General Rodinal Discussion

fmajor said:

OK, sorry for the newb question, but is ADOX "Adonal" the same chemistry as Rodinal?

I just bought a 500ml bottle of this ADOX "Adonal" and I'm really excited to try it with Acros 100. I've only used Xtol, which has been great, but I'm hoping for more contrast/"sharpness" than the Acros/Xtol recipe.

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(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

noacronym said:

Rich815, I would like to hear from you on a couple questions about the tree picture. I like it, and would like to ask some questions regarding your procedure. 1) Did you expose just one negative on your Rollei, or is it bracketed, consuming several frames. 2) How did you meter this? 3) Was there any printing tricks you used, like flashing, dodge/burn, or is it a straight print? Thank you.

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Probably just one neg. I only really bracket when shooting slide film. I do not remember exactly but I likely spot metered off the base of the trunk and then closed down two stops from that reading.

All this talk is so much repeating what has been covered extensively in the archives here and on the web for years, in magazines before that, and in personal photographic discussions for decades. Like any developer, depending on the format, the scene's contrast, the overall light, your exposure and then development technique and all that entails, you can get a variety of looks from Rodinal. One time online I uploaded an image I labeled as developed in Rodinal and people fawned over the "unmistakeable Rodinal look" and sparkle. Later I realized I made an error and it was actually D-76 I had used!

I've developed with D-76 where it's come out more grainy than Rodinal and vice-versa, same with HC-110. I use HC-110, Rodinal or D-76 about 80% of the time but also Pyrocat-HD, Microdol-X and on occasion DiXactol Ultra and Exactol Lux. To be honest which developer I use often depends on what other rolls I have to develop and which times are the closest so I go with that developer!

viridari said:

I don't shoot Acros often but I do think that Rodinal + Acros is super special.

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I approve this quote and agree wholeheartedly

rich815 said:

Like any developer, depending on the format, the scene's contrast, the overall light, your exposure and then development technique and all that entails, you can get a variety of looks from Rodinal.

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I think that this is very true. I have used various developers, but recently I have been spending a lot of time with Rodinal. I am beginning to learn that there are a lot of things about this developer that I don't know, and it may take me a lot of time to really understand what I can or cannot do with it.

I suspect it could take the better part of a lifetime to really understand any developer whether that be D76, HC-110, Rodinal or any of them.

Pioneer said:

I think that this is very true. I have used various developers, but recently I have been spending a lot of time with Rodinal. I am beginning to learn that there are a lot of things about this developer that I don't know, and it may take me a lot of time to really understand what I can or cannot do with it.

I suspect it could take the better part of a lifetime to really understand any developer whether that be D76, HC-110, Rodinal or any of them.

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Exactly. Years ago I could not get good results from using HC-110 and wondered what all the hype was about how good it is. Now I love it and get phenomenal images with it. I joke about how they must have changed the formula! ;-)

it is proably well covered in the other links. BUT Agfa does not make Rodinal any more, the AGFA development chemicals factory has been sold at least twice, and that factory still makes Rodinal- BUT they are not allowed to use the rodinal name. Adonal should be the same stuff in the same bottles.

The pre-war agfa factory also made rodinal, but it became part of the East German industry, so they called it Developer 09. That factory is also in business as "Calbe" these days.

To be confusing their is one version of the Agfa factory product called R09 One-Shot.

It can be hard to keep track of WHICH rodinal you are buying - but most observers find their is little difference in results between them. The Calbe stuff sometimes mentions dilutions of 1 to 40 rather then the 1 to 50 parts of the Western German stuff. The masive developer chart generaly lists both sets of times.

Rodinal is still made in the same plant that belonged to Agfa, by the same people.

We have John at J&C to blame for the name being fropped, in agfa's turmoil they let the name registration lapse in the US, John bought it and began selling Calbe RO9 packaged inbottles with similar labels to genuine Rodinal, while they weren't identical they were so close. Agfa having stopped consumer photographic products had no interest recovering their rights to the name. I don't think Calbe were to impressed either as ORWO (which they were once part of) had been paid to stop using agfa product names at the time Agfa mered with Gevaert.

Ian

cmacd123 said:

The pre-war agfa factory also made rodinal, but it became part of the East German industry, so they called it Developer 09. That factory is also in business as "Calbe" these days.

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Calbe recently stopped offering their consumer b&w chemistries . (They may still make to order though.)

Ian Grant said:

I don't think Calbe were to impressed either as ORWO (which they were once part of) had been paid to stop using agfa product names at the time Agfa mered with Gevaert.

