Developed for 13x18 film 45 min with APH 09

[nehartmannn]

My son gave me some advice yesterday:

Develop a 13X18 Foma planfilm 100Iso for 45 min in APH 09 delutied 1:80....used a tank....
And with great succes.... Just agrigated 4 times in the start and let it stay for the rest of the time.....
Never had a so fine negative.....

Can anyone explain what is going on ????

[Ted Harris]

Hmmmmm .... you didn't tell us what temperature you used for the developer. 20°C would be normal and and at that temperature I develop with constant agitation for 6.5 minutes in my Jobo ATL 2300 using Rodinal 1:50. Adolux APH 09 is one of several Rodinal clones and a 1:80 dilution would be about equal to Rodinal at 1:100 which would then require a development time of 12 minutes in my machine. Less agitation and colder water and I can see the time going to 45 minutes ... sort of semi stand development (those that use this process swear by it). IMO you don't gain much, if anything, with this approch but if your results please you then go with it.

[Jim Noel]

I am not familiar with the developer, but the process sounds a lot like what we used to call "Total Development."
I worked in the darkroom of a medium sized photography store and we processed anywhere from 50 - 100 rolls of filme each day. All were developed together in a deep tank. After hanging the film on the rack and attaching a heavy clamp to the bottom, the film was lowered into the tank, agitated up and down about 30 seconds, and then left to develop overnight. Even though we were working with several brands and speeds of film, it was the rare negative which could not be printed rather easily.

[Jiri Vasina]

The R09 is a Rodinal clone.

The development is one to be called a stand development - it uses diluted to very diluted developer for much prolonged time. In the area of highlights, the developer is used up faster and then the development stops. On the other hand, in the dark parts, the development goes on longer. This serves mainly two things - first, it greatly emphasizes the edges and contours (called edge-effect). Second, it's useful for taming very high contrast scenes.

There are a lot of variants of this kind of development with quite a few names, like "stand development", "minimal agitation", "semi-stand development"... And there are even more ways to actually perform this development - like you did with some agitation in the beginning. You could also agitate once at the halfway point. You could agitate once every 5 or 10 minutes (that would be the semi-stand development). Or whatever you like and whatever works for you. And Rodinal (and some other developers like pyro) are most suited for these high dilutions/low agitation experiments. Also the dilutions can be varied, most used dilutions (for Rodinal/R09) are 1:100, 1:150, 1:200.

If you are more interested in learning stand development, try going to APUG, in the BW development section you'll find more than enough info. (Yes, there certainly is something in the past threads here to, but I'm more familiar with the history over at the other site).

[Jiri Vasina]

Ah, I can see you already asked also over at APUG. Do a search for one of the names above, and you'll find more...

[nehartmannn]

Jim... I think you gave some good explanation... Night over development: I will try that some time.....
Jiri...You enlighted me...of what is going on with what like to call 'long time development' ...thanks.... APUG did not gave any futher explanation up till now.....

erik

[Jiri Vasina]

erik, as with any search engine, it's important to phrase the search question correctly. Otherwise you end up with useless answers (or none at all). Also try searching for "edge effects"... By way of emphasizing the contours, it may result in greater apparent sharpness of the image too.

This thread over at APUG might be of interest to you, too...