What film developer is your favorite and why ?

I started with Rodinal years ago, then switched to ID-11 which worked a lot better for me. I did try some Rodinal again recently, and was disappointed with the results. But I have switched now from ID-11 to Xtol (XT-3), using a replenishment method and I think I've hit right on the nail for what I was looking for in a developer, it's similar to ID-11, but less toxic and more economical.
 
Stand development, simply, a huge mistake at so many levels.

Do you stand-fix? No.

Do you wash your hands by leaving them in soapy water for 5 minutes without moving them? No.

Agitation during development has one single purpose: removing exhausted developer from the surface of the film, replacing it with active developer.
Same with soap: think about it.

If I told any stand-development afficionado that the developer actually exhausts after 8m43s, I’d be sure of two things. One: they never measured themselves as their one and only scientific source regarding this non-technique is only hearsay on the internet, and secondly, that they effectively waste 51m17s waiting for nothing, just to end up with bad negatives.

Ah yes: when you don’t know what’s on a negative, your very best bet is to actually develop WITH agitation. The classic 6minutes with 5 agitations per 30 seconds in ANY regular developer is unbeatable. This will always result in a fully printable negative. It will even print a pushed negative far better then stand development, which can NEVER do it as well as agitation.

A stand developed negative never reaches the “fully printable” status. As a matter if fact, no burning and dodging can save a stand-developed negative. It’s just that bad.

I’ve done all the possible tests: stand development is a joke.
 
XTOL is really nice. Especially for scanned negatives. Flat dense negs with wide latitude give the most freedom in LR. Also, grain reduction is a plus (with grainy films), and it's nicer for your watershed/planet.

Jenny by Jim Fischer, on Flickr
Nikon F2, Nikkor 55mm f/3.5, Eastman-5222, Xtol 1:1

Zuzu & Brian by Jim Fischer, on Flickr
Leica M7, Voigtlander 50mm f/1 Nokton VM, Eastman-5222, Xtol 1:1.

Man on Ferry by Jim Fischer, on Flickr
Leica M5, Light Lens Lab 50mm f/2 'Elcan,' Kodak T-Max 400, Xtol 1:1
 
Ororaro said:
Stand development, simply, a huge mistake at so many levels.

Do you stand-fix? No.

Do you wash your hands by leaving them in soapy water for 5 minutes without moving them? No.

Agitation during development has one single purpose: removing exhausted developer from the surface of the film, replacing it with active developer.
Same with soap: think about it.

If I told any stand-development afficionado that the developer actually exhausts after 8m43s, I’d be sure of two things. One: they never measured themselves as their one and only scientific source regarding this non-technique is only hearsay on the internet, and secondly, that they effectively waste 51m17s waiting for nothing, just to end up with bad negatives.

Ah yes: when you don’t know what’s on a negative, your very best bet is to actually develop WITH agitation. The classic 6minutes with 5 agitations per 30 seconds in ANY regular developer is unbeatable. This will always result in a fully printable negative. It will even print a pushed negative far better then stand development, which can NEVER do it as well as agitation.

A stand developed negative never reaches the “fully printable” status. As a matter if fact, no burning and dodging can save a stand-developed negative. It’s just that bad.

I’ve done all the possible tests: stand development is a joke.
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Then you aren't doing it right. Let me help:

https://gitbucket.tundraware.com/tundra/Stand-Development

Now, some examples - you have theory, I have practice. Practice beats theory. As Elon Musk says, it doesn't matter how good your science is if the rocket blows up.

Tell me these are not "fully printable". Scans of silver prints (my scanner sucks, so sue me):


The only post scanning manipulation to these images was to - as best as possible - match the silver print to overcome the limitations of my awful scanner.

I am indifferent as to whether people use stand or not. But it's kind of annoying when people say "it doesn't work", "you cannot get printable negs" from it, etc. This is without exception voiced by people who've never mastered it. It IS really fiddly at first (which is why I share those notes), but it jolly well does work, and work well (and consistently) when done properly. It's also not the only way to do things.

P.S. I've never been able to play golf at any level. Does this mean that no one can ever be a good golfer? Asking for a friend.
 
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Godfrey said:
It matters insomuch as you want your negatives to fully express as much detail as possible with a full dynamic range of tonal/color values and very little blocked high or low densities. That gives the maximum amount of detail and tonal/color information for a scanner to capture, and for Lightroom (or other image processing app) to work with in rendering.

I always expose and process my film to achieve as fully expressed a set of detail and tonal values as possible. I haven't shot with color film at all for many years ... Capturing for color with any of my digital cameras using raw capture output simply does a better job than color negative or positive film, for what I'm trying to get to, with fewer problems involving reciprocity failure and color balance, grain and noise.

