hc110 activity

Is there an easy-to-use additive that can be used to reduce the activity of HC110 developer?

For various reasons, in my developing machine (Photo-therm) it is not practical to use higher dilution or lower temperature. These limitations result in too-short development time for Fomapan 100.

I'd like to keep it simple and easy if possible.

Thanks.

Maybe you can try with Rodinal? It gives nice results with Fomapan 100, if you use it at 1+50 or 1+100 it will give you reasonable development time, and it is also economical and cheap as HC110.

I was going to be facetious and simply say "Yes, it's called water!" However, you indicate that a higher dilution is not practical. What makes it impractical? Surely as long as you end up with the correct volume for the machine it should work?

RR

Regular Rod said:

I was going to be facetious and simply say "Yes, it's called water!" However, you indicate that a higher dilution is not practical. What makes it impractical? Surely as long as you end up with the correct volume for the machine it should work?

RR

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Probably insufficient developer capacity in the more dilute solution. Suggest changing developers, D-76 / XTOL / DD-X etc. should work fine.

Tom

Try T-max developer.

Tom Kershaw said:

Probably insufficient developer capacity in the more dilute solution. Suggest changing developers, D-76 / XTOL / DD-X etc. should work fine.

Tom

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I use hc110 @ 100:1. In my 1.5L 5 reel tank, that's 3ml of developer per 35mm roll. No problems.

Dilution is your best option. There is one other possibility and that is the addition of 40 g/l of sodium SULFATE to the working strength developer. This should slow down the development a bit. Whether it is enough would be the subject of tests on your part.

If you want to experiment ... try monobath solution

http://new55project.blogspot.de/2010/01/donal-qualls-successful-monobath.html

Tom Kershaw said:

Probably insufficient developer capacity in the more dilute solution. Suggest changing developers, D-76 / XTOL / DD-X etc. should work fine.

Tom

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The risk is insufficient developer if diluted.

The machine is continuous agitation, 75 degrees F, 420mL of solution. If we figure that Fomapan processing times would be something like 75% of comparable films, continuous agitation times would be something like 85% of regular agitation, and 75 degree processing would take something like 75% of the processing time for 68 degrees we are down to about half the processing time compared to more standard conditions. If we follow recommendations to have at least three and one half minutes then that implies that one must use a very dilute solution.

I am guessing the unofficial dilution H would be about right, i.e. dilution of ~63:1. However, this dilution would give about 6.7 mL of developer in 420 mL of solution, which is pretty close to the minimum of 6mL recommended for one roll of 35mm film. By comparison, the 420 mL tank on a Photo-therm normally holds four rolls. It would be nice not to be limited to processing one roll at a time, but it would not be out of the question. However, if the developer could be restrained, then I could use more mL of developer, opening up the possibility of doing more than one roll at a time.

I do have a densitometer, so I could do some testing of different developer concentrations and development times. It is possible that 6.7mL would end up being too concentrated to meet the minimum development time, in which case things are even less favorable.

By the way, thanks for the other suggestions (rodinal, T-Max developer, D-76, etc.). I do have bottles of those developers, so they are fall-back strategies, but for various reasons I would like to work out a scheme using HC110 if possible.

The 3.5 minute recommendation is made to help ensure uniformity of results in an environment where people's agitation procedure may vary from film to film. Your Photo-therm machine would certainly minimize that variability. I would think that a slightly shorter development time should be fine.

Does the Photo-therm permit a pre-soak? If so, that too would help avoid inconsistency.

ic-racer said:

Try T-max developer.

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I'll second this! I've been using Tmax a lot more these days with spectacular results. But yeah, I like to work more with Dilution E of HC-110 these days.

MattKing said:

The 3.5 minute recommendation is made to help ensure uniformity of results in an environment where people's agitation procedure may vary from film to film. Your Photo-therm machine would certainly minimize that variability. I would think that a slightly shorter development time should be fine.

Does the Photo-therm permit a pre-soak? If so, that too would help avoid inconsistency.

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The standard version of Photo-therm does not permit pre-soak. For a price it is possible to have a new chip burned that would include presoak.

alanrockwood said:

The standard version of Photo-therm does not permit pre-soak. For a price it is possible to have a new chip burned that would include presoak.

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Can you do a pre-soak manually before loading the tube on the machine?

alanrockwood said:

Is there an easy-to-use additive that can be used to reduce the activity of HC110 developer?

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Yes, water.

MattKing said:

Can you do a pre-soak manually before loading the tube on the machine?

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As a practical matter it would be difficult to fit a manual pre-soak into the Photo-Therm workflow.

I do have a Jobo CPE, and a pre-soak would be easy to incorporate into the Jobo workflow, but that instrument is not as nice as the Photo-Therm in terms of ease of use or robustness of the instrument.

alanrockwood said:

As a practical matter it would be difficult to fit a manual pre-soak into the Photo-Therm workflow.

