just a little bit of Rodinol

[FrankS]

I processed the 35mm B+W shots from my maritime vacation tonight: 7 rolls of APX100 in Rodinol 1:100. It's the first time using Rodinol because my standard film has always been 400ASA HP5+. I've always found 400 speed film to be so versitile: outdoors and indoors with no flash, but wanted to try some finer grain film for this trip. It seemed weird futting just 15cc of developer into the big 1.5 litre jug for the batch of 5 reels. Almost hard tobelieve that so little developer can have an effect. Anyway, the negs look good.

I have a couple of rolls of 35mm FP4+ and 6 rolls of FP4+ in 120. (I took my Rolleiflex too.) My friend Peter suggests ilford developer (which is what I've always used for the HP5+) but I haven't got any. I do have lots of Rodinol left. Does anyone have any experiences good/bad with this combo? I know Ilfosol will work well, should I just get some? Thanks.

[Nachkebia]

I would love to try rodinal some day is it hard to mix it?
I also wonder how is grain on paper with enlarger, compared to scanner...

[thafred]

Hey Nachkebia,

I wouldn´t go through the pain of mixing it myself! A big NoNo!!! Especially working with hazardous para-Aminophenol (which is a incredient in Rodinal) in concentrated powder form is something I wouldn´t recoment for the hobby chemist (look at the MSDS at http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/AM/4-aminophenol.html).
I work at a Level 3 Biosafety Laboratory and so I know quite a bit about safety with Biohazard Materials but even I couldn´t do it at home without putting my health at risk (no ventilated work bench....ect.)

The good news is, that a 500ml bottle from A&O Rodinal is just under 10€ (plus there is Calbe R09 too!) and it´s storage time is forever!

I love this Stuff and since trying my first bottle (after learning to develop with T-Max dev) I never used anything else again and my Negs look prettier than ever! (I even can tell exactly when I switched to Rodinal by just looking through the Negatives... )
As I started I used 1+25 but the Grain was too much for me to like it (FP4), after using 1+50 for awile (works super) I´m now stuck with 1+100 doing pretty much every film at approx. 20min (20°C) which really is cool when you develop more than one brand of Film at once....My negs are really easy to Print and ok to scan.

Regarding your second question about grain: I found that by compairing scanned negs with printed ones, all the grain is there in the Print (printed with Durst 606 and V35) but much less prominent (more so on the 606)....the worst case was Neopan 1600 which I Printed before I got a scanner and I loved the grain! then when I got to scan the negs I was shocked at how bad the pictures looked!! I guess in digital, grain has hard edges cuz the sensor pixel ether sees a silver clump or sees none wereas the original grain is like a soft small spot surrounded by light..

secondly I seldomly look that deep into a print as I do on the screen (like 300x Magn. from a 3200dpi scan) so just don´t see it in the Prints as annoying.

Greetings
Fred

[Nachkebia]

thafred : Thank you for your brief answer!
Would you know where to buy 500ml bottle from A&O Rodinal online?
thanks again for your help!

[darkkavenger]

Frank, could you give me a hint about your HP5+ mix ? I have returned with a lot of 120 rolls and I plan to develop them myself to avoid high costs at the lab.

Thanks in advance!
max

[vicmortelmans]

Originally Posted by thafred

As I started I used 1+25 but the Grain was too much for me to like it (FP4), after using 1+50 for awile (works super) I´m now stuck with 1+100 doing pretty much every film at approx. 20min (20°C) which really is cool when you develop more than one brand of Film at once....My negs are really easy to Print and ok to scan.

Fred, this is interesting! I'm also developing the FP4+ (and HP5+) in Rodinal. Until now I did 1+25, continuous agitation. Times are around 7minutes and still quite overdeveloped. Cutting this down leaves little time for even development, does it? So I considered going to 1+50 anyway. I'm glad to hear that there are other advantages to higher dilutions, like grain reduction. Didn't hear that before.

Groeten,

Vic

[Trius]

Vic: 7 minutes is not really an issue, but I consider Rodinal at 1:25 a special case. I would use it only for very slow films that inherently have low contrast, or where the subject matter was very low contrast. Try 1:50. Grain and sharpness are enhanced by the agitation regimen.

