete. Agitation is done by rocking the tray first in the vertical direction, then the horizontal, for five seconds in each direction, once a minute. I never, ever get uneven development marks.
I used to lift the sheets out of the developer to perform agitation, and I struggled to eliminate the hot bands I inevitably got on one (or two) sides as the developer ran off the edge. This is why I now avoid lifting the sheet out of the tray to agitate. Of course, if I do opt to do 2 at a time, this becomes necessary, and in this case, I lift the sheet out from under, swiftly and evenly, and plop it back down flat into the tray (totally avoiding letting developer run off to a corner) and gently press it back down. I'll say it again: if you allow the developer to run off the sheet during shuffling, you will encourage the formation of a "hot edge" on one or more sides where the developer activity gets a little kick from the increased physical action on the edge.
I don't think that would do anything to counteract the flow patterns created when shuffling and/or re-submerging the film in the solution, although it might do something to counteract the dead spots in the solution itself. However, the goal is not to make sure the developer gets evenly mixed, but rather that the film is evenly developed. Randomness in agitation is the key to even developing. Turning the film 90° or 180° makes sure that the same side doesn't always get the surge from the side of the tray when re-submerging and it helps drain the developer from the film randomly when shuffling.
Best,
Doremus
While I haven't done tray processing in years, in the years that I did, my goal was to always handle the film as little as humanly possible, thus turning the tray rather than the stack of film. Every one does things slightly differently, it's most important that one finds the most consistent method, and not deviate once success has been achieved.
Cheers, SS
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