HC-110 stand development expirement

You might be interested in Bruce Barnbaum's technique for compensating development using HC-110. I've seen the results, and they are beautiful. (Ref: Barnbaum, "The Art of Photography" 2006, Photographic Arts Editions, Lake Stevens, WA, pp. 9-18 - 9-19) He first develops the negative in a somewhat stronger than normal solution of HC-110 (1:10) with constant agitation for the first 45 seconds and no agitation for another 45 seconds. This develops the shadows. Then he transfers the film to a very dilute (1:65, compensating) solution of HC-110 with continuous agitation for the first 30 seconds, no agitation for the next minute, and agitation for 15 seconds at the start of each minute thereafter. Total development time varies from 8 (very strong compression) to 22 minutes (compensating compression).

I can see I have a lot of experimenting in front of me my next task (once I've viewed the negs from the HP5 exposed @800) is to process a roll of HP5 exposed @1600. I suspect I need a longer development time, and suspect that twice the dev time may be required (to a first approximation).

For these experiments, I think I'll need to invest in a bulk roll of HP5 so I can make up short rolls

Told ya!

Time doesn't have that much of an effect now. If you develop for an hour and then extend to 1h30m, you're not going to see much difference, but you do run the risk of fogging the film.

If you decide to push the envelope and shoot your film at 1600, you may want to play around with dilution rather than time. Underexposure hurts the lower values of the film mostly. Highlights can usually be salvaged by developing longer, but you can never bring back shadow detail you didn't obtain at exposure. Basically, you need more energy from the developer before it exhausts, so more concentrate is in order.
Normally I use 500ml per roll. You can increase the amount of developer concentrate in two ways. Either increase the total volume of developer, or increase dilution. Since you don't agitate much with stand development, change the dilution.

- Thomas

namke said:

... and they're done. On first look (at the wet negs hanging up to dry) is that they're all pretty nicely developed - it turns out that this film had all sorts of different shots on it (it was, after all from my carry-around-everywhere XA2), but there appears to be detail throughout the negative which is good of course.

There's not really any way of knowing whether these would have been done 'better' using Ilford standard dilutions, but this way is a damn sight more economical I think...

I'll see how some of them print up later in the week.

Click to expand...

MattKing said:

This is one of those times where how you express the dilutions can lead to confusion.

To make the HC110 stock, you add 3 parts water to one part syrup, resulting in 4 parts stock.

Then, if I understand Ansel's info correctly, you need to dilute the stock so as to end up with 1 part stock added to 29 parts water, resulting in 30 parts Ansel's "brew".

I think that in that case the "1:3" diluted further to "1:30" means that you end up with 1:120 (1 part syrup in 120 parts final solution) rather than 1:90.

As dilution B is in effect 1:32, that means Ansel's solution is about 4 times more dilute.

Matt

Click to expand...

This is why I personally use 1+3, 1+31, etc. Even though that is what most people (including Kodak) mean when they write 1:3 and 1:31, I think it takes some of the confusion out. I think the really confusing thing is that some people write 1:31 and they mean 1 part concentrate + 31 parts water (equaling 32 parts total) and others say that 1:31 means 1 part concentrate to the total of 31 parts (i.e. 1 part concentrate to 30 parts water). Even though the latter makes sense to me, most people use this notation the same way they might use 1+49 or 1+31. Kodak uses 1:31 and they clearly mean 1 part concentrate to 31 parts water, totaling 32 parts. I understand what the notations mean, I'm just not sure how to multiply them . HC-110 dilutions were made for those using ounces so that it would evenly work out to pints, quarts, half-gallons, etc. When you are using one-shot development directly from the syrup, it is much easier to use metric measurements, especially considering all my syringes measure in milliliters and not in fractions of an ounce.