G
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Thank You
 
Ororaro said:
The classic 6minutes with 5 agitations per 30 seconds in ANY regular developer is unbeatable. This will always result in a fully printable negative. It will even print a pushed negative far better then stand development, which can NEVER do it as well as agitation.
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Well, this is an utter crock.

I used to shoot a lot of surveillance film. A 2 stop push in Rodinal 1:50 landed me in the 31 minute ballpark with agitation every minute. It was surprisingly good tonally, and had less grain that a 400 ISO film pushed to 1600 in Rodinal should have done:



6 minutes of developer wouldn't have gotten me anything but a very, very thin neg. And I know this because I did quite a bit of testing to get me to that 31 minute mark!

(Also, to bring this back on topic, I submit this as evidence for the fact that Rodinal is far more versatile than people often claim.)
 
When I was apprenticed in a studio in London about 300 years ago my master always used to say "if you don't know, just give it 12 minutes".
Worked for him and has worked for me ever since.
 
Pioneer said:
All this advice. Six minutes...12 minutes...60 minutes. If you-all don't mind I'll just consult that manufacturer's documentation as I normally do. Easy to find on-line and just as easy to print.
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That's probably cheating... 😇
 
Pioneer said:
All this advice. Six minutes...12 minutes...60 minutes. If you-all don't mind I'll just consult that manufacturer's documentation as I normally do. Easy to find on-line and just as easy to print.
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I probably was being too flippant, this was only meant to apply if you didn't know what film was in the tank, if you look at any of my photos you'd know I'm as fussy as all hell in terms of arriving at a dev time by experiment.
Please also be aware some of the times given online are way off, the Massive dev chart has some really crazy times.
 
Pioneer said:
All this advice. Six minutes...12 minutes...60 minutes. If you-all don't mind I'll just consult that manufacturer's documentation as I normally do. Easy to find on-line and just as easy to print.
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That will consistently get you a good average negative. It will usually not give you a great negative. That's why Zone system manipulates development time. That's why compensating schemes manipulate development time. That's why standing development manipulates development time. Each of these is working to provide the best possible negative for the scene in question.

YMMV
 
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For the Doubting Thomases among you, here is an experiment you can try for yourself. The only assumption here is that your developer is mixed with distilled water and that it's near 20C/68F +-5F. It also assume stainless steel reels and tank. the plastic reels with high edge walls are deadly for bromide drag. Shoot a roll of film at box speed of stuff you don't particularly care about - any film will do in my experience, but I have not tried this with T-Grain films so you're on your own there:

  1. Invert a small funnel in a tank that holds two reels.
  2. Load your film on a stainless reel and place it on top of the funnel. The top of the reel should be right where it would normally sit if you had two reels in the tank. Place the cover on the tank and turn on the lights.
  3. Use any of the following developers/dilutions: Pyrocat-HD 1.5:1:250, HC-110 1:128, D-23 1:3
  4. Prewet the film for 3 min
  5. Pour the developer into the tank and agitate continuously for 2 min
  6. Go do something else
  7. At 31min, agitate for 15 seconds
  8. Go do something else
  9. Pour out the developer at 60min
  10. Stop, Fix, Wash as usual
  11. Let us know how you feel about the negs.
The most important things about this process are:

  1. Loading the film on a stainless reel that has minimal wind wall height and therefore minimal contact with the film
  2. Getting the film well off the bottom of the tank but still fully covered with developer
  3. Initially agitating thoroughly for 2 minutes

You can do the same thing with sheet film in an open tank, but you need to hang it horizontally (to get it well clear of the tank bottom), with clip hangers like a Kodak #6 (for minimal support-to-film contact). Of course this means sitting in the dark for 29 mins at a time, so I turn off the light in the adjacent room and walk in- and out of the darkroom when I need to.
 
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There are some threads here and there in RFF regarding stand developing but nothing that includes pictures and techniques.

Why don't we start a new thread on stand/semi-stand developing where people can showcase their pictures and their workflow and have everything in one place?
 
I mixed and and used D76 (and its variants) for decades. Then for a good number of years, I had no access to a darkroom. After a few years of depending upon labs (for a variety of reasons), I recently returned to processing.

Because I used one or two labs regularly, I asked some lab workers and they recommended Claytons F76 Plus. I didn’t see a lot of published times/temperatures for this particular developer so I made some tests and sent out some queries.

I found that most films that I use can be batched because this stuff processes HP5, FP4, TriX, as well as Kentmere 100 & 400, which includes AgfaPhoto 100 and 400, at about 6:15 at 75 degrees F [24 degrees C], or 7 minutes at 20 degrees C. [I am told by Lab workers that these times/temperatures also work for Fomapan 100 and 400, as well as Kodak’s TMAX 100 and 400 and Ilford’s Delta 100 and 400 films. But, I haven’t tested these extensively so I couldn’t say for sure.] I have also read that this developer isn’t too sensitive to minor variations in temperature. I have seen little (if any) differences in films processed a low as 23.3 C and as high as 24.6 C, using these times.

