Do you twiddle?

studiocarter said:

I have examples of horizontal banding in sky's tones on 6x9 thin negatives. Now I'm wondering if that is not a result of scraping emulsion onto the plastic backing showing up when emulsion is thin. It may be a result of twirling developer the same way all the time. I'll have to try doing inversions along with spinning the stur stick.
Is this effect a result of spinning?
View attachment 165479

Michael.

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I've had this but only with development times under 5 minutes

Whether I twiddle or not is a private matter and none of your business.

studiocarter said:

I load 120 film tail first in a Patterson tank then spin clockwise. No back and forth or no inversions.
Left to right reading properly orientated, I don't know, tail to head spinning.
If you recognize this then I invert and twist next roll!

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Oops, I load head first. Sorry. Tail first never works. The taped end goes into the flanges first.

The banding went away with the new agitation method, inversions 5x every 30 seconds, no spinning with the little stir rod, the lid was on the whole time. Same film. Same time. Same developer.

f4 1/100 Red filter, 160 light, infinity focus. The clouds are sharper than the tree??! But no banding in the sky like the other rolls show.

Congrats!

Eric Rose said:

Way back in the early 70's I was experimenting with various development techniques and equipment. I was looking for the least amount of grain and the best sharpness I could get from Panatomic X and TriX both rated at box speeds.

Up until that point I had always developed my film in Honeywell tanks with metal spiral reels. The Paterson System was introduced to me so I tried it as well. One option with Paterson was to twiddle the film back and forth during your agitation intervals. Or you could just put the cap on and do the usual inversion agitation.

I tried both and really could not find any real difference. These days if I have two 120 rolls in a tank I use the twiddle technique due to a sore wrist but still use inversion for up to two 35mm reels. Ya I know the weight difference is not that much but it does make a difference to me.

So my question to you is, do you twiddle or not? Have you noticed any REAL difference between the two agitation methods?

I am not really interested in hearing about your Jobo's, or stand development etc.

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Eric,since I started rotation development in a Jobo, I never looked back.

studiocarter said:

The banding went away with the new agitation method, inversions 5x every 30 seconds, no spinning with the little stir rod, the lid was on the whole time. Same film. Same time. Same developer.
View attachment 165780
f4 1/100 Red filter, 160 light, infinity focus. The clouds are sharper than the tree??! But no banding in the sky like the other rolls show.

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Lots of grey sky in this image and exactly the areas I would be doing this type of agitation with.

If I could afford a Jobo I would have one.

I have always twirled in Patterson tanks. I only go one way, never back and forth. I do it so the end of the film on a reel isn't catching the liquid and wanting to force it to the centre of the reel. I've never had uniformity problems, the film has always come out evenly developed.

Eric, you're welcome to come over and run your film on my Jobo if you want. Just supply the chemistry of your choice.

I started with a Yankee tank, and “twiddled” back and forth with good results.

A few months later I got the SS Nikor tanks and inverted 5 seconds (2 inversions) every 30 seconds, again with good results.

Then a photographer taught me to roll the tanks horizontally (like a Jobo), using the same 5-seconds every 30. This worked out to about 2 revolutions (720-degrees) each agitation cycle.

Through all this, I didn’t notice much difference, and no streaks. If anything, the density was slightly greater with the inversion method.

I think we all can agree that almost all methods will work most of the time with great results, Images with lots of detail and confusion are probably the easiest to process, very hard
to see mistakes amongst the trees branches.

Portraits on grey background, on the other hand would be the toughest to get even backgrounds.

I think water quality is probably the first and formost issue with bad process, and we all have different situations. I think Agitation in the first 15-25 seconds comes second in good process.
I have pretty much used every method of processing film and will say that stainless steel tanks are every bit as good as Jobo's and tray processing is as well, (I just am too clumsy to do it right)/

When we would test a new dip and dunk machine, or general yearly maintenance on a dip and dunk machine we would load up the racks with film with slight overall non image exposure
and would then evaluate each film not only on its parameters and internal areas, as well placement in the rack. by reading the film with a densitometer .

What we would be looking for is flow irregularities , density differences, and if we found these problems then we hired Terry and he would come in and go over the whole agitation system in place and
modify till we had even sheets of film.

In the instructions, Paterson state that the twirling stick is for initial agitation only to get rid of air bubbles (I think) and that agitation thereafter should be by inversion.


Steve.

Steve Smith said:

In the instructions, Paterson state that the twirling stick is for initial agitation only to get rid of air bubbles (I think) and that agitation thereafter should be by inversion.


Steve.

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I always found a solid bang on the table was required to get rid of air bubbles, I have never felt comfortable smashing a jobo plastic tank on the table , but give me a stainless steel tank and whoooa.

Steve Smith said:

In the instructions, Paterson state that the twirling stick is for initial agitation only to get rid of air bubbles (I think) and that agitation thereafter should be by inversion.


Steve.

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Thank you for that. I never saw the instructions.
Michael

Craig said:

I have always twirled in Patterson tanks. I only go one way, never back and forth. I do it so the end of the film on a reel isn't catching the liquid and wanting to force it to the centre of the reel. I've never had uniformity problems, the film has always come out evenly developed.

Eric, you're welcome to come over and run your film on my Jobo if you want. Just supply the chemistry of your choice.

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Thanks Craig.

studiocarter said:

Thank you for that. I never saw the instructions.
Michael

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No. I'm not the sort to read instructions, I just read it on another forum!


Steve.