Hello, All these dilutions!!!! I like the idea of 1:100 HC 110 from concentrate. After reading this whole thing there was no conclusion. I read Mr. Brunners simple 1:49 but with pan f it is still 5.5 mins (too quick). I would like it to be longer so if I do 1:100 (R) then should I just double the time? I am also going to do rollei pan 25 and no clue but would like to stay with the same dilution. Any suggestions?

bump, sorry

If I were you and I wanted to use HC-110 at 1:100 (which I will do soon), I would expose the film normally and use about 50% more developing time. Maybe more. It usually takes a couple of rolls to calibrate something like this.
What I do is I expose one roll and I bracket. Say it's Plus-X, I would expose at EI 100, 50, 25, and 12 (just for the fun of it), in normal contrast scenes. Then I develop for a certain amount of time, say normal 1+50 time plus 50%. Then I look at the negs, maybe scan them, and see which has best shadow detail.
Then I shoot an entire roll at that exposure index, and in the dark I cut it into three pieces. Then I adjust development time until my highlight density is where I want it. Voila. That's it. Two rolls. The reason I answer like this is that there are so many variables between your, mine, and everybody else way of photographing. Camera shutter, light meter, how you meter, lighting conditions, even water quality matters.

Good luck,

- Thomas

Ok, sorry - I guess I was the one to re-awaken this thread, so I should really post the results too. The last couple of weeks have been a little turbulent with a friend dying unexpectedly (kind of makes one re-evaluate things!).

Anyway, to re-cap, I shot a roll of HP5+ at 800 (exposed in an Olympus XA2 which deals with the exposure-setting) and developed it in Ilfotec HC at a dilution of 1+99 (5ml developer made up to 500ml total solution). The film was agitated for a minute (30 inversions), and then left to stand for 59 further minutes. My usual stopbath followed (a couple of changes of plain water), then three minutes in Ilford Rapid Fixer.

The negatives came out pretty well (having a reasonable density to my eye), and on examination there is some decent detail in shadows and highlights. I printed one of them as a rough test, but underexposed it on the enlarger. Good shadow detail although the sky is detail-less as would be expected.

I will print/scan some examples this evening or tomorrow evening and follow up... Promise

This can be difficult or easy.

This is how to make it easy: the dilution has no direct effect on the highlight density.
Dilution only directly effects the time needed to build a given density.
It is AGITATION that places the highlights. More agitation, higher density, less agitation, lower highlights.

It IS necessary, to achieve a lower highlight density relative to shadow,
to increase the development while reducing the agitation. To make THIS work,
you need to increase the dilution until you would have a development time between 15 and 30 minutes.

1+31, or 1+63 works very well. If your development is still shorter than 12 or 16 minutes at 1+ 64,
of course you can dilute it further. If you measure in milliliters, use 1+ 50 or 1+100 or some number you are comfortable measuring. There is no supernatural virtue to a number.

HC-110 works like all other developer suitable for minimal agitation: agitate for 10 or 15 seconds to begin, and again every 3rd or 5th minute.

The danger of longer resting time, with 120 film, is a graduated density across the film. Five minutes if safe. Actually, 10 minutes is usually safe, but there is little to be gained beyond 5 minutes.

There is a BIG tonal difference between agitation every 5th minute and every minute.

With 35mm, you can use longer resting times, but I would rather be consistent with 35 and 120.

I find my development time by exposing a roll for midtone desnities at the ISO speed of the film.
I agitate for 10 to 15 seconds every 5th minute, and determine the time by simply finding the time needed to give me midtones.

Hello:
I made this post last agost. It just talks about TX400 and HC110:

Post:
I hope this information could be useful for everybody in this forum. I would ask you to share any other similar information that you could have.

I have been studying this combo for a while, and these are the results that I have found:
Film: TX400, 35 mm.
EI 200
Pre-washed: Water, during 1 minute of constant agitation.
Developer: HC110 (E- 1:47)
Developed two rolls of film, continuous agitation during the first 30 seconds, and then 5 times each 30 seconds.
Time of developing: 6 minutes.
Temperature: 20ªC.
Stop bath: Kodak Max Stop, 1:15, and 1 minute with constant agitation.
Fixer bath: Tetenal, 1:9, 5 minutes. The first minute with continue agitation, and then 5 times each 30 seconds.
Results:
After having taken pictures of a Kodak grey card, I have found the following relative densities:
Zone 5: 0,68
Zone 1: 0,10
These densities have been measured with my RH Designs Analyzer Pro.
My conclusions:
For my working system I can say that TX400 (EI200) and HC110 (E), 6 minutes developing time, are perfect.