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Developing Film
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Interesting, “to stop or not?”
The beauty of developing the film yourself is that you can play with the development and therefore final contrast/density of the film.
I’ve used a number of developers over the years and there have been more debates on this than canon-vNikon, RAW-Jpg etc etc. The economy stuff from Jessops seems to do a good job :)
In essence: Wash-Develop-Stop-Fix-Wash (the first wash isn’t necessary, just a bit of a habit to get the kit wet at the start and equalise temperature.
You can use water (or other chemicals) instead of a stop bath creatively to reduce contrast and increase accutance (edge density, similar to sharpness in Photoshop).
Personally I use stop baths, less for the stopping development purpose and more for creating an acid flavour in the emulsion before it’s fixed. If your development times are 8-10 minutes, a few seconds one way or the other won’t make a difference. If you’re development times are 3 minutes then stopping is essential for consistency.
I know you didn’t ask, but the best advice on loading the film is:
Use clean and cold hands, make sure the spirals are bone dry.
Si
thefizz wrote:
It’s not an odour problem that puts people off using stop baths but rather the risk of pin holes forming on the film. Now some will say this is rubbish but I have been told by enough photographers and also read it in numerous photography books not to use it so I never bothered with it as water works fine. I know water will not stop the development as quick as a stop bath but a few extra seconds is nothing to worry about.
Peter
I’ve read it on forums but dismissed it as twaddle as I’ve never had any pinholes. I’d be interested to know more about the different books you’ve read this though, could you post more info on this. Cheers.
Hi Fintan,
The Film Developing Cookbook by Anchell and Troop recommends water and also Bernhard Suess in his book, Mastering Black & White Photography. I’m sure I read it in other books but these two are the only ones I can think of at the moment.
Peter
You can try this site
Barry, now deceased, was considered a master of the B&W film and print genre.
Si
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