Advantages of stand developing

[Markok765]

Why dont we all just stand dev except for the reason of time. I find in rodinal 1:200 2 hours you get high sharpness, beautiful tonality and just a hint of grain when viewed up close from an 8x10 from a 35mm tmax 100 neg.
hp5 is also quite fine grained in it. stand dev with rodinal! you dont get the usual loads of grain and you get all the onther nice features of it.
So what are advantages\disadvantages of this process?(apart from time)

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I'll bite... sometimes sharp is too sharp in the negative... you don't necessarily WANT all that microcontrast if you're doing portraits of 80 year old ladies.

 

[Markok765]

Yes, but I don't do portraits. if you want softness stick a zeiss softar under the enlarger lens.

 

[Curt]

I'll bite... sometimes sharp is too sharp in the negative... you don't necessarily WANT all that microcontrast if you're doing portraits of 80 year old ladies.

Unless your Richard Avedon; but what did he know?

 

[Travis Nunn]

I think this thread pretty much covers it...
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[Curt]

Travis, that thread is a really good review and sums up the information.

Curt

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Yes, but I don't do portraits. if you want softness stick a zeiss softar under the enlarger lens.

Marko - who said I was enlarging? I'm doing contact prints from 8x10 negatives.

 

[Markok765]

Sorry, Im used to roll film. i make 8x10 prints from tmax negs that show no grain

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Marko - there's a difference between a softar and a naturally smooth negative. Doing stand/semi-stand development creates micro-contrast which can over-emphasize details where you don't want them. As I said in my original post, portraits are a subject that you don't want semi-stand for, which if I recall correctly was the original question you asked. When I'm shooting subjects with lots of fine detail where I want to bring out that detail, and where I've got a naturally low contrast subject, I do semi-stand to bring out that detail and boost the contrast into a useful range.