Developing Times & Compensation - please help

Nicole · Mar 23, 2005

Hi everyone

As some of you know, I've only just recently taken the plunge into the darkroom and have a little problem I'd like to solve:

Today I did a shoot at the beach before and during sunset and used AGFA APX400, for a change. I had all APX400 film but an APX100 snuck into my batch and so was exposed at 400ISO.

Can I save my exposures on this roll somehow?
How do I compensate in my developing time?

This is what my new Rodinal Bottle instructions tell me:
AGFApan APX100. ASA100.
Rodinal 1+25 at 8 min.
Rodinal 1+50 at 17 min.
20°Celcius

AGFApan APX400. ASA400.
Rodinal 1+25 at 7 min.
Rodinal 1+50 at 11 min.
20°Celcius
Agitation: Continuous agitation during first minute. Afterwards every 30 seconds.

This is what my up-to-date College handout tells me:
AGFA APX100. ASA100.
Rodinal 1+100 at 20 min.
20°Celcius

AGFA APX400. ASA400.
Rodinal 1+100 at 17 min.
Continuous agitation! 24°Celcius

AGFA APX400. ASA200.
Rodinal 1+100 at 15 min.
20°Celcius

AGFA APX100. ASA100.
D-76 1+1 at 13.5 min.
20°Celcius

AGFA APX400. ASA250-400.
D-76 1+1 11 min.
20°Celcius

This is what the new AGFA film box instructions tell me:
(Attention: New developing times!)
AGFA APX100. ASA100.
Rodinal 1+25 at 8 min.
20°Celcius

AGFA APX400. ASA400.
Rodinal 1+25 at 10 min.
20°Celcius
Agitation: Continuous agitation during first minute. Afterwards every 30 seconds.

I could do with some experience and guidance here. Thanks very much for your input!

Kind regards,
Nicole

Donald Qualls · Mar 23, 2005

The simple answer is that you need to push develop the stray APX 100 by two stops (which will not help the shadow detail much, but will at least bring the midtones into a reasonable range by way of increasing contrast). To do that, you'd generally develop for about twice the "normal" time for your film -- based on the information you posted above (I've never used either APX films or Rodinal), that would be either 16 minutes in Rodinal 1+25 (based on the APX box), 27 minutes in D-76 1+1, 40 minutes in Rodinal 1+100 (the latter, especially, might benefit by being increased to an hour with only one or two agitations over that time after the first minute -- longer time with less agitation will bring up the shadows more) based on your college handout, or 16/34 minutes with Rondinal 1+25/1+50 based on the Rodinal bottle.

Of that lot, I'd be strongly inclined to go with either the D-76 1+1 or Rodinal 1+100, in either case reducing agitation and extending development even further (with D-76, I'd suggest agitation every 3 minutes and adding another 25% to development, for a total of about 34 minutes) to help out the highlights. You still won't get as much shadow detail as you will with the APX 400, but it'll be much better than with conventional push processing.

johnnywalker · Mar 23, 2005

The massive development chart only takes it up to 200 with Rodinal and 100 with D-76. Personally I'd add 20 per cent on to the 200 time for Rodinal, but check out the site - possibly you'll find some other combinations that will work.

http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.html

Good luck,

BWGirl · Mar 23, 2005

Hey Nicole!

Here is a link to an article about push/pull processing. It might also give you a place to start.

http://www3.telus.net/drkrm/push-pull.htm

rbarker · Mar 23, 2005

Although shooting ISO 100 film at 400 sounds terrible, it's only a two stop under-exposure. Depending on lighting and other variables, you might get away with developing "normally" and not notice too much difference.

The Massive Dev Chart suggests 11 minutes at 20° C for Rodinal 1+25 for APX100 shot at ISO 200, or 8 minutes for it being shot at 100 - a 37% increase in time for the 1-stop difference. I think I'd try the 11 minutes, splitting the difference if the work is not highly critical. If it's very crucial, I'd suggest shooting another test roll at 400, and experiment with the test roll first.

One of the resident Rodinal experts may have better suggestions, though.

