2-bath question

jim appleyard · Feb 29, 2008

Harry Lime said:
>Try a roll w/o agitation and see if you get drag.

will do.

I would also like try try different versions of bath B to control contrast.

Harry,

Do you have copies of Anchell/Troop's "Darkroom Cookbook" and "Film Dev Cookbook"? There is quite a bit in these two about 2-bath devs. "Film Dev Cookbook" has many versions of DD-23 with various amounts of metol in "A" and everything from borax to sod. carb in "B"; Steckler to Adams!

Harry Lime · Feb 29, 2008

jim appleyard said:
Harry,

Do you have copies of Anchell/Troop's "Darkroom Cookbook" and "Film Dev Cookbook"? There is quite a bit in these two about 2-bath devs. "Film Dev Cookbook" has many versions of DD-23 with various amounts of metol in "A" and everything from borax to sod. carb in "B"; Steckler to Adams!

Nope, not yet. I plan on picking up a copy.

cheers

Paul Verizzo · Feb 29, 2008

??????????

dancqu said:
About a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.
A bath then B bath then A bath and back
to B. Or visa versa. Use A very dilute
as a one-shot. Dan

A teaspoon of bicarb for Bath B? Bicarb???? Do you mean sodium carbonate? It's cheap stuff and the pH follows concentration pretty well until about 5 grm/liter, pH 10.5.

Why would you go back and forth between the baths without a good water rinse? Not saying that repeat bathing may not be interesting, but if you drain Bath B out and then fill with A, that A is contaminated. The pH will start rising and then development will be taking place in Bath A from then on.

dancqu · Feb 29, 2008

[QUOTES=Paul Verizzo;594533]
"A teaspoon of bicarb for Bath B? Bicarb????
Do you mean sodium carbonate? It's cheap stuff
and the pH follows concentration pretty well until
about 5 grm/liter, pH 10.5."

Carbonate makes for a very active developer.
It builds contrast fast. Bicarbonate is the one
to use. Harry wishes "to control contrast". A&H
backing soda will do well. The lower ph is
high enough to keep metol active while
delivering finer grain.

"Why would you go back and forth between the baths
without a good water rinse? Not saying that repeat
bathing may not be interesting, but if you drain Bath
B out and then fill with A, that A is contaminated.
The pH will start rising and then development will
be taking place in Bath A from then on."

One-shot chemistry. Any sulfited or higher ph
developer will not have to any practical extent
a lowering of ph.

Any off the shelf or Home Brew developer will do
as long as it is used very dilute. Solution volume
must be great enough to hold the necessary
chemistry at the high dilution; ie Rodinal
at 1:200 or D-76 at 1:7, 500ml.

Two tanks a reel lift and total darkness. Dan

Paul Verizzo · Mar 1, 2008

Developed to the same CI, the activator makes no difference in grain. D-76 and other fine grain developers work because the low alkalinity allows a lot of time for the sulfite to dissolve (i.e., mush) the silver grains. Modern films are a LOT less grainy than their 1930's cousins. The grain that exists is natural and we can now aim for acutance.

Extended time in developers allows this to happen, no matter the activator. Right off the top of my head, Patrick Gainer's PC developers, Diafine, and Otha Spencer's all use carbonate activators. All with little grain, enought to make "grainless" 11x14's. Now, if you want a bill board from you 35mm neg, that's another story!

All of the other suggestions sound awfully complex and unneccessary, IMO. One purpose of divided development is simplicity.

Rob Archer · Mar 1, 2008

"I agree. I gave it a super gentle twist halfway through bath B, to fend off bromide drag, but I agree that in this case less really is more."

I've only had problems with bromide drag when I've tried to do several films at once (3x120 in a big Paterson tank) it only affected the bottom film, but quite badly (almost unprintable). Since then I've only ever tried 1 film at a time.

Rob

dancqu · Mar 1, 2008

dancqu said:
[QUOTES=Paul Verizzo;594533]
"A teaspoon of bicarb for Bath B? Bicarb????
Do you mean sodium carbonate? It's cheap stuff
and the pH follows concentration pretty well until
about 5 grm/liter, pH 10.5."

Carbonate makes for a very active developer.
It builds contrast fast. Bicarbonate is the one
to use. Harry wishes "to control contrast". A&H
backing soda will do well. The lower ph is
high enough to keep metol active while
delivering finer grain.

"Why would you go back and forth between the baths
without a good water rinse? Not saying that repeat
bathing may not be interesting, but if you drain Bath
B out and then fill with A, that A is contaminated.
The pH will start rising and then development will
be taking place in Bath A from then on."

