First time developing with Rodinol

MCB18 · Sep 22, 2024

Just developed some 220 FN-64 in Rodinol because I’m running out of HC-110 and holy cow, I’m stunned! I was expecting to get a crunchy high contrast negative, however when I pulled the film out the contrast actually looked very nice, and I can’t see any grain whatsoever even when looking through a magnifying glass. I really wish I could scan these properly because I don’t think my DSLR scanning will do this any kind of justice. Kinda a silly thread for now since the film isn’t even dry yet, but I just wanted to post since I was so surprised!

paddycook · Sep 22, 2024

MCB18 said:
Just developed some 220 FN-64 in Rodinol because I’m running out of HC-110 and holy cow, I’m stunned! I was expecting to get a crunchy high contrast negative, however when I pulled the film out the contrast actually looked very nice, and I can’t see any grain whatsoever even when looking through a magnifying glass. I really wish I could scan these properly because I don’t think my DSLR scanning will do this any kind of justice. Kinda a silly thread for now since the film isn’t even dry yet, but I just wanted to post since I was so surprised!

I’m a recent convert to Rodinal too. It looks great at 1+25 with Acros II, Delta 400, TriX. Lovely grain structure & sharpness.

oxcanary · Sep 23, 2024

Bit of an irony with its coarse grain reputation. I found it fantastic at 1:300 for Kodak Pan at 12 minutes

M-88 · Sep 23, 2024

I don't know if Rodinal will give coarse grain with Kodak Pan, especially with 1:300 dilution. Tri-X or HP5+ with 1:25 is a different story. Even then, grain is perfectly fine in prints.

I sometimes use it with FP4+, when I'm out of D-76.

rduraoc · Sep 23, 2024

There used to be a Holy Church of Rodinal here since the times of APUG (now Photrio), and it's the only church I've been praying at for many years.

Romanko · Sep 23, 2024

MCB18 said:
Just developed some 220 FN-64 in Rodinol

Could you please share your dilution and developing time? Do you know what film is this FN-64?

Romanko · Sep 23, 2024

oxcanary said:
I found it fantastic at 1:300 for Kodak Pan at 12 minutes

Do you mean Technical Pan? At what temperature are you developing? How is the contrast compared to POTA or compensating developers like Barry Thorntons'?

I have some TP in a 70 mm roll and I am still wrestling with its high contrast.

loccdor · Sep 23, 2024

I saw this Technical Pan Rodinal recipe on Flickr that has results that look great to me.

16 EI
Rodinal 1+150 for thirteen minutes
Agitate with 30 seconds initial inversions, then 3 inversions every 3 minutes

MCB18 · Sep 23, 2024

Romanko said:
Could you please share your dilution and developing time? Do you know what film is this FN-64?

1+50, 11 minutes, 20°C.
agitate first 30 seconds then 5 times every minute.

As far as the film, it is Astrum/Svema FN-64. fairly certain it’s Aviphot 80. Really fine grain, high resolution film. Extremely good film/dev combo, I was not expecting this to work so well.

Chuck1 · Sep 23, 2024

Try to get you hands on agfa apx 25, grain, what grain...

MCB18 · Sep 23, 2024

Chuck1 said:
Try to get you hands on agfa apx 25, grain, what grain...

Thinking about ordering some MZ-3

Chuck1 · Sep 23, 2024

Never heard of mz3, so I checked it out.
The film photography project site examples are very soft focus(the brick seams in the house are anything but crisp), stupid question but is this film capable of fine resolution ( i like tack sharp fog)

MCB18 · Sep 23, 2024

Chuck1 said:
Never heard of mz3, so I checked it out.
The film photography project site examples are very soft focus(the brick seams in the house are anything but crisp), stupid question but is this film capable of fine resolution ( i like tack sharp fog)

Yes, it’s meant for microfilm applications, extremely high resolving power.

Romanko · Sep 23, 2024

Chuck1 said:
is this film capable of fine resolution

The nominal resolution is 108 lines per mm (not too shabby).
While we are here, the sensitivity is 2.8 to 5.5 GOST (ISO 3 to 6), the exposure latitude is 0.9 (in lg H, or 3 stops) and the recommended gamma is 3. Maximum density is 3, base-plus-fog 0.04 (quite low).

