bulk development in rodinal

acp · Mar 9, 2007

Hi there

I've got a heap of 4x5 to develop and will be using deep tanks for the first time. Normally I try develop small runs (up to ten sheets), and chuck the developer afterwards.

The deep tanks I have hold 3 litres. I'm just wondering how many sheets I could expect to put through - using rodinal at 1+25 - before having to replace the developer.

Also would I need to vary the development time significantly from tray to deep tank?

Cheers, Andy

Ian Grant · Mar 10, 2007

Andy, I use a Jobo 2000 tank that takes 6 5x4's per reel, this processes a upto 12 sheets in 2 litres of developer.

I've always used Rodinal at 1:50 for N, and 3:100 for N+1, with APX100 and Tmax100 @ 50 ISO the tank is not the rotary type and I invert it every 30 seconds. The developer is always just single use.

On that basis you can process 18 sheets in a 3 litre deep tank, the dunk dip agitation would be the similar to tank inversion.

Ian

NikoSperi · Mar 11, 2007

Back of the envelope math here

... Agfa states that 10ml of Rodinal is required to fully develop one roll which is about 480 square centimeters. That's the same as four sheets. At 1:25 in 3 liter tank would mean 120ml Rodinal which should develop 12 sheets.
In practice, there has been alot of debate about whether that 10ml figure form Agfa refered to developing a completely exposed film (i.e. reducing ALL the silver hallides) as opposed to only those silvers which had been exposed to light. In practice, I think it is accepted that as little as 3ml can develop a normal scene exposed negative of a mid-grey tone on average.
By that math, your tank should be able to develop... [pulling this number out of all that]... 30 sheets?

acp · Mar 11, 2007

thanks guys. good info there. i did 36 sheets yesterday and everything seemed to be fine. back to the darkroom now.

Jerry Thirsty · Mar 11, 2007

NikoSperi said:
... Agfa states that 10ml of Rodinal is required to fully develop one roll which is about 480 square centimeters. That's the same as four sheets. At 1:25 in 3 liter tank would mean 120ml Rodinal which should develop 12 sheets.
In practice, there has been alot of debate about whether that 10ml figure form Agfa refered to developing a completely exposed film (i.e. reducing ALL the silver hallides) as opposed to only those silvers which had been exposed to light. In practice, I think it is accepted that as little as 3ml can develop a normal scene exposed negative of a mid-grey tone on average.
By that math, your tank should be able to develop... [pulling this number out of all that]... 30 sheets?

You should note that 120ml of Rodinal in the first paragraph is for 12 batches of 4 sheets, or 48 sheets. Personally I've never had any problem using 5ml per 36exp. roll equivalent (4 sheets of 4x5), so you could double it to 96, but you may start running into problems with the developer oxidizing before you can run so many batches.

NikoSperi · Mar 12, 2007

Jerry Thirsty said:
You should note that 120ml of Rodinal in the first paragraph is for 12 batches of 4 sheets, or 48 sheets. Personally I've never had any problem using 5ml per 36exp. roll equivalent (4 sheets of 4x5), so you could double it to 96, but you may start running into problems with the developer oxidizing before you can run so many batches.

:rolleyes: Duh, I forgot the part where we're talking about 4 sheets a pop... so at 3ml per roll that's... 160 sheets! Who ever said film is expensive to process!!! But being a little conservative at 5ml; still a huge amount of film for such a small quantity of developer.

bulk development in rodinal

acp

Ian Grant

NikoSperi

acp

Jerry Thirsty

NikoSperi

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