I do have a Jobo CPE, and a pre-soak would be easy to incorporate into the Jobo workflow, but that instrument is not as nice as the Photo-Therm in terms of ease of use or robustness of the instrument.

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Understood.

Have you asked Phototherm about the issue?

MattKing said:

Understood.

Have you asked Phototherm about the issue?

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Phototherm will burn a chip for almost any process one could specify except for Kodachrome... It costs money though.

alanrockwood said:

Phototherm will burn a chip for almost any process one could specify except for Kodachrome... It costs money though.

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I was aware of that. What I was wondering was whether they had anything to contribute to the discussion about whether the short development times were a problem.

The 6mL minimum can be ignored with all but reckless abandon. I stand-push Tri-X in HC-110 1:100 in a Paterson two-reel. 600 mL solution=3 mL per roll. No problems there, and with continuous agitation that should be even less of a problem (since local exhaustion of developer is a non-issue).

Dilution is the answer. HC-110 loves high dilutions, like Rodinal does.

markaudacity said:

The 6mL minimum can be ignored with all but reckless abandon. I stand-push Tri-X in HC-110 1:100 in a Paterson two-reel. 600 mL solution=3 mL per roll. No problems there, and with continuous agitation that should be even less of a problem (since local exhaustion of developer is a non-issue).

Dilution is the answer. HC-110 loves high dilutions, like Rodinal does.

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How long do you stand develop with HC-110 at 1:100? 1 hour? Is this at room temp or carefully controlled at 20 C?

It is amazing how well HC-110 does at various dilutions. Going back to dilution B seems almost wasteful as it is soooooo concentrated.

1 hour for EI1600, 2 hours for 3200 with one round of agitation in the middle, otherwise the dev gets exhausted early and I never get the shadow detail that's the whole reason I stand develop in the first place. This gives dense highlights, but Tri-X's tone curve seems to keep them from blocking up. I just developed a roll that has a long exposure (10 seconds, maybe?) of a city scene at night that has detail in the face of a building lit only by urban luminescence, while retaining detail in the pavement directly under a streetlight.

I usually try to mix my developer at 20C for consistency, but I make no effort to control the temperature during development. I've worked as warm as 26C (with reduction in time) with acceptable results. Stand is super forgiving of variation.

Dilution B is the magic bullet for holding down base fog in old film, and works well for aggressive pushes of low-contrast scenes. I don't push in dil B anymore because I'm mostly pushing to work in bars and outside at night, and the contrast can get away from you pretty quick.

Besides sodium sulfate (not sulfite) as mentioned early on, look around for sugar (sucrose) to slow up development. Kodak used it in one of their 'special' developers. I have read of as much as 200g/l. Maybe methyl cellulose will slow down those pesky molecules!

Murray Kelly said:

Besides sodium sulfate (not sulfite) as mentioned early on, look around for sugar (sucrose) to slow up development. Kodak used it in one of their 'special' developers. I have read of as much as 200g/l. Maybe methyl cellulose will slow down those pesky molecules!

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Yes sugar will work but there is a problem of ants. Not a joke they do like my batch of the Kodak developer!.

Sucrose is an interesting idea. One could keep a concentrated solution of sucrose handy, and add it to the mix in a separate syringe from the HC110, or possibly even scoop it in granular form. I wonder if the effect of sucrose is subtle or pretty large. If it works well it could be a very convenient method because it is easy to obtain and it dissolves fast.

Regarding sodium sulfate, is there an easy consumer-oriented source?

Reducing the developer to 3ml is also interesting. I had been hesitant to try something like that because I was afraid of developer exhaustion.

I am also wondering if addition of Borax might buffer the pH a to bit lower value and make the developer less energetic. On the other hand, borax takes a while to dissolve, which reduces the convenience factor.

From one point of view it might not even be such a great idea to get HC110 working with Fomapan. Some of my preliminary testing with the combination showed that there was a big decrease in film speed compared to using T-Max developer, and Fomapan has a reputation for building up density too fast if overdeveloped, which might be a bad thing when using a fairly energetic developer.

Still, it is something I would like to work out because I have the feeling that HC110 is less likely to be discontinued than T-Max developer, plus it's a lot less expensive.

Using Rodinal is possible, and I have some of it, but I think it is generally considered not a great developer for high temperature continuous agitation processing, plus it faces some of the same issues of getting a good dilution that will work within the total volume constraints of the Phototherm instrument.

The common name for sodium sulfate is Glauber's salt. It is used as a laxative for humans and animals. Check with pharmacies and feed stores. It is also used in dying cloth so any company selling dye stuffs should also sell. Many, many other uses check the web. Also sold by The Chemistry Store. It is very cheap.

http://www.chemistrystore.com/Chemicals_A-Z-Chemicals_S-Z-1.html

Do not add anything other than water, a neutral salt like sodium sulfate or sugar. So no borax which would screw up the action of HC-110.