Developing prints in Dektol at 78 degrees

It's summer in Florida, and I don't have much hope of getting my printing chemicals down to 68 degrees. I could do it in the spare bathroom, but now that I'm doing bigger prints and had to move to the bedroom, everything is more makeshift. Will it work? I'm wondering about the contrast. Nearly all of my negs have plenty of contrast, so that's OK if it decreases the contrast, but there may be issues if it increases it.

Is the room air conditioned? The main issue with heat is development time, and how fast prints will go "muddy" looking. If the room is A/C'd then ambient temp chems would be as cool as the room and shouldn't be an issue. Conversely, if the room is hot, you will need a tempering bath to keep your trays cooled. Primarily the developer needs cooled, stop and fix (I don't believe) would be affected as much.

We keep our air conditioned house at 73-74 and I have been printing with the chemicals at room temperature since 1976 with no problems. I don't think a few degrees one way or another will really matter. If necessary adjust your developing time but i doubt you will have to. I am in south Florida.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

I too live in Florida and don't even bother to check the temperature of my print developer. Never experienced any problems. To repeat what has been said on APUG many times, prints are developed to completion. At this point the rate of change of density with time has significantly slowed. So watch the print and not the clock.

Yes, the room is A/C, so the humidity is not bad, but the ambient temps do tend towards 76 to 78 in the hottest part of the day in the back bedroom, which gets the direct sun in the mornings till about 2 PM. I won't worry about it then. The test strip should tell the tale just to confirm. Thanks!

If you find that developing at 76 is too hot for your work flow, you can find old tropical formulas that were designed to work at higher temps.

PDH said:

If you find that developing at 76 is too hot for your work flow, you can find old tropical formulas that were designed to work at higher temps.

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While there are tropical developers for film I have never seen one for papers. So the search might be a long and difficult one.

I develop my films at higher temperatures than that when in Turkey, there's no problems just shorter development times.

I print with my developer tray on a dish-warmer probably set a touch higher, but I use warm tone papers and warm tone developers and get best results that way.

Your not in the Tropical developer range

Ian

Gerald C Koch said:

While there are tropical developers for film I have never seen one for papers. So the search might be a long and difficult one.

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I think I have a formula in an old Kodak book from the 40s. It may the only tropical paper developer I have seen. Then again it could be that I confused tropical film and tropical paper, will check when I get home and have time to find the book.

When in the Air Force during the waning days of the Vietnam War we used portable darkrooms that had AC, but the AC was not always reliable so we worked with room temps in the 80s and even 90s waiting for the AC to be fixed. We used Dektol or GAF , at time we just toss in a few ice cubes and add stock developer to make for the ice as it melted. Not perfect but it did work.

Have you considered using factorial development? That could at least partly handle the variation in temperature and development time.

Michael R 1974 said:

At one time way back Kodak recommended D-163 for developing papers under tropical conditions and listed development times up to 30C for bromide papers, but this was back when emulsions were softer. As Ian and Gerald have said 78F should be no problem.

D-163 contained more salt (not sulfate, just extra sulfite) than some other print developers.

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D163 was the standard Powder Kodak print (& Universal) developer in Britain and Europe for years, Dektol (D72) was not sold here until recent years.

Going through Kodak Formulae books there's no specific Tropical paper developers, but like you say D163 is recommended for Tropical use in UK publications. It wasn't sold in the US.

Ian

Michael R 1974 said:

Thanks for the additional historcial detail as usual, Ian. Always interesting. I had no idea D-163 was the standard in Britain.

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There were quite a few Kodak formulae sold commercially here in the UK that never saw the light of day in the US, Kodinol for instance Kodak's equivalent of Rodinal and Ilford's Certinal (1907 approx until after WWII).

Kodak Ltd Research at Harrow and Eastman Kodak Research in Rochester were both founded and staffed from the research department of Wratten and Wainwright which was run by KE Mees with Sheppard so had common roots. But both companies took over smaller competitors and some formulae would have come from (or evolved from) them.

Ian

Ian Grant said:

There were quite a few Kodak formulae sold commercially here in the UK that never saw the light of day in the US

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Also Kodak's HDD High Definition Developer an interesting spin on acutance developers.

Gerald C Koch said:

Also Kodak's HDD High Definition Developer an interesting spin on acutance developers.

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I've not really double checked but there's quite a number of Kodak published formulae in the D130's-D170's range that appear in British Kodak publications but not corresponding Eastman Kodak ones of the same period. Many of these were available commercially,

These developers highlight that photography went in a different direction in Europe, this was largely due to the huge take up of miniature formats with high quality cameras like Leica, Contax, Rolleiflex etc. Beaumont Newhall's "History of Photography" is a very US biased perspective and Peter Turner wrote a History of Photography to address this that took a more global view.

It's Hans Windisch who really highlights the European direction before WWII in his book "Die Neu Schule" luckily also published in English as "The New Photo School". He's highlighting how to get the best out of miniature formats, (at that time 120 was deemed a Miniature format), and this was a period when acutance and high definition developers became more common in Europe but weren't sold in the US.

So we had Ilford Hyfin, Kodak HDD, Johnsons Definal, Neofyn Red & Neofyn Blue, Widisch's own developers, Beutler and late PAterson (Crawley) Acutol and Acutol S plus many others, not forgetting the variations of Rodinal from virtually every Eurpean manufacturer.

Ian

Hi Ian

Johnson's Azol - ie Rodinal

Noel

Xmas said:

Hi Ian

Johnson's Azol - ie Rodinal

Noel

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I did list all the Rodinal alternatives once, I think the oldest is Certinal, Mees and Sheppard investigated p-Aminophenol and PPD developers etc at Wratten and Wainright about 3 years later in 1910, I have a paper they wrote somewhere. I'd guess Kodinol came from that work.

Last week I bought 3 Kodak catalogues, 2 1959 & 60 are Dealer (Professional) catalogues and marked Confidential has the Net & List prices, the third is a Kodak Professional Catalogue no date and doesn't list prices. The dealer's margin is 50% on most items. I also have a 1940 Professional catalogue with a special Wartime Conditions of Sale.

The catalogues list developers I've not come across before, some formulae numbers I've not seen but also some named developers I'd not heard of before. Some of these will just be name changes, DK20 became Kodatol, D159 - Kodurol-Hydroquinone, and I should be able to identify those I don't know. Others are new liquid versions of existing developers probably re-formulated as PQ version of MQ developers (like Ilford and Agfa).

Ian

Another Florida Apug'er here. I've never given a thought to paper developer temperatures when I was doing the wet darkroom. And not air conditioned, just some leftover cool air wafting into the garage.

My mother, who was born and raised in Brazil, told me that her father used to develop the film he shot in an ice cooled outer waterbath. Probably ortho film then, I do think I remember her talking about trays. No, not sheet film, either. Most of images I have from that time and place are rather tiny contact prints.