Rodinal 1:100 stand question

[mabelsound]

Hey all--tried this for the first time yesterday, and wasn't super happy with the results. I souped a roll of XX for one hour at room temperature, the only agitation at the beginning, for thirty seconds. The film was definitely fully covered, but it was rather "burned" along the bottom. In addition, the roll seemed overdeveloped overall, with very little contrast. What did I do wrong? I was able to salvage almost everything in Lightroom, but I would have preferred better negs right out of the soup...

It definitely isn't my M2--the two rolls from the same week that I developed in the normal way, turned out fine.

Here's a sample of the burn:

[capitalK]

Did you stir the Rodinal in well before transferring to the tank?

[martin s]

They're supposed to be low contrast, also I'd agitate a little more. Every 30 minutes is what I was told.

martin

[charjohncarter]

I've had this happen with Rodinal when using low agitation, and also when I was agitating every 5 minutes. I decided to not use Rodinal, when doing stand, or semi-stand development , or minimal agitation. I have had much better luck with all three when I use HC-110. So Rodinal is on the self unless it is regular agitation. I like Rodinal, but I do find it fussy unless I am using regular agitation and 1+50. In fact I'm not sure the high dilution developers do anything that can't be achieved by minimal agitation (and normal dilutions). Somebody said: expose for the shadows, develop for the midtones, and agitate for the highlights. I'm beginning to agree. I used to think that development dilution with a certain combo of agitation regime gave you your development overall time. I don't have any solid evidence that agitation it so important to highlights, but the guy that changed the expose for........... mantra says he does. I sure can see it with TriX at 250 and minimal agitation ala Ansel Adams (HC-110).

[mh2000]

maybe it's just XX... with TMX and TMY is works great.

[blazejs]

I have tried that a few times - 1 hour, temperature ca. 20°C, agitation continuos for the first 30 sec, then 2 inversions after 30 min. I was very glad with the result, beautiful tones.

[Rhodes]

My try was with XP2 at iso 200, agitation for the first minute, and one hour stand.The resaults were also good/great! I was happy that turn out fine! Now I'll use rodinal for the C-41 B&W films!

[Roger Vadim]

Same happened to me on two rolls in one tank. rather strange, the ones I did before came out well...
I suppose i didn't stir the rodinal well enough, I remembered being a bit sloppy there. My explanation, because as I said, other tests came out fine (low gradation, yes, but thats the whole idea of stand development and high dilution).

So I go the minimal agitation route rather then stand dev, because I don't want to loose valuable pics. 1:80, every 4 minutes 2 soft inversions, still experimenting with the times, but the results are repeatable and the grain and gradation looks good so far.

Good luck next time, don't forget to stir the juice

[mabelsound]

It was stirred! Maybe it is the XX, but I thought Tom had had some luck with this method. XX really seems to like Rodinal with a more conventional every-60-seconds agitation routine.

If I'm going to agitate evey 4 or 15 or 30 minutes anyway, I will just agitate every minute and be finished quickly, as usual. The appeal of stand is not having to think for an hour!

[BSchall]

I think 1:100 is too hot. My standard mix for Acros in 1:100, 20C, 18 min. w/ std agitation. I've done Acros for 1 hour stand w/one inversion at 30min at 1:200 with great results. I can't imagine doing stand developing for 1 hour at 1:100. It seems that just in the last couple months I've seen more people talking about 1:100 and stand. Before that, I was always 1:150, 1:200 or more.

[Trius]

Someone needs to do some controlled testing with Rodinal at high dilutions.

[ItsReallyDarren]

I've had a strange working relationship with rodinal and stand developing. When pushing film to high EIs such as tri-x at 3200 its come out fine. When I try to use it at box speeds with films they come out very contrasty with little to no shadow detail and blown highlights.

I've had a similar uneven development similar to the OP and I contributed it to too little initial agitation.

I switched over to agitating every minute for a shorter amount of time 15-18 minutes depending on film and have had better luck with results that are more to my liking.

[Keith]

I disvovered with that burn ...I avoided it by moving the reel a little further up the paterson tank and using more solution so that I knew I had at least a couple of centimeters of solution above the reel and also below it!

