Difference between Jobo 3010 vs. 2551

[brian steinberger]

I notice alot of people in here have the Jobo 3010 Expert sheet film drum. What are the advantages of this drum over say the Jobo 2551 which holds 2 reels of six 4x5 negs? There's a huge price difference. I'm looking to develop on a beseler motor base. Thanks!

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Brian,

With the Jobo Expert drums, the film goes into individual tubes within the drum which helps protect the film and provide even development.

The 3010 drum holds 2 sheets per tube for a total of 10 sheets while the 3006 drum holds one sheet per tube for a total of 6 sheets.

These drums work very well on a Beseler motor base or a Jobo manual base but of course were designed to be used on a Jobo processor.

Either of the Expert drums are great and can be found used easily these days. I use a 3010 on a Beseler base and it works fine.

A good friend of mine uses the smaller version of the 2551 tank on a Jobo manual roller and gets excellent results. So, any of them work fine with practice.

Hope that helps.

Eric

[Bjorn Nilsson]

One big difference is that it is much easier to load the 3000 series drums. You don't have to find the tiny slots in the dark. It's just a matter of finding the tube. (One trick is not to push the film all the way down until they are all in their respective tube. Then you push all of them down. If you don't understand this, just look at a picture of the drum and you'll get it.)
The 3000 drums are said to give the best results, but I don't think that the 2500 drums are bad either. I havn't had any visible problems with the negs developed in the 2500 drums. It is just more simple to use the 3010 or 3006 drum.

//Björn

[Jim Noel]

I have both styles of drums. In fact, I have three different sizes of Expert Drums. As far as I am concerned the only advantage is that they ae easier to load and can be purchased to ohandle film up to 8x10.

When developing 4x5 film I choose the drum by the number of films I have to develop, If more than one drum load I choose the 2500 series drum and put up to 3 reels, 18 sheets of film, in it.

I see no difference in development or development time.