This will be a long post…and perhaps a bit controversial or at least a bit provocative and “feather-ruffling” - so please bear with me…or don’t!
Years ago…I spoke with Gordon Hutchings (The Book of Pyro author), who went on at length about the advantages of tray-processing a single negative at a time. (Gordon also mentions this in his Pyro books). My problem with this approach was that it would just take too long to do all of my films this way…particularly after returning from an outing where I may have exposed a large number of films.
But then by some miracle the lightbulb lit…and I came up with using a single, very large tray, within which sit a number of smaller trays - as you will see in the photo below:
(Note in the photo that there are a number of 8x10 trays, with the first being placed before a 20x24 tray (within which sit six 5x7 trays), and the remaining five 8x10 trays being placed after the 20x24 tray).
The way this works: I place six (4x5 or 5x7) negatives, face up, into the first (8x10) tray, which is a presoak to which I’ve added a bit of photo-flo. After three minutes of very gentle shuffling, all the negatives go, one by one (again, face-up) into their own smaller (5x7) trays, which are themselves arrayed in one large (20x24) tray.
After the transfer is complete, I then pick up the entire large tray and rock it around gently for one minute, with the remaining agitation cycles being timed depending upon my desired contrast and density ranges.
Furthermore, I may take this a step further and give one or more of the little trays its own specific agitation cycle, if that or those particular negatives need this. Keeping track of those negatives is usually a matter of carefully notching a corner as these films come out of their holders.
Once the developing stage is complete, all the films get transferred (one by one, in the same order as they’d been placed in the developer) into the first of three water bath trays…but this time face down…as without the added protection of the photo-flo, the films are a bit more vulnerable to scratching, regardless of whatever added protection might exist from the degree of emulsion hardening which may have occurred from one of my staining/hardening (pyro or pyrocat) developers.
After shuffling through the three water baths (with one complete top to bottom shuffle in each tray), the negatives go into the fixing bath (TF-4), and get gently shuffled there (again, face down) for either five minutes (for “traditional” film), or seven minutes (for t-grained films) - and following this the films are washed for a total of fifteen minutes prior to photo-flowing and hanging in the drying cabinet.
The thing about giving each negative its own developing tray has some real advantages. First among these, at least from my point of view, is that the agitation cycles are much more accurate, defined, and controllable. Think about this…if you are shuffling several negatives in one developing tray, with the idea that by going through the pile in timed cycles - do you think this equates to any single negative in that pile being agitated but once during that cycle…and that by adjusting the timing and/or shuffling speed of these cycles, you’ve accurately controlled the actual agitation intervals for each negative? Hardly. What is really happening in that pile is that all of the negatives are, to some degree (so long as you are shuffling) always in motion.
Furthermore, thinking that you can work around this by simply shuffling faster to achieve a longer “quiet interval” can be very risky in that this will increase the potential of scratching one or more negatives, and can also build up contrast needlessly. Also, when the pile of film is “quiet” in the developing tray, do you think that there is enough space above the emulsion side of the closely packed films to allow for a truly meaningful developer exchange and local exhaustion scenario? Sometimes I wonder about this.
At any rate…finally, keep in mind that prior to starting in with the above processing scenario, I did a number of “lights-on” tests with sacrificial films and developer - to make sure that the films were each being agitated equally in the developer…and that there were no problems with films either sticking to the trays or floating upwards, noting that the 10oz of developer per tray was more than enough to keep the films happy.
Jeesh…I guess I’m really sticking my neck out here! And yes…I do realize full well that many of you get stupendous results by shuffling your negatives through your developing trays (as I did before this) - so maybe I’ll just be quiet for now and go back outside to rake a few more leaves! Bye!
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