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Many ORWO employees then mourned after the memise of "their" name. But it was the Agfa-Wolfen management, backed by state officials, who had that idea of a new brand. The new brand offered a lot of advantages. It solved some legal issues existing between both companies. But the branding was only part of the problem. The major problem were products and markets. All this was solved by contracts.

I mixed up a batch of the Photographers' Formulary clone a few years back and used it on a variety of Agfa and Kodak films at 1+49 dilution. I definitely noticed its sensitivity to agitation. But other than that - ho-hum. I went back to D-76. I didn't notice any special grain effects, and the speed it gives is a bit less than D-76. Sharpness is good, but nothing special. It does last, but not indefinitely.

I wouldn't trust that clone it's related to a poor cousin published Dr Momme Andresen himself. It certainly wasn't Rodinal.

Would you base judgement of a Ford top of the range model on a home built kit car made from the same parts ?

Ian

I've always read how Rodinal is sensitive to agitation and I've found this to be true but not in the usual way. I used to do very gentle inversions with Rodinal 1+100, a couple inversions once a minute. I started seeing uneven development along the edges of the negs, they were more built up in then in the center. After asking around it turned out that not only was I overfilling the tank (to the top) but it was suggested I increase agitation. So now I fill the tank with just enough soup to cover the reel and I invert four times every 30 seconds. The difference is like night and day! I look at prints from before these changes and they all look so flat and dull but I never really noticed until I started printing the negs after the changes. Now they have great tones and contrast and I don't notice any increase in the appearance of the grain.

Any developer used quite dilute will be more sensitive to agitation as the developing agent(s) are exhausting. People use stand development because localised exhaustion in the emulsion increases adjacency (edge effects).

Ian

With Rodinal, the trick lies in getting adjacency effects without reducing the overall contrast too much. The more the agitation, the higher the contrast will be. But that works against the adjacency effect, i.e. it reduces sharpness. I find that the sharpness and contrast are in good balance as described further up in the thread, with dilution at 1:50, and one or two gentle agitations per minute. It is not good to over-agitate, as Rodinal is already a fairly high-contrast developer, and the highlights will not be spared when the agitation is too rough. It kills one of the main reasons to use it in the first place.

At 1:50 the minimum recommended developer (10 ml) will give 500ml total volume, so it will barely suffice for one roll of 120. I make 550 ml to be sure the entire film is submerged. Resist the temptation to develop two rolls of 35mm 36 exp in 500 ml at 1:50. The overall charge of developer is too low. In such a case, go to 1:25 or use a larger tank. 7 ml of concentrate is borderline, so one can get away with 700 ml at 1:50 using 14 ml of concentrate. Note that 5 ml will develop a film, but the results will be inconsistent and depending on the overall exposure of the entire film, the developer may run out of steam causing thin negatives. The developer strength for stock solutions of D76 and Xtol is such that 250 ml of stock develops one roll of film. For Rodinal, 1:25 corresponds to a stock solution. That is what the 10 ml of concentrate is based on.

I am not sure what the equivalent for HC-110 is. I use the latter at 1:64 (dil H) for specific films that are not good in Rodinal or even D76 (e.g. Rollei RPX400). I inherited about 30 free 120 rolls of RPX400 with my Mamiya 645 afd II kit, and rather than dump the film, I have resorted to using HC-110 for it. Apart from the "incompatible" films, Rodinal and HC-110 give very similar tone curves, and share many of the same pros and cons. Rodinal is cheaper by a country mile if you home-brew it, though, and HC-110 is unsurpassed for low-fog development of expired or difficult films. I have yet to try Rodinal at 16 C - our summer temperatures make that impractical without the aid of a temperature-controlled bath.

What is an edge effect?

I've been using Rodinal in stand development for a couple of months now (because of the workflow, not results - not that I've had bad results, they've been great) but I've been noticing a, I don't know how to describe it, a significant glow around dark shadows sitting against highlights.

I am a regular Rodinal user ! i love it with hp5 and tri-x for street photography , and with rollei 80s for landscapes.

With 1:25 or 1:50 diluition , 30 seconds of initial gentle agitatons , than only 1 gentle agitation every 30 seconds.
Or a splendid 1:100 1h stand!

This is a print on mcc 110 in moersch eco4812 , rollei retro 80s (agfa aviphot pan 80) 64 iso in rodinal 1+100 semistand

What you see could be related to a few different things, actually. You have to eliminate other possibilities before being sure it is the developer.

