Beginner question: R09 Developer and Times

Hi,

First off I apologise for being a newbie at developing Black and White. I have done some research but I want to sanity test what I've learned, and there's a few things confusing me and I don't know how fusspotty to be about the process. I plan on using the agitation process with a cylindrical Patterson development tank.

I have obtained these chemicals:
"Compard R09 ONE SHOT" developer. DigitalTruth says to treat this as Rodinal or possibly at a pinch Fomadon
Ilfofrd Rapid Fixer
Kodak Professional Indicator Stop Bath
Homemade distilled water for final rinse

And these B/W films:
Ilford SFX 200/24
Rollei IR 400/27
Fomapan creative 200/36
Fomapan Classic 100/36

Confusion example 1 :

The first difficulty I have is this: I look on my bottle of R9 one shot developer and "Rollei Infrared" at a dilution of 1+50 should take 22 minutes (1+25 takes 10.5 minutes) However when I look up the Massive Dev charts on Digital Truth I see the films marked as Rollei Infrared IR400 400/25 and 400/10-25 and the development times for the same dilutions are a little over half that given on the label of the R09 one shot developer bottle.

Confusion example 2:

Ilford SFX 200/24, I looked up the data sheet for the film but R09 or Rodinal or Fomadon are not listed amongst the developers.

How do I deal with incomplete information like this, and WRT the chemicals and films I'm using how am I likely to best develop them. They don't need to win awards (And I'm not making prints) but just a good first experience would be wonderful.

Obvious learning resources welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the wonderful and often confusing world of processing your own film.

Seeing different development times for the same film/developer combination from different sources indicates one of two likely possibilities: one source is wrong, or the films in the two sources aren't actually the same. In this case, I think it's likely that the IR400/25 and 400/10-25 you see on the Massive Dev Chart isn't the same as the IR 400/27 you have -- and it's also very possible the "Rollei Infrared" listed on the developer concentrate bottle is a different film yet.

There are a couple tools you can look to: for a "similar" film that lists both Rodinal or R09 and some other common developer (D-76, for instance) you can look at the ratio of times, and use the same ratio for your film (so if D-76 1+1 is 9.5 minutes and Rodinal 1:25 is 15 for Reference Film 400, you'd look at the D-76 1+1 time for your version of IR 400 and give 150% plus a little in R09 1:25. You can also look at times for the developer you have for other "similar" films -- for instance, if you have Catlabs 80 and it doesn't show in your reference (I don't offhand know if that one does or doesn't show in the MDC), you'd look for other ISO 80 films like Ilford Classic 80, Shanghai in 80 speed, etc. (assuming you didn't already know Catlabs is Shanghai).

Worst case, you can do a leader test. Drop a clip of 35mm leader into the beaker of developer working solution in the light, and time how long it takes to get fully black (i.e. stop getting darker), and as a starting point develop five times that long. That will get you images that you can probably print and almost certainly scan, and you can adjust future development time for that same combination based on whether the contrast is too high, too low, or just about right.

Welcome to Photrio.
You don't need to apologize for being a newby. We are happy you asked.
I think part of the reason that the various versions and incantations of Rodinal and other related developers aren't listed on some film maker's data sheets is that, over the years, there have been so many versions and incantations of Rodinal and other related developers!
It may help if you had a reference to R09 to your thread title - that may help attract posts from R09 users. I'll do that for you - if you need that sort of assistance in the future, use the Report this post function to make a request from one of us moderators.

Hey folks,

Thanks a lot for your help and reassurance. I'm delighted to report that, with your help I took a confident guess a the development time for 3 Fomapan films using multiple sources and settled on the MDC time. It was a great experience using the patterson tank for the first time. I learned that you really need to twist that puppy closed But thankfully I was fast and saved the film. I have some very nice shots to show for it, and had lot of fun.

Thanks for your support.