Da,, 4x5 shooters, how many develope specfic groups?

Been developing for a while, photography as well as the film, getting educated, and need your help.
Basically shoot up to 8 to 12 shots or so of 4x5, and then develop all of them as a single batch.
But beginning to see that this may be limiting my .. ah 'creativity', (for want of a better word), with the resulting negatives and scans.
Background... done the testing on Arista EDU 400 (shot @ 200) and have gotten my method down, time agitation ect, for normal shots and semi stand, for the high contrast ones of landscape ect, where there is often burn out in the sky, or within the composition.
So the de question:
One of the beauties of 4x5 is that its not a roll of film, and can be developed singly, but that becomes time consuming and a P.I.A.
Sooo.. of those who shoot 4x5, how many of you make a note, of the develop you want at the time you shoot it, and then put those aside and develop them as a specific group?
Da, is this a common procedure, that I'm just now awakening to?

I use a Jobo 3010 which does 10 sheets at a time; doing 2 or 3 sheets at a time would suck. What I do is keep multiple boxes for the exposed film: one for N, one for N+1, etc. Do your exposures and unload the films into the right boxes. When I have "enough" in a box, I run a development batch from that box with the appropriate development time.

practical

As a practical matter, it would take a lot of time and effort to develop a dozen sheets of film one at a time. When using sheet film I would normally develop one sheet as a test and then go on and do the others in a group. Of course, there are exceptions to this. It's a balance of how much time you want to spend in the darkroom vs. how custom you want to develop the films. I am building a 4x5 Crown Graphic from various parts obtained from here and there and will be shooting with mostly enlarging paper, I think. This will make it easy to develop one sheet at a time.

Don't have Jobo, but have two daylight tanks.. and could put a piece of adhesive tape on them, to designate the type of development for each one.

snapguy said:

When using sheet film I would normally develop one sheet as a test...

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Out of curiosity... is that test sheet shot.. one of two? As you shoot two identical shots, so if you don't like the development.. you can try again?
BTW... my 4x5 is a Pacemaker, put together from loose parts given to me... love it.
Before moving to Sedona, was a desert rat in Joshua Tree.. from '72' to '85', so say hi for me, to the lovely California desert, where when it rained, we took the day off.

I really don't think there is any way around processing sheets of film individually to control contrast if the image is really important too you and you want to get optimum results.

If I know that I want varying times, but don't want to spend developing Group A, then Group B, etc., seperately, then I make a note of the times (in my head, since it's dark and can't read hand written notes), then incorporate the lesser time sheets into the mix.

For example, if I have six sheets total to develop: (A) 3 @ 6 min, (B) 2 @ 5 min, and (C) 1 @ 8 min. I would start with the longest time, then incorporate the others. So develop (C) first, start the timer at 8 min. After 2 minutes have gone by, I develop (A) along with (C). One more minute passes, then (B) gets developed with (A) and (C). At the end of the 8 minutes, I have six sheets developed properly at the desired time.

Hope that helps more than it confuses!

peter k. said:

So the de question:
One of the beauties of 4x5 is that its not a roll of film, and can be developed singly, but that becomes time consuming and a P.I.A.
Sooo.. of those who shoot 4x5, how many of you make a note, of the develop you want at the time you shoot it, and then put those aside and develop them as a specific group?
Da, is this a common procedure, that I'm just now awakening to?

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Peter,
everyone will use procedures which suit their working style. This tends to tailor with what equipment you have and how you have developed as a photographer.
For example; I own a couple of Grafmatic 6 shot magazines and a MOD54 developing tank. Both takes 6 sheets of film so I tend to operate in multiples of 6.

Good luck

Simon

Simon Howers said:

Peter,
everyone will use procedures which suit their working style.

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Boy, isn't that the truth.. and will incorporate some of these suggestions.. thanks guys.. as we change the flow in how we do, the do.

garysamson..

processing sheets of film individually to control contrast if the image is really important too you

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that may come to pass, as I get more experience. With the portraits you normally do, I would have to believe that it would be a must!

silveror0.. good idea, right now all I use is a blank piece of paper folded up, to fit in shirt pocket. But have thought about making it into a printed form in the past, as in a rush, to take the image, I don't often give clarity to what the image detail I used was, but with your suggestion will DO IT, now!

I really like jcc's method, but alas, at this time, all we have is a dark bag.. ;-)

silveror0 said:

This method works fine. As a caution, however, it's important to note that the hand doing the developing/agitation (shuffle in a tray) will get wet, while the other hand must be kept DRY for adding film into the developer. Any moisture on the dry sheets will certainly cause them to stick together and mess up the procedure.

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This is true. Options include keeping them in separate pre-wash trays (if you have the room), so they're all wet; or have someone hand you the incoming sheets (kind of awkward, but works better with more practice).

jcc said:

This is true. Options include keeping them in separate pre-wash trays (if you have the room), so they're all wet; or have someone hand you the incoming sheets (kind of awkward, but works better with more practice).

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No need for extra pre wash trays. Simply rotate the sheets that get different developing times. This would allow you to tell them apart in the dark.

As for a good way of talking notes. If you have an iPhone check out the app Reciprocity Timer. It does more then calculate reciprocity, it also lets you take notes and add a photo that you can place your zone system markings on. I like to print out the note and keep it with my negative.

People working with single grade papers have my sympathy but for straightforward black and white work I reckon the idea of doing N+ and N- development modifications is largely obsolete. With the current perfection of variable contrast photographic papers it is much easier to go up or down a paper contrast grade than to jog negative contrasts up or down. Going from paper grade 2 to grade 3 is a remarkably close match for a N+1 development change. And, sure enough, a N-1 negative is matched by a paper grade 2 to grade 1 change. The really big changes like N+3 or N-3 are not so closely matched by paper grade changes.

I must also confess I've never had much success in grafting good photographs out of recalcitrant subject matter that needs gross development expansions or contractions. And the few times I've had an ok result it's been a N+3 expansion. N-3 never seems to deliver even though the tones and zones are in the right place. Maybe it's all just poor visualisation on my part.

peter k. said:

how many of you make a note, of the develop you want at the time you shoot it, and then put those aside and develop them as a specific group?
Da, is this a common procedure, that I'm just now awakening to?

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Unless you are doing some oddball stuff, a nominal development for all films will allow adequate printing on multigrade paper.