I have doubts that it will make a good film for pictorial photography.

According to Jeremy Mudd his MZ-3 was manufactured by Kodak.

Embracing weird and unusual film - Svema MZ-3 — Jeremy Mudd Photography

For 2020, one of my resolutions is to shoot more film than I did in 2019, and I’ve started the year off with a bang, having already shot several rolls since January 1st. I even went to Hocking Hills last weekend and only brought my RB67 and shot several rolls, with no digital equipment as a back-up.

www.jeremymuddphoto.com

Either Svema contracted Kodak to make MZ-3 to the Soviet specifications of 1980 or this is a totally different film.

MCB18 · Sep 24, 2024

Romanko said:
The nominal resolution is 108 lines per mm (not too shabby).
While we are here, the sensitivity is 2.8 to 5.5 GOST (ISO 3 to 6), the exposure latitude is 0.9 (in lg H, or 3 stops) and the recommended gamma is 3. Maximum density is 3, base-plus-fog 0.04 (quite low).

I have doubts that it will make a good film for pictorial photography.

According to Jeremy Mudd his MZ-3 was manufactured by Kodak.

Embracing weird and unusual film - Svema MZ-3 — Jeremy Mudd Photography

For 2020, one of my resolutions is to shoot more film than I did in 2019, and I’ve started the year off with a bang, having already shot several rolls since January 1st. I even went to Hocking Hills last weekend and only brought my RB67 and shot several rolls, with no digital equipment as a back-up.

www.jeremymuddphoto.com

Either Svema contracted Kodak to make MZ-3 to the Soviet specifications of 1980 or this is a totally different film.

Probably just a low speed Kodak microfilm that Astrum is selling. To be completely honest I’m not surprised, and with how hard microfilm is to find nowadays, I’m just glad it’s for sale at all.

guangong · Sep 24, 2024

A long time user. When Agfa announced discontinuation of Rodinal I stocked up, not knowing what the future would hold. Besides an open bottle, I still have two bottles remaining of my original stash.

cliveh · Sep 24, 2024

Rodinal is a superb developer. Just get the dilution right. I would suggest 1:50

oxcanary · Sep 25, 2024

Romanko said:
Do you mean Technical Pan? At what temperature are you developing? How is the contrast compared to POTA or compensating developers like Barry Thorntons'?

I have some TP in a 70 mm roll and I am still wrestling with its high contrast.

Yes I mean technical pan -sorry

Philippe-Georges · Sep 25, 2024

MCB18 said:
1+50, 11 minutes, 20°C.
agitate first 30 seconds then 5 times every minute.

As far as the film, it is Astrum/Svema FN-64. fairly certain it’s Aviphot 80. Really fine grain, high resolution film. Extremely good film/dev combo, I was not expecting this to work so well.

AVIPHOT is/was an AGFA-Gevaert product and is still made at the Gevaert facility in Mortsel (Belgium).
Rodinal was an AGFA-Gevaert product too, although they weren't meant for each other.

Anyway, here is AVIPHOT's tech sheet:

MCB18 · Sep 25, 2024

Philippe-Georges said:
AVIPHOT is/was an AGFA-Gevaert product and is still made at the Gevaert facility in Mortsel (Belgium).
Rodinal was an AGFA-Gevaert product too, although they weren't meant for each other.

Anyway, here is AVIPHOT's tech sheet:

Yeah they still make it and sell it by the master roll, I looked into getting it but I would have needed to order… a LOT of film, so not worth investigating further than an email. I’m definitely not complaining about getting it from Astrum though, still way cheaper than other resellers

Philippe-Georges · Sep 25, 2024

MCB18 said:
Yeah they still make it and sell it by the master roll, I looked into getting it but I would have needed to order… a LOT of film, so not worth investigating further than an email. I’m definitely not complaining about getting it from Astrum though, still way cheaper than other resellers

Japan Camera Hunter sells a Gevaert film as Street Pan which is 400ASA, and in 120 rolls too, and, I think, it is Gevaert's Traffic Observation Film.
Perhaps it's interesting to have it along Aviphot as a faster (classic-) film?

BTW: If you see a developer formula which has an identification number starting with the G letter, it is an original Gevaert formula.

