Develop B/W Negative at 27 degree C

[MonoAsia]

Hi,

I am new to film and I have seen some of my friends developed their film at 27C . But the manufacturer states only at 20C and 24C. Does it affect the negative or they can produce the same results?

 

[Donald Miller]

Within reason, one can process at different temperatures by altering developing times.

 

[MonoAsia]

Within reason, one can process at different temperatures by altering developing times.

Which means it may takes shorter time to develop. But will affect the negative like grainer or damage the negative due to high temperature or will it lose any highlights etc.

 

[fschifano]

That's a fairly warm temperature for developing B&W materials. You will need to shorten your development times considerably, something on the order of 1/2 the time you would use to process at 20 deg. C. Because processing at high temperatuires will soften the emulsion more, extra care needs to be taken to avoid any sudden temperature excursions. It goes without saying that all your chemicals, including the wash water, should be at or very close to that temperature. If you are already using developers that give you short development times, you could be in trouble. Conventional wisdom dictates that you should avoid development times less than 5 minutes in manual tanks or trays to prevent or at least lessen the risk of uneven development.

My usual processing temperature in winter is 68 deg F./20 deg. C. In summer when the tap water is not so cold, that changes to 22 or 24 deg. C. with appropriate time adjustments. The negatives come out the same.

 

[MonoAsia]

I am using Tri-X together with HC-110. The box says at 3.25mins but I read on this forum it was not recommended and prefer 1:63 @ 9 1/2mins. But again the said time for the development should not be more than 5mins. I am getting confuse???

 

[kaiyen]

Which said time should not be more than 5 minutes?

You usually want to avoid development times of _less_ than 5 minutes, as it's hard to avoid uneven development in such situations.

Grain should not go up if you adjust your times accordingly to compensate.

allan

 

[MonoAsia]

Which said time should not be more than 5 minutes?

You usually want to avoid development times of _less_ than 5 minutes, as it's hard to avoid uneven development in such situations.

Grain should not go up if you adjust your times accordingly to compensate.

allan

Ok, I got it. Should avoid development less than 5 mins...

 

[vet173]

Read it as, use a developer combination that has a developing time of at least 5 munutes.

 

[MonoAsia]

Back to 27C, issit ok to develop at that temperature?

 

[titrisol]

Sure is, actually most commercial labs will be developing at high temp. If you have all your solutions at the same temperature and you develop properly I think most of the characteristics of the film/dev combo shouldn;t be affected.

27C will require some adjustments in time, also some measures fro "tropical" development may need to be taken.
Look into a chemistry book for such recommendations.

Presoaking may help as it increases dev time slightly and helps with uniformity and air bubbles with such short times.


I think your times will be about 1/2 of those at 20C, thus increasing dilution will have to be the way to go in order to keep dev times in a manageable range.
As you increase dilution from stock to 1+1 add a 40% each time

 

[Donald Miller]

The typical compensation is about 5% per farenheit degree of variance.

 

[juan]

I regularly develop my film at 27C (80F) in the summer. I do so because I am unable to get my wash water at a lower temperature and it seems to be better to keep all solutions at about the same temperature.

I've found that I can take 4% of the suggested times for lower temperatures, and subtract the result for each degree of temperature change. For instance, if the suggested time is 10 minutes at 70F, then 4% of 10 is 0.4, multiply times the 10-degree difference - or 4 minutes, subtract from the original 10 to give 6-minutes develop time. Now I work in Fahrenheit - degrees are a little smaller than in Celcius, so 5% change for each degree may work better for you. You'll need to test, but it can be done.

As others have said, pick a developer and dilution that can give you longer development times - one of the high dilutions of HC-110, or Rodinal maybe. I use Pyrocat HD with no problem at these temperatures.
juan

 

[Donald Qualls]

For what it's worth, once when I was in high school I developed a roll of Verichrome Pan in HC-110 Dilution B at 90 F (that's, what, about 32 C). Development time was under two minutes, as I recall, but that was the temperature I had and there was no way to cool the darkroom (actually my dormitory room) below that. The negatives, as I recall, actually looked pretty good -- but it's been about thirty years; anything with images on it would probably have looked good to me at that point.

 

[canuhead]

When I used to shoot hockey and baseball on deadline back in the day, we regularly souped Tmax3200 at 100 degree C. Looked better than 20 c.

 

[doughowk]

Diafine

I'd suggest using Diafine - a good developer for warmer climates since time/temperature have little if any effect. It was often used by photojournalists who developed film on location (hotels with no AC). Check out Oberdorf.org for more info.

 

[Helen B]

When I lived in Singapore I usually developed at 27°C to keep all the steps at the same temperature. Water etc. stored in bottles in my apartment would be about that temperature. Mains water was often much hotter - up to 50°C - because the pipes came over the roof, so I would not use that for washing. I used Xtol diluted 1+3 most of the time.

If I needed to develop at a lower temperature, say 24°C, I used a mixture of mains water and water from the fridge to dilute the developer to the correct temperature. The stop, fixes and wash would be tempered in a water/ice bath to bring them down to about 24°C to avoid temperature changes.

If you follow the link below and look at the 'Pieces of Evidence' series you'll see TMZ shot in Singapore and developed at 27°C.

Best,
Helen

 

[canuhead]

now that my memory has gotten clearer, I think it was tmax3200 at 100 deg F, not celsius. That would be boiling !

 

[Abbazz]

I second Doughowk's suggestion: use Diafine. I live in tropical Asia and the temperature inside the house (with air conditioning) is about 27-28 deg C all year long. I soup all my negatives in Diafine for the recommended time (3 minutes in A + 3 minutes in B) with very good and repeatable results.

One piece of advice though: don't follow the overstated ISO ratings for films developped in Diafine. Just use 1.5x to 2x the nominal ISO rating of the film and you should be OK.

Abbazz

 

[Jim Jones]

I try to keep my darkroom between 20C and 25C, and develop at whatever temperature the darkroom and chemicals are. If that is a few degrees above 25C, it still works well enough. As mentioned by others, a presoak promotes uniform development at short times.

 

[MonoAsia]

For those who use both temperature. What about the quality between 20C and 27C negative? Are there and difference?

 

[fschifano]

For those who use both temperature. What about the quality between 20C and 27C negative? Are there and difference?

That's just what we've all been saying. If you make the appropriate adjustments to your development times and you keep all your processing chemicals, including wash water, at or near the same temperature, the results will be identical. Click on the link below for a temperature conversion chart from Ilford. The data are good. I use it myself with confidence.

http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/2006210208211880.pdf

 

[juan]

For those who use both temperature. What about the quality between 20C and 27C negative? Are there and difference?

I develop at about 20C in the winter, and I can't tell any difference from my summer negatives developed at 27C. As said above, that's the purpose of making adjustments - you'll need to do a little testing, but it's not hard to do if you pay attention. Also, don't take too seriously what you read about what results you should achieve. Test in your own darkroom, under your own conditions and make your own charts, etc.

Try it.
juan

 

[djkloss]

That's just what we've all been saying. If you make the appropriate adjustments to your development times and you keep all your processing chemicals, including wash water, at or near the same temperature, the results will be identical. Click on the link below for a temperature conversion chart from Ilford. The data are good. I use it myself with confidence.

http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/2006210208211880.pdf

Thanks for the link. I can't wait to try. It can be very frustrating you know. I was almost going to revert to color just so I could go shooting! I'm wondering about using HC-110 as a compensating dev. (Ansel Adams "The Negative" at 1:30.) That way the times wouldn't be so short?

Thanks...

Dorothy