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Film Developer, dilutions and times
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I have only recently begun to develop my own negatives and apart from water marks I haven’t been doing too badly for a beginner, well in my oponion anyway, however I have come across different dilutions and dev times for various developers.
At the minute I am using Rodinal and have seen a few different ways of using it, for example 1:15 for 5 minutes and 1:50 for 13 minutes.
My question is how do you arrive at the non manufacturer listed dilutions and times and what does diluting the developer and increasing the time do for the neg.
I usually shoot kodak tmax 100 and ilford delta 100Congrats on developing your first few rolls!
Water marks are often the result of the hardness of the water you’re using. There’s a few threads here on the problems and solutions around watermarks, if they’re proving an issue for you.
Check out the massive development chart for development times, should you need them (http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php” onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false;)
Greater dilutions of the same developer, increase the development time, as you’ve seen. Other effects of greater dilution varies, and the web is a good source of info on what to expect. Typical effects include changes in contrast, and greater/ lesser grain, with effects usually varying by developer.
Development time itself is a little more interesting. You’ve no doubt heard the phrase ‘expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights’. This is specific advice for negative film, and if you do any research, you will find the amount of time you develop for has a far greater impact on the highlights in your negs, than it does with the shadows. Unless you’re doing your own darkroom printing, I would not worry about it at this point, just use the times you find. If things change and you start to do your own b&w wet printing, this is something you will want to explore, and most photographers do as part of their film testing routine, to test the impact of under/ over-exposure in combination with under/ over negative-development.
You can get bogged down in detail, so my advice at this stage would be not to worry about it. Worry solely about getting your process as consistent as possible, ie film loading, water temp, developer dilution, agitation, stop and fix times, and film washing. Consistency is king when it comes to your own developing and printing, and once you get your routine nailed down, you will find it far easier to diagnose the cause of any problems or issues that may arise.
Damien
The link below and already mentioned will give you good starting dev times for rodinal and your films
http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php” onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false;Rodinal is generally used at one of three strengths, these are: 1+25, 1+50 or 1+100. Others are used also but these are the most common…
Depending on the filters you use when exposing the film and how contrasty the light was in the scene I use different dilutions to get the required contrast in the negative that I can print from
as a very general guide to get you started this is how I decide what dilution I will use to dev a role of film in rodinal…
1+25 will increase the contrast in your negatives than what was in the scene when you took the picture
1+50 will give you what ever contrast was in the scene when you took the picture
1+100 will decrease the contrast that was in the scene when you took the picture
1+200 will really decrease the contrast that was in the scene when you took the pictureNote as a guide I normally rate 100 speed films at 50 and 400 speed films at 250 when using rodinal so the above info on dilutions is based around this…
M
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