Frank: I haven't shot FP4+ in a very long time, but every neg I've seen of it souped in Rodinal has looked wonderful. I'd try one roll and see what you think. If you don't want to committ a roll from vacation, should another roll with the Rollei as a test roll.

Earl

[thafred]

@ Nachkebia
You´re welcome! I buy that stuff at a local Photo store but have just dropped a order at Fotoimpex germany for ADOX Films...they have A&O Rodinal as well as R09 : http://www.fotoimpex.de/index.html ...they have an english and frensh Homepage but unfortunately the catalouge is in German (you will figure it out without problems, thou their descriptions are good too)..btw the rest of the Products is totaly amazing and I´m looking forward to a bunch of 20,25 and 50 Asa ADOX films
..maybe other members have good sources too for Rodinal.

@ Vic
I think you should try 1:50 as Earl stated! You will definately see better grain and sharpness with this dilution (i´m gently agitating 3times every minute @1:50 (the first 30 sec continous)...I heard the less you agitate the finer the grain or something...once I agitated pretty hard for the first 10 seconds every minute and got really dense negs with more prominent grain...better to do it gently for me)
My main reason for 1:100 is saving developer secondly I like that every Film I tried (FP4, HP5, MACO 64, TMAX, TMY) comes out ok at 20min as said above (agitation 30sec after pouring in the dev. then 3times every minute for 10min and afterwards one or two gentle invertations every two minutes or so until 20min are reached)..that way my FP4´s are approx. 125 ASA....
Fine tuning surely would be important to squeeze the maximum out of the Films (I have that crazy idea of matching the Film speed to developing rather than the other way around...is this a problem?)

I havent compared grain between 1:50 and 1:100 but I guess its quite equal.
Developing gives so many factors to consider, it could take my whole photographic life to check it all out!

[Nachkebia]

Great information!
Thanks!

[Uncle Bill]

I use the 1:50 dilution as my standard with Rodinal and I love it.

Bill

[kmack]

You may want to pickup some Clayton F76+ I found it works very well with the Ilford films. Very fine grain and good tone. It is also a liquid with a long shelf life.

[GeneW]

I like Rodinal with Tri-X and Neopan 400 but not with HP5+ -- Rodinal makes HP5+ much grainier than it need be. The combo of HP5+ and HC-110 is beautiful.

Gene

[darkkavenger]

This thread kind of motivated me to get into developing my own film. So far I've bought a Jobo tank, some D76 and Ilfotol. I need to get some Ilfostop apparently (I had forgotten about the stopping bath!). Do I need something more? I'm already impatient to develop my own film AND worried about messing up!

[Nachkebia]

darkkavenger !!! welcome!! same way I got into a developing my own film, just like that, something motivated me and same night I developed you will need small things, like the metal thing to open film in the darkness also practice to load film on the tank

[jdef]

Frank,

1:100 is my standard dilution for 510-Pyro, but I use dilutions as high as 1:500 quite often, and putting 1ml of developer into a 500ml tank does take getting used to. At the risk of becoming very unpopular here, I'll admit I'm not a fan of Rodinal, at any dilution, or with any film. I've tested too many film/developer combinations to list, and Rodinal is a consistently poor performer by comparison to almost any other developer, in terms of emulsion speed, grain, and acutance. Rodinal has only three virtues, as far as I'm concerned, and those are: convenience, shelf life, and no tendency to fog. You might notice its only performance related virtue is low fog, which is only of critical importance to alt. process printers, or those developing very old film. If you switched to a slower film for finer grain, it might be counterproductive to soup it in Rodinal, but if you like your results with APX 100 in Rodinal, you'll probably like FP4+ in Rodinal even more, but I believe that any other general purpose developer will produce better results. Good luck.

Jay

[titrisol]

Most people do not like HP5+ in Rodinal, I liked it since grain has never been a problem to me. (Examples here: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~pcorone/photo_...nal/index.html)

As per Patrick Gainer's recipe, try Rodinal 1+50 and 4 g/l of sodium ascorbate.
Use the times for 1+25, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

- Mix the vitamin C in a little water, then add sodium bicarbonate to neutralize (until fizzing stops)
- Add the rest of the water, and then the Rodinal

Examples of FP4 in Rodinal+C
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~pcorone/photo_...alC/index.html

[titrisol]

PS you can make a rodinal clone with some acetaminophen (paracetamol), lye and sulfite.
Search the net for it, Donald Qualls has a great recipe for it.

