Question: Tray Lifespan of Rodinal

[dwross]

Questions for Rodinal gurus:

I used Rodinal years ago, but for reasons I can't for the life of me remember, I didn't use it for long. I'm giving it another go right now (Adox Adonal) and wondering how long it lasts, diluted, in a covered tray. I made up enough yesterday to develop 6.5 x 8.5 film and I couldn't bring myself to throw it away and make new to test one sheet of film today. I just ran the sheet through the old stuff and the results seem consistent with yesterday when it was fresh. How long before I'm pushing my luck? Also, what's the straight scoop on Rodinal and agitation? I'm really impressed by the look of the negatives coming out of the Rodinal. The stuff seems worthy of the hype.

Apologies if this has been covered to death. I've never paid much attention to Rodinal threads and the search machine here was kinda overwhelmingly unhelpful (which is actually OK by me -- prefer people to search engines.)

Thanks,
d

[Leigh]

Rodinal is a one-shot developer, designed to be mixed right before use and discarded immediately after.

It says that in the instructions.

Lifespan in a tray might be an hour or two.
I've never tried that, even though Rodinal has been my developer of choice for over 50 years.

But the undiluted concentrate in the original bottle lasts for decades, even if partially used.

- Leigh

[dwross]

Thanks! My bottle only came with the dilution recommendation and toxicity warnings. Of course, I suppose I could have found a data sheet somewhere on the internet.

Well, decades is good. One shot -- not so much. I used it at a higher concentration than recommended. Maybe that helped its tray life (??) Ah, the puzzles. Gotta love 'em. Again, thanks for sharing your long experience with Rodinal. I can certainly understand your choice. I really am charmed by the results I'm getting.

d

[Leigh]

There are lots of datasheets available on the i'net. I have most of them from 1996 through 2004.

Here's a link to the APX product page: http://www.agfaphoto.com/appc/conten...9251e662c55f64
That page defaults to German. Click en in the upper right for the English version.

And here's the current APX datasheet, including processing recommendations using Rodinal:
http://www.agfaphoto.com/appc/_uploa...et_F_PF_E4.pdf

You can find the original Rodinal instruction sheet online easily.

Hope you like the APX/Rodinal combination as much as I do.

- Leigh

[dupont07]

I used to use Rodinal to develop, I like it a lot but now I could not find it anywhere. Where do you buy rodinal? Tks

[Leigh]

It's still available, although not under the Rodinal name here in the US due to trademark problems.

Current products are called Adinol (from Adox) or RO9 (I don't know whether that's a zero or a letter O).
Those are the same as Rodinal (which has undergone slight formula changes over the years).

- Leigh

[dwross]

Leigh,
Thank you for the links. Excellent info.

dupont,
I ordered my Adonal (advertised as "Produced according to the Rodinal original formula") from Freestyle. They have excellent service.

d

[Helen Bach]

I guess that you already know that Evelyn Hofer used Rodinal in a tray, but in case you don't, here's my summary of her method (based on her longer description in Portrait: Theory).

She used it with Tri-X rated at 320, with a 1+50 dilution. She seems to have used it one-shot, making up just enough for the number of sheets she was going to process so that she achieved consistency. (I guess that the usual recommendation for minimum amount of concentrate per sheet would apply). She mentions counting the sheets in to the tray, emulsion side down, then cycling through them just once. After that she seems to have left them alone for five minutes, if I have interpreted her correctly, until checking with a deep green safelight for just a second to judge how much more they needed.

Good luck,
Helen

[Leigh]

Regarding developer quantity...

The datasheet says 10ml per roll (meaning one 135-36 or 120 roll, one 8x10 sheet , or four 4x5 sheets).

To be more accurate, it says that one 500ml bottle will develop 50 rolls (duhhh).

- Leigh

[Kevin Crisp]

My experience with the Agfa version was quite different on shelf life. If the color changed from deep purple to medium brown, I found it had lost a great deal of potency. This was in an opened bottle in the fridge.