Rodinal is an excellent choice for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike, because it delivers excellent results with almost any film, is easy to mix, and an opened bottle should remain usable for a year or more under normal storage conditions. Does it exaggerate grain characteristics? Only moderately. A "fast" film like Tri-X or HP5 (or Bergger Pancro 400, which I highly recommend as well) has its grain characteristics "baked in" to the emulsion and your choice of developer minimally modifies grain size and sharpness. Its
not as if one developer can render grain that looks like it was shot on Ilford Pan-F (25ASA) where an alternate developer makes the grain look like coarse sand on the beach. The degree to which the developer modifies grain characteristics is very limited. It would be a great experiment for you to shoot one roll of either HP5 or Tri-X (assuming you want to start out with a fairly fast emulsion), photographing the same subject (use a tripod) for all twelve frames, then cut the film into two or three equal pieces and process each in a different developer. Then you can see for yourself exactly how much or how little each different developer affects grain (and contrast/tonal rendering, etc), and how subtle the differences can be. (You may want to get comfortable with the whole developing process by processing a few rolls before doing this experiment) As someone else pointed out, since you are planning on working with medium format, the negatives will be quite large and contain a lot of detailed information, and because of their size, the appearance of grain is nowhere near as pronounced as the same film shot in 35mm format. The larger the negative you shoot, the less grain you are going to see, and so developer choice is going to be
less important* in terms of how it affects grain characteristics.
*not
unimportant, just
less important.
For practical purposes, I would suggest you
not get too hung up on your choice of developer. For the beginner, the liquid/dilutable developers are an excellent choice because of their obvious convenience factors. The big three are Rodinal, HC-110, and Ilford DD-X. They are all fine choices. They all have good shelf life (with some variation) and so you can have developer at the ready, without worrying whether or not it has oxidized (expired), even if you pause for a couple of months between shoots. You could easily choose a trusted standard developer like D-76 to start with, but it - along with most of the powder formulas - has a fairly short shelf life once mixed. You could easily open that half-full gallon jug of D-76 you made three months ago, only to find its turned amber/brown from oxidization, at which point its useless. The dilutable concentrates significantly minimize the risk of finding out that you have nothing but expired developer on hand. Oh, and by the way - Rodinal and Adonal and RO-9 are all the same product, so buy whichever you have access to.
You mentioned something about the "tabular grain" films (Delta & T-Max)
requiring special developers, and that's not quite correct. In fact, Rodinal is an excellent choice for almost any film you can lay your hands on.
It will give good results with the Delta films, and the T-Max films as well as it will with traditional grain style films. These films aren't so very different that they "require" their own special developers.
And as for your choice of fixer: it isn't really important as long as you use it according to directions. Ilford Rapid Fix is an excellent choice because its cheap, stores well and washes out as easily as you could want. Do you know the basic principle of fixing films? Cut a small piece off the end of your roll of film (
In the darkroom, after you've unspooled the film to load it in the tank, snip a quarter inch off the end and set it aside) and take the 1/4" piece to your "developing station" (darkroom, kitchen sink, or wherever you will be processing the film) and drop it into your fixer. Be ready with a stopwatch/timer and count how many seconds it takes to "clear" the film (make it transparent without any cloudiness. Some of the film base dye will likely remain, but that's not what you're watching for - you are watching for the film to go transparent). Take note of how many seconds it took for the film to go completely clear, then double that number: that is your optimal fixing time, for that brand/dilution of fixer. The "clearing time" increases as you use the fix for each roll of film: the fixer becomes saturated with silver and so the amount of time it takes to remove silver from a film gets longer and longer. Why do I suggest you learn how long the ideal fixing time is, using this method? Because if you simply drop your HP5 into fresh Rapid Fix (of any brand) and leave it there for 2-3 minutes, you are allowing the fix to penetrate the emulsion far more than you need to. If you fix for only the minimum ideal time, then the washing stage can be completed in a shorter time and fix is more easily washed out of the film. In fact, freshly made Ilford Rapid Fix clears HP5 in as little as 10-15 seconds in my experience, and so the film is fully fixed after 30 seconds under normal conditions. There's quite a difference between 30 seconds in the fixer, and three minutes. (or more!) Bottom line: there's no need to fix longer than the ideal minimum. Find out what the ideal is for your fixer and film combination.
Some would say this is "a fine detail" that isn't required learning for someone first starting out with their own processing, and perhaps that's true. But it doesn't hurt to learn good habits from the very start
?
..