[darkkavenger]

Originally Posted by Nachkebia

you will need small things, like the metal thing to open film in the darkness also practice to load film on the tank

thanks for the warm welcome! I'm mainly going to develop 120 film for now, but maybe the thing used to open beer bottles might do it for 35mm cartridges? I'll be training anyway

[FrankS]

Originally Posted by darkkavenger

This thread kind of motivated me to get into developing my own film. So far I've bought a Jobo tank, some D76 and Ilfotol. I need to get some Ilfostop apparently (I had forgotten about the stopping bath!). Do I need something more? I'm already impatient to develop my own film AND worried about messing up!

Hi Max,

I'm happy that you are inspired to develop your own film!

You do not need a stop bath for film other than 30 sec in normal water. This dilutes the developer and stops the developing. (STop bath is necessary for processing prints.)

For processing HP5+ I use Ilfosol developer.

Best regards, Frank

[Nachkebia]

darkkavenger : I guess that will do too, don`t forget the squenjie or whatever you call it, the thing that you use to get rid of water drops after washing the film.... (my dream is also to shoot BW on medium format)

[thafred]

Hey Darkavanger,
You really don´t need a stop bath! just use water to wash out the developer thus avoiding contermination of the Fixer. At least with modern Emulsion this should work well.
afaik the pH-shift from alkali Dev. to acidic Fixer used to "eat" holes into the gelatine so the Stop bath was used to make it less traumatic for the emulsion...the Films are said to be much more solid today so I always use water and never saw any ill effects. Its the same with hardener, modern Film doesn´t need it (at all/as much) as old one did.
PLease correct me if this is too big BS as I only read it on the web but it works well for me.

Film canister opener? Use the same as you do with your favorite beer

worried about messing up!

Don´t be my friend...A Friend of mine, who is a professional photographer, nearly got crazy as I told her how I used to develop film in the beginning (using my fingers to judge water temps, chaos agitating, 500ml diluted T-max dev. for at least 10-15 films!!)...she was absolutely certain that there would be no useable neg. at all but the negs were not soo bad! plus with Scanning and Digital Darkroom I could get everything I wanted back then. (for printing they are horrible!) ... I´ve come a loong way since then trying to aim at the perfect negative for printing on my new V35 everything must be under tight control!
The point is: To get anything at all is not complicated, it´s almost too easy! to get everything right is very complicated otoh.

Good luck with developing! (start tonight!!!)

[Bryce]

Frank (and everyone else...)
FP4 and Rodinal is my standard combination. After years of tinkering, here's how I do it and why:
At 68-70 degrees, and film exposed at ISO 80-
35mm- Mix 2grams per liter sodium ascorbate and a half gram per liter of borax in water (half the strength Patrick Gainer recommends), then add rodinal at 1+50. Develop for 12 minutes with 3 inversions each 3 minutes.
120- use at 1+50 for 15 minutes, 4 inversions every 5 minutes. I don't add sodium ascorbate or borax for the larger film.
So why all the complication? My enlarger/ paper combination seem to require somewhat lower contrast negatives than most film developing data will accomodate, so using semi-stand development works best.
As for the different combinations with different sizes of film, in 35mm the results are just a little grainier than I like. The ascorbate/ borax makes a very noticeable difference in grain clumping, as well as speeding development. By 645 size, grain is right where I like it without the extra chemicals.
After all this, it took tons of trial by error to come up with a really satisfactory scheme. Done again, I'd stay away from the stuff unless I REALLY like to experiment.
As for HP5 or Tri-x in rodinal, I can't tell them apart except for the strange dark ooze that comes out of the tank with Tri-x, and the extra fixing time required for Tri-x. Results are very grainy in either case.
Specifically for 120 I've had trouble with uneven development with both Tri-x and HP5. I'd suggest running a test roll first.
Hope this is useful!

[Bryce]

Ooh, I forgot to mention- I don't use a stop bath. Pinholes seem to be guaranteed if you do use one. Just a water rinse.

[FrankS]

Thank you Bryce (and everyone else).

[titrisol]

PS. if you have vitamin C instead of ascorbate do not forget to neutralize the acid with some bicarbonate (baking soda) or the acidity will kill the Rodinal.
BTW Ascorbate + borax sounds like a good buffer