Bromide drag becoming a drag

[Llamarama]

Hello everyone,

I've been on a bit of a darkroom binge after discovering the benefits of stand development (Yay, no agetations every 60 seconds!) and I've noticed I'm getting some bromide drag on older films.

It's only been a problem on a roll of 1995 vintage Ilford FP4 Plus and some Circa 1989 found Ektachrome, both 35mm. The Delta 400 from 96 and brand new Pan F have been fine, as has Fuji Acros 100.

Is it just a problem with old style emulsions rather than the T-grained Delta and Neopan, with the Pan F being ok because it was still good to Nov 2016? Or is it just one of those things?

A factor could be I'm using home made parodinal, though a friend tested some from the same batch and said it was fine.

It doesn't show up much in scanning so It's not a massive issue, more of a mild annoyance. Any pointers would be greatly appreciaded. Many thanks, Mike.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I recently did some 60-minute full stand processing of 8x10 sheet FP4+ using Adonal (Rodinal) at 1+100. The nighttime scene contrast was very, very high and the exposure was 7 minutes.

The results (click (there was a url link here which no longer exists) to see) were quite printable with no sign of bromide drag. But then the sheets were lying horizontally in a developing tray during the entire cycle.

[Edit: Oops. I just noticed that as a non-subscriber you probably can't see into the gallery. Sorry, my bad...]

Ken

 

[Dr Croubie]

Just for the rest of us, can anyone post examples of what Bromide Drag looks like? I do a lot of Rodinal (adonal) stand so I'd be interested to know what to look out for.
(preferably to (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[frotog]

I was experiencing bromide drag when developing 35mm delta 3200. It showed up as tiny little trails of lower density across large, even swaths of higher density. Bromide is formed during the dev. process - a result of the reduction of silver bromide to metallic silver during development. The most common solution is to increase the rate of agitation. But of course this is not the goal with stand development so one must look for an alternative solution to the problem. Since the bromide is heavier than the developer, it will eventually make it's way to the bottom of the tank and come to rest. By bringing my stand dev. temp. up from 68 degrees f. to 73 degrees f. so as to further soften the emulsion and speed up the path of the bromide particles I successfully cured my bromide drag problem.

 

[AndreasT]

Agitate the film once every 5-10 minutes.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

While I did not notice any streaking on the 8x10 sheet of FP4+ shown in my above link, I did notice an odd sheen on the negative surface covering only the lighted sign portion of the image. My assumption was that metallic silver had been plated back onto the negative? But I'm not sure.

Ken

 

[frotog]

Agitate the film once every 5-10 minutes.

The OP wants stand development.

 

[AndreasT]

Yes I know he wants stand development. (What does OP mean anyway) It just always occures to me how often people have streaking with stand development. I just don't get it why people still do it. To be honest. And if one agitates just every now and then I would still regard it as stand development and I would think the streaking is gone.
I sometimes use longer develoment times where I agitate one every three minutes.
A while ago I was on a blog or something where people were showing scans of their negatives comparing stand developments with different developers etc. What nobody seemed to realise was how many of them had streaking. I do not remember the site.

A good friend of mine is into stand devolpment, and what he does at least I think so is have the developer at say 18°C where the room temperature is 20°C. So that the developer warms up slowly and creates a circulation in the tank.

 

[mrred]

The 'trick' with full stand development is to keep times short, contrary to what people seem to think. The attraction of higher acutance will still be there. The longer the dev times the greater chance of streaking.

There is nothing wrong with semi-stand. Most experienced people with stand development wind up there because it solves the problem of streaking. It is certainly not evil to mention it, frotog.

Try a 'drop' of photoflo in a presoak the next time you do stand. It does make a difference.

 

[MattKing]

(What does OP mean anyway)

It means "Original Poster" - the person who started the thread.

 

[frotog]

My experience with stand dev. is that the longer the duration, the better the shadow separation. The aim is for gamma infinity in the shadows while keeping the highlights as open as the process will allow - this is the reason to go for stand dev. rather than semi-stand. I've no clue as to which process is more evil though true stand dev. is definitely more difficult to pull off. Mortensen has some good articles on its practice.

I aim for ambient room temp as close as possible to the dev. temp in order to avoid convection currents, which will cause uneven development with longer times. Mrred is right on target with his suggestion for a wetting agent in the pre-wash as it will reduce the amount of tooth on the films emulsion thereby giving the bromide particles less of a surface to cling to.

 

[Llamarama]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I think I've solved the problem.

With the ektachrome the film was so dark I needed to increase the brightness so much to get usable scans that the streaking was clearly visible, however the FP4 was not noticable on the scans.

I tried giving a couple of inversions at the 15, 30 and 45 min mark and it seems fine now. I'm interested with the wetting agent in prewash, i'll give that a go since i've just invested in some. Belt and braces method.

Thanks for all the replies, now all I have to do is clear the rem-jet off my reels, bloomin' cine film.