HC110 and 100:1

I'm looking for about the cheapest and easiest way to develop film. I have heard of people using Rodinal at 100:1, stand developed for an hour, and that sounds pretty easy and cheap. I don't have Rodinal but I do have HC110. Has anyone tried a similar stand technique with HC110?

I have used HC-110 that way, but have found no advantage to stand developing compared to normal agitation.

1:100 works well, just make sure you have more than 5ml of concentrate in the tank for consistent results, per film.

From what I can tell, Dilution H gives results that are virtually indistinguishable from 1:100. You use a bit more concentrate, but sometimes it's hard to fit 500ml per roll in a tank, especially if processing 35mm.

- Thomas

It keeps getting said over and over again -- developer is cheap but film is expensive. It is a foolish economy to try to save on developer cost at the expense of ruining a roll of film. Kodak gives a minumum amount of HC-110 concentrate needed for development. So if you still wish to use 1:100 dilution you need to use a larger tank to accomodate the extra amount of dilute solution needed. Look at the Covington Unofficial HC-110 website for lots of info on HC-110. There should still be infomation on Kodak's website on the use of HC-110.

I live in the tropics where the water temperature is usually at around 28 to 30 degrees celcius, so I develop my Tri-X using HC 110 at 1:100 to keep development times manageable, as well as to save on developer.

Like the earlier poster, you should ensure that you have at least 5ml of HC 110 in your tank. I use a syringe to get 6ml of HC 110 and mix it with water to get 600ml of developer.

I haven't tried stand development, but I have tried doing minimal agitation, e.g. 10 sec every 3-4 min. However, I found that my negs sometimes ended up with uneven development. So what I've done now is to agitate 5 sec every 2 min, and so far the results have been ok.

I'm not just trying to save money, I'm also trying to minimize effort. Sometimes I just don't want to temper my water, look up the development time, stand there and agitate X times every N minutes blah blah blah. I used to like Diafine because there was no thought required and it is also very cheap, but I haven't ever used it for sheet film. I have heard lots of 35mm shooters who develop everything in Rodinal at 1:100 for an hour, standing, and that seems really easy to me; I just don't have any Rodinal. This weekend I shot a sheet of 4x5, stuck it in a standard roll film daylight tank, squirted in 10mL of HC110 and put in a liter of water from the tap. I agitated it for 10s or so and then let it sit 20min. The negative seems to have come out pretty well. Just wondering if other people use HC110 this way.

I usually use HC-110 at 1+49 dilution essentially dilution H and have been very happy with the results. I personally do not believe in stand development as a general purpose method for development. The technique has a very specific use for contrasty subjects.

Gerald C Koch said:

I usually use HC-110 at 1+49 dilution essentially dilution H and have been very happy with the results. I personally do not believe in stand development as a general purpose method for development. The technique has a very specific use for contrasty subjects.

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Not saying that standing development is wrong, but I treat it just like you do, Gerald. It's a tool to cure a specific condition of extreme contrast reduction (or contrast expansion of severely under-exposed film).

Just to be clear, dilution H is double dilution B which is 1:31, therefore 1:63. 1:47/49/50, whatever people want to call it, is dilution E. Anyway, for absolutely foolproof developing at that dilution, you can consult our very own Jason Brunner's page on HC110. No reason to make it more complicated. It just works, flawlessly. Even better in my book, for Tri-X, expose @ 200 and develop with HC110 1:49 for six minutes with one min initial agitation and 4 inversions (10 sec) every 30 sec. Works wonders for portraits and landscape as well. HC110 is dirt cheap and lasts forever. No reason to use it with stand developing unless you are really looking for something very specific. Rodinal works better in that regard, IMO.

Coincidentally, I've just used HC110 to develop some Tri-X and TMY2 as outlined above (TMY for 9 min @ 68 deg). Metered with Nikon F6 spot on skin for roughly zone 6. This is what you can expect and it never fails, assuming you are exposing properly. First two are TMY.

Mia culpa. I should have checked Kodak's dilution chart.

Gerald C Koch said:

Mia culpa. I should have checked Kodak's dilution chart.

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Just don't rely on those crazy times