PS: at the time, before Gevaert acquired AGFA (in 1946-'47 as a war damage compensation), and even there after, they published a lot of very interesting books giving an even larger lot of advices and interesting formulas... I collect them.

JParker · Sep 25, 2024

Philippe-Georges said:
Japan Camera Hunter sells a Gevaert film as Street Pan which is 400ASA, and in 120 rolls too, and, I think, it is Gevaert's Traffic Observation Film.
Perhaps it's interesting to have it along Aviphot as a faster (classic-) film?

Japan Camera Hunter JCH Street Pan is also only simply repackaged Agfa Aviphot Pan 200 film. So it is exactly the same film as Rollei Superpan 200, Rollei Retro 400S and Rollei Infrared. But Street Pan is much more expensive than all the other Aviphot Pan 200 repackagings.
I have compared these films under exactly the same test conditions, and the results have been absolutely identical.

Agfa-Gevaert is not producing any specific traffic surveillance film. Which is clearly visible by looking at their film programme.
The film which is partly still used for this purpose is also Aviphot Pan 200.

Philippe-Georges said:
PS: at the time, before Gevaert acquired AGFA (in 1946-'47 as a war damage compensation), and even there after, they published a lot of very interesting books giving an even larger lot of advices and interesting formulas... I collect them.

Gevaert has not acquired Agfa in the 40ies.
Instead in 1964 Agfa and Gevaert merged, fused into Agfa-Gevaert.

Philippe-Georges · Sep 25, 2024

JParker said:
Japan Camera Hunter JCH Street Pan is also only simply repackaged Agfa Aviphot Pan 200 film. So it is exactly the same film as Rollei Superpan 200, Rollei Retro 400S and Rollei Infrared. But Street Pan is much more expensive than all the other Aviphot Pan 200 repackagings.
I have compared these films under exactly the same test conditions, and the results have been absolutely identical.

Agfa-Gevaert is not producing any specific traffic surveillance film. Which is clearly visible by looking at their film programme.
The film which is partly still used for this purpose is also Aviphot Pan 200.

Gevaert has not acquired Agfa in the 40ies.
Instead in 1964 Agfa and Gevaert merged, fused into Agfa-Gevaert.

About the Street Pan and Aviphot Pan 200, you can be right (why the difference in sensitivity?), and where is that story about Traffic Film coming from then (I didn't invent that, you are right when saying that the internet is full of strange stories).

But about that merging, it is the first time in all these years (since '74) I heard it, all the Gevaert people I knew told me about the war...

JParker · Sep 25, 2024

Philippe-Georges said:
About the Street Pan and Aviphot Pan 200, you can be right (why the difference in sensitivity?),

Difference in sensitivity: You can ask the same question to Maco who are offering Aviphot Pan 200 as Rollei Retro 400S and Rollei Infrared 400.
The answer is in all cases the same: Misleading marketing. Period.
ISO 400 films are generally more popular than ISO 200 films. So these film repacking guys simply increase their sales and profits by labelling lower speed films as higher speed.
With Aviphot Pan 200 that is even more problematic as the 200 speed is given by Agfa only for aerial photography (no shadow detail needed in that application).
On the ground in pictorial photography the real speed (shadow detail) is even two stops less.

Philippe-Georges said:
and where is that story about Traffic Film coming from then (I didn't invent that, you are right when saying that the internet is full of strange stories).

Again misleading marketing to fool the customers and hide the real source.

Philippe-Georges said:
But about that merging, it is the first time in all these years (since '74) I heard it, all the Gevaert people I knew told me about the war...

Please have a look here:

Agfa-Gevaert - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I am not a big fan of wikipedia, but before wikipedia I have read exactly the same about the company history in several printed photo magazines.

titrisol · Sep 25, 2024

Chuck1 said:
Try to get you hands on agfa apx 25, grain, what grain...

at some point there was also Rollei TechPan (ATP) which was extremely fine grained

First time developing with Rodinol

16 EI Rodinal 1+150 for thirteen minutes Agitate with 30 seconds initial inversions, then 3 inversions every 3 minutes​

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16 EI
Rodinal 1+150 for thirteen minutes
Agitate with 30 seconds initial inversions, then 3 inversions every 3 minutes