developer volum and sheet film

developer volume and sheet film

i am trying to figure out the min number of sheets of exposed 4x5 delta 100 i can process at one time. i use a yankee daylight tank film holder and instead of putting it back in the tank to process use a 3 qt tupperware container. i have been using a 15 to 30 dilution of pmk. i was given a bottle of hc110 and want to use it at the h dilution and try it. how do you figure out how many or how few sheets of film you can process.
thanks
mitch

The data sheet should have the nunber of square inches that can be process with a gallon, sometime quart. 4X5=20square inches. If you dont have a data sheet go the Kodak Web site.

Capacity for any particular developer is usually expressed in terms of area of film. One 35mm/36 exp roll is about the same as one 120 roll or 1 8x10" sheet or 4 4x5" sheets.

The rule for HC-110 is that you need to use a minimum of 3 ml of syrup for each 8x10 equivalent, regardless of dilution. IIRC, that Yankee holds somewhere between 1500 and 1800 ml, which (at Dilution H) would be a minimum of about 23.4 ml of syrup -- good enough for up to about 30 sheets of 4x5. Yes, that's silly; your Yankee tank will only hold, at most, something like a dozen sheets. So you have plenty of capacity; you could actually use Dilution F or possibly even Dilution G and still be just fine.

However, if I'm reading your post correctly, you want to save and reuse the developer (presumably in order to get maximum use from it, for economy) -- in doing that, you also need to extend your times based on the fraction of the developer capacity you've used, or else get some HC-110R replenisher and switch to a replenished process. I think Kodak has information in the data sheet on how much you need to extend times if reusing unreplenished Dilution B (if not, you should be able to use the capacity information for D-76 stock solution interchangeably with Dilution B); you'd treat Dilution H as if you'd processed twice as much film, since it has half the developer in it to begin with.