Lee L · Mar 23, 2005

Donald Qualls said:
Of that lot, I'd be strongly inclined to go with either the D-76 1+1 or Rodinal 1+100, in either case reducing agitation and extending development even further (with D-76, I'd suggest agitation every 3 minutes and adding another 25% to development, for a total of about 34 minutes) to help out the highlights. You still won't get as much shadow detail as you will with the APX 400, but it'll be much better than with conventional push processing.

I wouldn't recommend Rodinal 1:100 for push processing. As you increase dilution with Rodinal and standard agitation (I haven't tried stand development for pushing with Rodinal), the film speed tends to drop. Most slow films are at half box speed with Rodinal 1:100, and you'd be giving up shadow detail in an already underexposed negative.

There are some recommendations for APX-100 at EI 400 in Xtol and some other developers on the massive development chart at digitaltruth.com. The highest speed there for Rodinal is EI 200 in a 1:25 dilution. HC110 is also listed there with higher speeds. I'd suspect that Xtol gives the highest natural E.I.

Lee

kaiyen · Mar 23, 2005

I thought that diluting accutance developers resulted in an effective increase in film speed?

ahhhh! getting confused again.
allan

Kevin Caulfield · Mar 23, 2005

Regarding the processing time for the APX400, if the box gives you the new times then you must have the new film. Agfa changed their APX400 a year or two ago. So you need 10 minutes at 1:25 as opposed to the old 7 minutes at 1:25 in Rodinal.

Regarding the unintentional push of the APX100 to ISO400, as mentioned above it's only a two-stop push. As a rule of thumb you should increase development by a third for every one-stop push. I would probably push it just the one stop, i.e. add a third to the development time, and you should get reasonable results.

Hope this helps.

Nige · Mar 23, 2005

How important is it? If important, reshoot another roll in similar conditions and try it 1st. Cut off a 30cm or so piece and soup that, then adjust if needed and try another 30cm piece, that way you can dial it in without wasting complete rolls of film. Have you used APX400 in Rodinal before? Not a combination I'd care for from my limited experience of it. If it's real important, reshoot a roll, get some Microphen, XTOL or DD-X and do the snip test. If it's not important but you really would like something decent, don't use Rodinal... if you don't care, use Rodinal but not too diluted, and add a little bit of time to the development, I'd go with Kevins thought of 1/3 extra at most. Easyier to add some contrast in printing than trying to tame something grossly over-developed. I do use Rodinal 1:100 (18-20mins @ 20C) but film speed is greatly reduced as mentioned above.

Nicole · Mar 24, 2005

I think I'll get some XTOL and give that a try as I have heard it's fantastic and I'd prefer a finer grain. At the same time I"ll develop a roll in Rodinal and see what the differences are. Thank you all so much for your input! Kind regards, Nicole

JohnArs · Mar 24, 2005

Hi Nicole

Your are on the right track with XTOL take it undiluted at 20° Celcius for about 11 minutes as a starting point.
And do a test then with the 400 ASA one in XTOL and one in Rodinal and then take a loup or make some enlargementsyou as a woman will see the winner!

P.S. For the 400 ASA Agfapan is a good starting point 8 minutes at 20° Celcius!
Good luck!

JohnArs · Mar 24, 2005

Hi

I forgot to say this 11 minutes are for the underexposed Agfapan 100. In your case I would the development time expand to 12 minutes only if it was a contrasty scene and then in the beginning all 1 minute shake and after 8 minutes only all 2 minutes shake. So you get the contast a bit down. If it was just a normal contrast scene then just 11 minutes with all 30 second shake!
Good luck!

kaiyen · Mar 24, 2005

JohnArs,
I presume the reason for different agitation intervals is to help control contrast while using a longer dev time to help with shadow detail.

Personally, I _always_ stick to a consistent agitation method throughout the development. I've seen references to something in The Negative (which I have not read all the way through yet) about using a different pattern at some point during development, but I have not found a real benefit to doing so in my tests.

Therefore, I always agitate 2x every 30 seconds, except when doing TXT @ 1600 in Microphen, when I agitate only once every 3 _minutes_.

allan

JohnArs · Mar 24, 2005

Allan

You are right works quiet well with Xtol the shadows show more details and the lights are also better printable! Its not a huge difference but sometimes exactly what is needed to get easy printable negs.

Developing Times & Compensation - please help

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