[ChrisN]

I had a very similar issue with an early attempt at 1:100 stand dev. After this I decided that a bit of gentle agitation was needed at the half-way point in the process.

Raising the reel in the tank so it sits in the middle of the available developer sounds like a good idea too.

[ItsReallyDarren]

When I tried stand development in rodinal I used a paterson 3 reel tank. The reel on the bottom was the most likely to receive any kind of negative effect such as streaking. Changing my agitation alleviated the problem quite a bit but still show up. One possible remedy was to place an empty reel on the bottom and develop the top two reels.

[Bassism]

I've had good luck using Rodinal stand with Tri-X, fp4, and Delta 400. It's all I use now, no matter whether I'm shooting at box speed or pushing.

I second Keith's suggestion to move the roll up to the middle of the tank. With a Paterson tank I just move the plastic clamp that holds the reel to the bottom of the spindle under the reel and move it up about half way. I also mix the developer by dumping 5ml of solution into a water bottle, topping it with water, then shaking it around for a while. It's quick, easy, and I know that the developer is well mixed.

As far as agitation goes, when shooting at box speed I agitate for about a minute to begin with then don't touch the tank again until I pour it out. For times over an hour I'll agitate a bit every 30-45 minutes.

[wpb]

Did you do a water rinse before you added the developer? I always found a drop (and I mean a drop) of LFN or photoflo (to a minimum 16 oz of water) to the rinse water seemed to soften the film emulsion and get it ready for the long development. While you could agitate part of the way through the development, this will take away from the exhausted developer masking the highlights from further development, the main benefit of stand development. Better to add an extra 30 seconds to one minute to the initial agitation instead.

[Bassism]

That's a good point I forgot to mention too, wpb. I've had trouble with a few rolls where I've forgotten to do a presoak. I just use regular water for my presoak, but I've found it to be important to getting good results.

[ItsReallyDarren]

Speaking of presoaks. I should mention that my previous attempts did not include a presoak. It seems like an important step to getting better results.

I haven't heard about using photo-flo as a presoak though.

[Bassism]

Presoaking always seemed to me like a bunch of jibber jabber until I tried it with stand developing.

I really don't know the science behind it all, but I would have to guess that in normal development with modern films it doesn't make much difference since the emulsion is saturated/swelled/whatever within a minute or so and things continue on from there.

But since in stand development the first minute is very important and where all the agitation occurs, I would guess that by presoaking the film the developer can start work immediately without having to saturate the film first.

But regardless of why, I've found that it works!

[charjohncarter]

Posts #12 through #19: why bother, there are plenty of other ways to get better results.

[ItsReallyDarren]

Originally Posted by charjohncarter

Posts #12 through #19: why bother, there are plenty of other ways to get better results.

yes there are other ways.

Plus-x EI 100, Rodinal 1+100, 15 mins. Might edge out xtol as my developer for the film.

[Bassism]

Originally Posted by charjohncarter

Posts #12 through #19: why bother, there are plenty of other ways to get better results.

There are other ways, but I've found this to be the easiest way to get consistent results that are far better than I've found with other developers.

For me the primary advantages are not having to accurately measure volumes or temperatures, and not having to stand over the stuff agitating every minute for 10-20 minutes. Once you get to a 60 minute dev time, the stuff is going to be room temperature anyway, and 5 minutes either way doesn't make a difference.

The fact that my results are more pleasing to my eye anywhere from box speed to a 3 stop push is just gravy.

[novum]

Originally Posted by ChrisN

I had a very similar issue with an early attempt at 1:100 stand dev. After this I decided that a bit of gentle agitation was needed at the half-way point in the process.

Fits my experience to a T.

The difference pre-soaking makes is fundamental. I use Rodinal about 30% of the time, and almost always 1+100 for one hour with a couple of gentle inversions on the half hour. It can be beautiful. I still like PMK Pyro better for most of what I do, while Diafine is great for pushing Tri-X to EI 1250 "automatically".

Everyone's experience is unique and there's a lot of valid alternatives out there. I wish I could see what some of you are doing in person!

[Keith]

More about pre-soaking ... I've gone back to it for the older films I use with softer emulsions. Rollei Retro and Adox seem to both prefer it!