One-shot chemistry. Any sulfited or higher ph
developer will not have to any practical extent
a lowering of ph.

Any off the shelf or Home Brew developer will do
as long as it is used very dilute. Solution volume
must be great enough to hold the necessary
chemistry at the high dilution; ie Rodinal
at 1:200 or D-76 at 1:7, 500ml.

Two tanks a reel lift and total darkness. Dan

One correction: 1:100 for that Rodinal. At the
1:200 dilution the 2.5ml of concentrate may
be too little.

The main purpose of divided development is
not simplicity but contrast control. Simplicity
is one shot chemistry. Quick is tanks loaded.
That last from my little journalist's
experience. Dan

Harry Lime · Mar 15, 2008

A few more questions:

a) Thornton's 2-Bath:
- Does the sodium sulfite in bath A control the sharpness of the grain? If I increase the amount of sodium sulfite, will this give me finer grain?

Thornton's 2-Bath

Bath A
Metol 6.25g
Sodium Sulphite 85g
water to 1 liter

Bath B
Sodium Metaborate 12g
water to 1 liter

b) Earlier in the thread it was mentioned that the use of only methol in Thornton's causes the loss of 1/2 - 1 stop of speed.

Does Divided D-76 suffer from the same problem?

Bath A
Distilled water (52° C/125° F) 1000 ml
Metol 4 g
Sodium Sulfite 100 g
Hydroquinone 7.5 g
Potassium Bromide, 1% 30 ml

Bath B:
Water 1000 ml
Borax 60 g

c)Crawley's fx4 (as a 2-bath)

If I up the Sodium Sulfite in Divided FX-4, will I get finer grain?

Bath A

Metol 2.5g/l
Hydroquinone 5g/l
Phenidone .025g/l
Sodium Sulfite 80g/l
Potassium Bromide 1g/l

Bath B
12g/L Borax

Thanks in advance

jim appleyard · Mar 15, 2008

Hi Harry, Yes to both parts of your "A" question. Sulfite acts as a preservative, activator and silver solvent. 85g of sulfite is enough to eat away some silver from the film, although not as much as the 100g found in D-76, D-23, et al.

I can't answer your "B" question as I've never compared the two.

el wacho · Mar 15, 2008

hey Harry,

c) 85g/L is kind of a sweet spot. i remember using perceptol/microdol x straight and i don't remember it being substantially finer... there are better ways like larger formats, reducing enlargment sizes etc

b) 60g/L B bath sounds like a recipe for bulletproof highlights. loss of speed comes with the territory. i suspect that p76 (phenidone version) would give increase in speed. i think crawley's fx4 makes it redundant though.

a) you should get a copy of 'edge of darkness' by Thornton, B. he goes into detail about apparent sharpness and it's relationship to grain. in short, more sod. sulfite, finer grain - less apparent sharpness. i've got an A bath that i use when there's no smooth tonalities in the image that is a combination of metol 6.5g/L sod. sulfite 35g?/L with a B bath of 12g/L of sodium carbonate ( as mentioned in his book ) and it is similar to crawley's fx1 ( which you should give a go. it has to be seen to be believed, in particular the smaller formats. )

hope that helps

Harry Lime · Mar 16, 2008

Thanks for the answers.

So, far I've developed about 30 rolls of Tri-X@400 in Thornton's 2-bath and I have to say that these are the best negs I've ever made.

The tonality and retention of highlight and shadow detail is superb.
The negs are very crisp, but not overly grainy.

But best of all the results are very consistent from roll to roll and batch to batch. I've been developing film for over 10 years, but always struggled somewhat with that, using single bath developers. Basically the a 2-bath system is as close to fool proof a method as you are going to find.

It's also cheap. I shoot a lot of film and something like DD-X runs about 13 pounds/bottle. If I shoot a lot of 120 that month I can burn through a few bottles and would rather spend my money on film. A batch of Thornton's costs a fraction of that.

Anyhow, I'm sold on it. I'll give DD-76 or FX4 a try, to get the small bump in speed.

But what I really need to find is a 2-bath developer for push processing, that can handle Delta3200 @ 1600 asa. Then I'll be set.

el wacho · Mar 16, 2008

hey Harry,

there's a patrick dignan recipe floating around on the net that is diafine like. the crux of it is A PQ A bath with a beefed up B bath. diafine is meant to do tri-x at 1200.... might be your thing. hope this helps.

2-bath question

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