I watched the videos by Jahan Saber and Vintage Visual but I am left with a few questions:
1. At 375 euros does that include the modified Paterson tank?
2. Is there only one size of tank available?
3. Is it possible to modify your own Paterson tank by drilling the 3 holes yourself
4. Does the power come from batteries in the unit? If so what are they and how long do they last?
5. The power paddle seems to be driven in one direction only, is this correct?
6. If you have the temperature of the developer at 20 degrees to start with but your room is lower than that so the developer temp starts to fall over say 10 mins do I take it that the sensor ensures that it continually compensates to ensure that the end of the development time is exactly right for whatever the developer temperature graph tells the machine to lengthen the time or shorten it to if the development temperature were to rise?
As there is no means of keeping the development temperature constant if the room temperature is less than the developer temperature then presumably you'd need to ensure that over the course of the development time the development temperature will not fall below 20 or is it 18 degrees? So you'd have to ensure by experiment what the start temperature needs to ensure that by the end it hasn't dropped to less than 18-20 degrees?
Finally Vintage VisuaL say this about C41: "C-41 processing is no longer so temperature sensitive — you just need to make sure that chemical temperature is between 30 to 38°C."
Doesn't this re-open the debate about how accurate the temperature has to be for C41 to deliver faultless development?
Yes Tetenal say that it is OK for the temperature to be between quite a wide range (30-38C) but every time this is raised on Photrio there seems to be a strong body of those who maintain that it has to be 38C or 100F otherwise problems will arise?
We are back to the risks of using anything other than 38C plus or more accurately 37.7 plus or minus 0.2C, aren't we?
pentaxuser
Thanks for your questions.
1. No it doesn't. Actually you need only to modify Paterson funnel (drill three holes). Package includes sticker template to drill you funnel at home.
2. You can use any Paterson tank with AGO
3. Yes you can modify your own funnel, this doesn't compromise light tightness of you rig. so you can still use it without AGO if needed.
4. Yes it has two batteries inside. Batteries last minimum of 4 hours.
5. Shaft rotates in both directions. You can modify it yourself in settings. Default setting is 14 seconds one way and 15 seconds other way.
5. Yes correct, algorithm is built in a way that it first measures the temperature @ 20 seconds to get first estimation of roughly how long the process will be and from there at 1/3 point of the process the second measurement and time correction is done to get overall process time. This is done like that because at higher temperatures chemistry does its work exponentially more.
Yes with b&w it is suggested to keep temperature between 18-24 degrees throughout the process. It compensates further also but chemical manufacturers don't suggest that. Depending on the length of the process normally it doesn't change that much.
With c-41 the range for Tetenal and Rollei is 30 to 38 degrees.
Faultless development- For some maybe yes, I have seen comparisons with 38 and 20 degrees development, some colors definitely bit change with that big of temperature fluctuation but we don't suggest to go that far as 20 degrees. This is accordance of the chemical manufacturer and as far I have processed film with it I cant tell a difference.
Do you have some references for the risks?
. Generally there are two major ideas behind it. 1. That there aren't many alternatives to expensive Processors like JOBO, Filmomat, etc. which take off bit of film developing labor if you develop film more then few rolls per month. 2. Second idea is that most of the Minilabs used in lab are soon to be depreciated, so there is a question where and how we can develop C-41, E-6 in future. This came out of also in my research, that most haven't done C-41 at home because it seems too complex. So this time compensation is mostly for color film, which makes the process much easier, for few rolls you even don´t need a sous vide, only throw you chemicals to sink and use warm tap water to heat up them, just look that temperature is in right range.