Edge effects have to do with two chemical effects that happen simultaneously. The first is the depletion of developer. This happens when developer is very dilute and there is a lack of agitation. In stagnant liquids, the diffusion rate is typically in the order of 1 cm/day (as opposed to 1 cm/sec for gases). That means that fresh developer molecules take a long time to diffuse to areas on the film where developer has become depleted due to more rapid development. When this diffusion takes places on the border between very bright and dark areas, the developing rate does something that is similar to unsharp mask in software sharpening. It drops a little on the dark side of the edge, causing that side to be slightly darker than the rest of the dark area as the developer gets "robbed" there, and it inceases slightly on the bright side of the edge as the fresh developer flows in, causing the edge to be slightly brighter than the rest of the bright area. This is visually similar to sharpening, and has the same effect if done correctly: it gives the image more acutance (but not more resolution!). The second effect is build-up of bromide, which is released when the silver bromide is reduced to metallic silver. The bromide acts as developer restrainer, i.e. the higher the concentration, the slower development becomes. Both effects combine to preserve highlights with dilute Rodinal (which is sensitive to bromide). Both effects can be effectively eliminated with constant or over-zealous agitation. Just like unsharp mask, the effect when exagerated can be garish and even objectionable. Dilutions of 1:50 to 1:100 should be okay with intermittent agitation, but note that Bob Schwalberg specifically warned against 1:100 dilution with films such as TriX and HP5.

Some other possibilities:

i) Lens flare or ghosting due to dirty or scratched elements or poor coatings will cause spillover of light into darker areas of the image. It is not easy to see the opposite, where lighter areas become darker. Generally, such images will also have poor local contrast and an overall muddy or foggy look. If it happens under normal lighting, with excellent lenses that are multi-coated, your problem is something else. Suspect the filter too, if you have one on.

ii) Some films have no or weak anti-halation backing, which causes light to bounce back from the carrier that the emulsion is coated on, into the emulsion to illuminate it a second time, but diffused. This is seen as halos around bright objects and ghosting inside the darker areas. It is fairly easy to find out whether your particular film has this characteristic, as it is well documented for all films that are still available. Lucky SHD100 is a good example, but I am also aware of earlier Kodak films, and also the Rollei Retro films.

iii) It may be that you see developer depletion, but it is not necessarily accompanied by visible acutance edge effects. This will be the case if you start with too little developer, that is locally exhausted before the film is fully developed. It will cause uneven and unpredictable development, and should be discouraged. You should not use less than 10 ml concentrate per standard roll, 7 ml as an absolute minimum. So calculate your volume after mixing from there. For 35 mm and 120 film, I always use 10 ml made up to 500 ml, regardless of whether I need less to cover the reel. Resist the temptation to develop two rolls of 120 on one reel in 500 ml of 1:50. As Parodinal is so cheap (it costs me less than 10 US cents per dose of 10 ml to make), there is no conceivable reason to skimp on a few ml when the film costs $5 to start with. Even commercial Adonal/Rodinal or whatever you use, should still be very cheap compared to the film itself, so using less than the recommended dose is penny wise pound foolish. As for 1:100 stand development, unless your highlights are exposed completely out of whack, I cannot really understand the need for this approach as a general one. The problem in my view is better solved with better exposure. Stand development comes with other potential problems, and will rarely produce an optimal tone curve for modern films. While it may solve a specific problem when encountered, I think it creates more problems than it solves for general use. I am talking from the perspective of printing negatives, not scanning them, of course.

dorff said:

With Rodinal, the trick lies in getting adjacency effects without reducing the overall contrast too much.

At 1:50 the minimum recommended developer (10 ml) will give 500ml total volume, so it will barely suffice for one roll of 120. I make 550 ml to be sure the entire film is submerged. Resist the temptation to develop two rolls of 35mm 36 exp in 500 ml at 1:50. The overall charge of developer is too low. In such a case, go to 1:25 or use a larger tank. 7 ml of concentrate is borderline, so one can get away with 700 ml at 1:50 using 14 ml of concentrate. Note that 5 ml will develop a film, but the results will be inconsistent and depending on the overall exposure of the entire film, the developer may run out of steam causing thin negatives. The developer strength for stock solutions of D76 and Xtol is such that 250 ml of stock develops one roll of film. For Rodinal, 1:25 corresponds to a stock solution.

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This is a great point often overlooked. The Film Developing Cookbook discusses safe stock quantities.

Dorff forgot one thing... Scanning, if you're scanning and the edges have a halo, it's often that the film is outside the depth of field of the scanner and the height of the film holder needs to be adjusted.

For assistance on that go to DPUG though


~Stone

Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1, 5DmkII / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic | Sent w/ iPhone using Tapatalk

Now I am confused. I have been developing film pretty regularly using 4 ml per roll and getting what I thought were decent results. I do not remember anything in the film developing cookbook that indicated that this was not enough Rodinal to develop a roll of 35mm film. I will have to go back and check this out again.

