Use of X-ray film: technical discussion with example images

[RHITMrB]

One of the first few shots through my 8x10, on Fuji HR-U a friend gave me. I think I'll be sticking to HP5+ despite the cost.

[Jim Noel]

Beautiful, Sergei!!

[Andrew O'Neill]

One of the first few shots through my 8x10, on Fuji HR-U a friend gave me. I think I'll be sticking to HP5+ despite the cost.

Pretty hard to beat HP5! Nice image, even with the nasty scratches.

[Fr. Mark]

I'm going to humbly revise my comment about Rodinal lasting to eternity. I made a bunch of batches a year ago. I've been using one 800 ml bottle 50-100 mL's at a time at 4-10 week intervals and only had 50-100mL's in bottle, the rest was air. I had two sheets of 8x10 xray come out super thin 1:100 after 20 minutes, and I thought it could be an exposure error. One is a really nice photo of my wife. Then I tried to develop a 4x5 film that I know was 4-5 stops over exposed because I forgot to stop down. It came out super thin. At that point I opened a new lightly colored bottle that'd been tightly closed and tried it with some 4x5's and they came out much more like what I thought I should expect at 1:100 10 min 65 deg.

Point is yes, it gets dark with exposure to air, dramatically so, and still works, but there is a limit.

Given my highly sporadic darkroom time at this point in my life I either need to get an argon cylinder and purge everything everytime I open a bottle of photo chemicals (even powders for the ocd folks) or I need to make up one shot developers from dry chemicals.

I really wish the big portrait of my wife came out better. Maybe with grade 5 paper...

[Randy]

Don't know about Rodinal, but HC-110 concentrate will last for years after being opened. When I wasn't doing much processing I had a partial bottle probably last 5-6 years...never had to compensate development times when ever I mixed up a batch of working solution.

[StoneNYC]

Don't know about Rodinal, but HC-110 concentrate will last for years after being opened. When I wasn't doing much processing I had a partial bottle probably last 5-6 years...never had to compensate development times when ever I mixed up a batch of working solution.

They are practically the same, Rodinal might actually last longer than HC-110 but they are both pretty much impervious to time.

I cracked the lid on my Rodinal once and the bottle sat unused and literally open to the air in my basement for 6 months and still worked fine to the last drop.

Crystallization is normal with Rodinal and you just shake it a bit and the crystals re-mix with the solution.

I can't speak for home made Rodinal I'm talking the official stuff by AGFA/ADOX that's the official formula. The R09 stuff is similar but I still stick to the official ADOX Rodinal (Adonal for you non-USA residence) as it's the latest AGFA formula before they shut down.

There's tons of info on it, anyway, to each their own.

[Corran]

I usually toss my Rodinal when the bottle gets down to 5% or so and the crystals are getting really bad.

[StoneNYC]

I usually toss my Rodinal when the bottle gets down to 5% or so and the crystals are getting really bad.

The more crystals the sharper yet less grainy my images seem to be, I now always dump the new stock into the crystals of the old stock, my images keep getting better and better

Not joking, I compared development of old 5% full bottle to a full new one, the new clear bottle came out grainy and soft (I mean in terms of close magnification) and the old bottle was much sharper, this test came because I couldn't figure out why my new images weren't as sharp as the old ones till I made the correlation that I had started a fresh bottle, I then compared a few different bottles of Rodinal I had including an unopened actual AGFA Rodinal bottle, my results tell me that Rodinal is like a fine wine and gets better with age, also I like my wine like my Rodinal, dark and strong

Just don't mistake one for the other!!

[Corran]

For that to be true something has to be changing in the chemical composition (or it's a placebo). But you may be seeing something. After cracking open a new bottle (as I reported in that Rodinal thread months ago) the fresh solution acted totally differently than what I was used to. For me that's a big red flag and I am definitely moving away from Rodinal. Acufine seems to be better in every way anyway, and some of the other newer developers I am using blow Rodinal out of the water for certain films. That said Rodinal and Pan F+ are still a match made in heaven. Not that it matters for LF since it's not made in sheets.

[axs810]

Sounds like a placebo effect...post up your results StoneNYC