Getting Ready for First Time: Paterson Tank Question

[Rick Rosen]

I found quickly that the plastic Patterson reels can be difficult to load if the reels are wet. So if you do multiple batches, you may find that drying the reels with a hair dryer may make for a more pleasant experience. I still have my Patterson tank and reels from 20 years ago, but if I ever have access to steel reels, I prefer those. Once I got up the courage to use steel reels, I found them to actually be easier to load, even though that seems impossible until you try it

It is very difficult to load a reel that is wet so if you are developing more loads of film I would invest in some extra reels. You should be able to find Paterson stuff on Ebay very cheap.

Because the plastic reels are designed to handle 220 film which is about 6ft long, the spiral is very tight. Consequently the film layers on the spiral are very close together. With inversion agitation (my preference) you have to be careful not to trap air bubbles in the spiral. You will
end up with circular "donuts" on the emulsion of your developed film. I never had that issue with 35mm film but it was a problem with 120 roll film. To avoid trapping air bubbles against the emulsion layer, after you agitate by inversion (slowly) then lightly tap the tank when you set it down.

Once I went to stainless reels and tanks I never went back to the Paterson system.