I am developing 5 rolls of 35mm at a time in a Paterson System 4 tank. This tank needs a minimum of 290 ml per roll of 35mm. I mix 20 ml of Rodinal in a tad less than 1500 ml of solution. No matter how how you cut it that is nowhere close to this minimum 7 ml per roll.

Well, back to the cookbook.

Speaking as the person who started this thread just to get a little input on Rodinal, I'm surprised to see the staying power of the thread. A lot of Rodinal fans out there. As good as a lot of it looks, I've re-concluded from this inquiry what I disliked 40 years ago. Rodinal is grainy. Grainy, grainy. Goodness knows I've tried to convince myself to give the stuff another go, but nahhh.... And all this talk about the finicky agitation is just over the top for me. But carry on, men.

Pioneer said:

Now I am confused. I have been developing film pretty regularly using 4 ml per roll and getting what I thought were decent results. I do not remember anything in the film developing cookbook that indicated that this was not enough Rodinal to develop a roll of 35mm film. I will have to go back and check this out again.

I am developing 5 rolls of 35mm at a time in a Paterson System 4 tank. This tank needs a minimum of 290 ml per roll of 35mm. I mix 20 ml of Rodinal in a tad less than 1500 ml of solution. No matter how how you cut it that is nowhere close to this minimum 7 ml per roll.

Well, back to the cookbook.

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4 ml will develop a film, but it will not develop all films consistently, and some films may be flat overall. More likely, you may find that local areas of high exposure will suffer problems as the developer crashes there. There are different emulsion types that use more or less developer depending on the silver content. And there are exposure differences from one film to the next. If you shot a whole roll of stars against the night sky, then the developer required for that film will be minimal. On the other hand, if you shot an airshow with lots of darkish objects against a bright background, you will require more than the average quantity. My advice is to do your own tests, and see if it makes a difference for you. Over five rolls, the effect of one or two rolls either side of average is diminished. But if you develop only one roll at a time, maybe two, then it is better to use the larger quantity. I cannot say what will work for you, but one cannot make a recommendation to someone who is inexperienced with Rodinal, that is based on living on the edge of what the developer can do. Sooner or later, one is going to have problems with low developer quantities, and it might be the one film where you regret it most.

Another point is that weak developer is more prone to depletion via oxidation. The extent of depletion will be the same per volume of liquid and total tank volume, and will reduce the developer content by a given quantity. The lower the concentration, all other things being equal, the larger the overall effect. With long developing times as are typical for stand development, this creates even more potential for inconsistency. I personally think that stand development is not for beginners, and I avoid it myself for various reasons. That does not mean that it doesn't work, and that it is necessarily complicated. But it does have more variables to consider, and it leaves the door open to inconsistency. Some photographers are happy to tolerate inconsistency, and simply compensate for it after scanning. I personally have an aversion to inconsistency, and will do much to avoid it. It is worth noting how different photographers arrive at wildly differing times for stand development using the same dilutions and films. Furthermore, I haven't seen scientifically backed guidelines for stand development from Agfa or others supplying Rodinal or its clones. For me that places stand development in the realm of alchemy, i.e. proceed with caution.

My advice is based on printing, while for scanning you may prefer thinner negatives and can correct local problems more easily. I rather develop negatives that are good for printing, knowing that they will scan perfectly easily too.

A note on the Cookbook: While it is an excellent resource, there are a few guidelines or methods in there that we don't all have consensus on. Some of the developing times are incorrect, too. Consider the above in light of my personal experience with Rodinal, which may or may not be aligned with the Cookbook's exact quantities, but the sentiment that one shouldn't skimp on cheap chemicals to save a few pennies we certainly share. The Cookbook's section on Rodinal is based on inputs from others (notably Bob Schwalberg), at least that is my interpretation, while Anchell and Troop seem to use different developers for their own work. Bob Schwalberg according to my resources used Rodinal typically at 1:50, 1:75 and sometimes 1:100 with agitation, not stand development. His comparisons with D76 are interesting, and not always borne out by the comparisons done by others. Why that is the case, I cannot say.

I use 1+50 = 6ml + 300ml for 135. My personal development time for APX 100@50 is 15 mins with two gentle inversions on every 'fifth' minute.

dorff said:

I personally think that stand development is not for beginners ... My advice is based on printing,

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But I'd imagine it's very attractive to beginners, who see a method which is very simple, apparently requiring no special timings or temperature control and (and this may be the crucial point) produces negatives that scan perfectly well.

It would not surprise me to learn that most film developed using a "stand" method (whether in Rodinal or HC110) never sees the light of an enlarger, and thus observation of the absolutes of consistency or the niceties of shadow control are of relatively small importance.

For those who produce wet prints from their negatives, of course, these things do matter.