This developer is relatively inexpensive, $11.95/quart, so using 1 + 9 as the standard dilution gives about 31-32 rolls of 135 or the equivalent. It certainly doesn’t have the shelf-life of HC110, but it does relatively well kept in a cool place. I regularly decant one US quart into three 12 oz. high quality containers. I keep one [the partially filled bottle] for daily work, and refrigerate the other two. I easily get three months of dependable results. To the best of my knowledge, it is only available in the US, through FreeStyle in LA.
 
Godfrey said:
I'm still using HC-110 ... it takes me an eon to use up a bottle of HC-110 concentrate, I think I've been using this one since 2006. I find it does the job nicely with most any film I've used. Might try using something else when I finally finish up this bottle... :)

G
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I have 5 bottles, 4 unopened and just sitting around. They might just end up being the last developers I ever need to use...
 
chuckroast said:
That will consistently get you a good average negative. It will usually not give you a great negative. That's why Zone system manipulates development time. That's why compensating schemes manipulate development time. That's why standing development manipulates development time. Each of these is working to provide the best possible negative for the scene in question.

YMMV
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Nothing wrong with a good average negative. I do manipulate things occasionally but I always like to start with with a known baseline and that is found with the manufacturer's information. I don't usually like manipulating development when I'm dealing with a strip of 120 or 35mm negatives., but I have been known to do it once in awhile.

I do find it kind of interesting that you would say that because in my opinion that is EXACTLY what happens when I use stand development. I am only able to get exactly what I got with my original exposure, nor more, no less. I typically use agitation, temperature or time as a way to manipulate my negatives if I feel I need it. But stand development eliminates all those options from my toolkit.

I am certainly no Ansel Adams so in my case I really prefer to do most of my manipulation at the printing stage where I am working with single sheet of printing paper. If I make the wrong decision there and screw up a print I can easily recover. For me, screwing up the negative is usually not a good thing, and I am way more likely to do that if I get too far afield with manipulating my film development.

But, quite obviously, we all have our preferred ways of doing things.
 
chuckroast said:
That will consistently get you a good average negative. It will usually not give you a great negative. That's why Zone system manipulates development time. That's why compensating schemes manipulate development time. That's why standing development manipulates development time. Each of these is working to provide the best possible negative for the scene in question.

YMMV
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The reason i don't bother with any of that stuff anymore is because all i need is a good, average neg that has all the information in it. All of my negs are scanned post the processing, and all the rendering is done in digital image processing. Those scans are my archived originals; i often don't bother even to save the negs as once i have good scans, i never touch them again.

Film and processing constitute one way to record and present the image data, that's all. A clean, average neg is the best original to scan.

G
 
Godfrey said:
The reason i don't bother with any of that stuff anymore is because all i need is a good, average neg that has all the information in it. All of my negs are scanned post the processing, and all the rendering is done in digital image processing. Those scans are my archived originals; i often don't bother even to save the negs as once i have good scans, i never touch them again.

Film and processing constitute one way to record and present the image data, that's all. A clean, average neg is the best original to scan.

G
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The problem is that if you stick strictly to the manufacturer's recommendations, unless you're only photographing a limited kind of scene, sooner or later you will either blow out highlights or lose shadow detail. That's because you need different development schemes for different subject brightness ranges in the scene. When there is a very big range of light from dark to brightest (long SBR), you have to decrease development in the highlights. When you have a limited range of light from dark to brightest (short SBR), you want in increase development to spread the tones of the scene more widely across what the negative can reproduce.

The whole reason things like Zone System exist is to control the range of light in the scene and "place" it properly on the negative. That way you capture as much as you can on the negative and decide how to use it in the printing process.

For years, I followed manufacturer's recommendations carefully and got a lot of "meh" negatives. The shadows were thin and highlights got blocked. When I took the time to dive into Zone System and learn about development controls, it was quantum leap in negative quality and printability.

Just for fun, try this with a roll of film you don't care a bunch about (because I cannot guarantee this will give you good results).

  1. Set your light meter to 1/2 the box speed for your film. So, for ASA 400 film, set it for 200, for example.
  2. Shoot a normal range of light - some stuff in the shadows and some bright highlights.
  3. Develop the film 20% less than recommended for your developer/temp combo, agitating as usual

See how you like the results when you print.

(This assumes you have a decent light meter and a reasonable thermometer and timer ... if not, all bets are off ;)
 
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Jonathan R said:
Splendid! Please post them here so that we can all be convinced.
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I have to say, I am impressed with that claim you responded to. I've been doing a deep dive on stand, semistand, and EMA for over 3 years and I have nowhere near done "all the possible tests".

So yeah, let's see the "all the results" so I can quit testing ;)
 
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