How critical is paper developer temp?

Schlapp · Feb 5, 2007

I recently spent a day with a renowned printer in the UK and he didn't monitor his developer temp at all - and the prints were wonderful. Now, everything I read about printing tells me I need 20C for developers in most cases.
I'm soon to set up my own darkroom in a stone built outhouse which is joined to the house which itself is on a Scottish island. Needless to say, it's not always so warm there. Will the lower temps I am likely to have matter?

John Simmons · Feb 5, 2007

I start with 20C and my darkroom is a little colder and I notice no difference at all. A few degrees either way makes not difference in my experience. How low are you talking about here?

Regards,
John

blokeman · Feb 5, 2007

........ from experience I've found little difference with a few degrees either side of 20. However, when toning afterwards, if the developer temperature has fallen below, say, 15 or 16 then you will notice inconsistencies & also at that temp the prints take much longer to fully develop. A simple thing such as one of those heating 'mats' used for fish tanks can be useful to stabilise the temperature of the developer.

jstraw · Feb 5, 2007

Warm developer is more active than cold developer. If your developer is very warm, you may lose shadow detail before all the latent image in the highlights have had a chance to fully develop.

That said, the most important reason for controlling temperature is for the sake of consistancy. If you're temp is all over the place, then your time MUST be all over the place too...and any attempt to have a repeatable result is based on eyeballing. You may get a "good" print on one day...and another "good" print on another...but I defy you to get two that match.

avandesande · Feb 5, 2007

paper will start fogging at 75F with certain developers

glennfromwy · Feb 6, 2007

I just use it at room temperature, which is around 69° F. If the developer is too cold, it will slow down and even quit working. I second the suggestion of a heating mat of some sort, if room temperature can't be raised.

Bob F. · Feb 6, 2007

Recall that most paper/developer combinations develop to completion (more or less) so you do not need to take the same care as you do with film. After a certain time, little extra density is gained.

Some developers like to be warm (glycin based ones IIRC) in which case it is best to keep it above 20-22C, but other than that it seems most developers will work at cooler temperatures quite happily.

Cheers, Bob.

haryanto · Feb 6, 2007

Schlapp said:
I recently spent a day with a renowned printer in the UK and he didn't monitor his developer temp at all - and the prints were wonderful. Now, everything I read about printing tells me I need 20C for developers in most cases.
I'm soon to set up my own darkroom in a stone built outhouse which is joined to the house which itself is on a Scottish island. Needless to say, it's not always so warm there. Will the lower temps I am likely to have matter?

In book 3 AA, said that metol has a wide range temperatur activity, but Hidroquinone loses much its activity at about 55F but has very high activity at 75F, a developer MQ producing normal activity at about 68F

hope it's helps

dancqu · Feb 6, 2007

haryanto said:
In book 3 AA, said that metol has a wide range
temperatur activity, but Hidroquinone loses much
its activity at about 55F but has very high activity
at 75F, a developer MQ producing normal
activity at about 68F.

That is important and something which needs more
of my attention. An interesting post some time back
pointed out that one can control contrast by adjusting
developer temperature. I'm quite sure that has to do
with hydroquinone's increased activity as it warms.

Beer's and A. Adams split Ansco 130, both contrast
control developers, depend on varying the amount of
hydroquinone. As hydroquinone is a weak developing
agent it disproportionately ups density in the more
exposed portions of the film or paper. So, contrast
goes up. The more active the hydroquinone
the more contrast. Sensible I'd say. Dan

skygzr · Feb 6, 2007

Howard Bond suggested that you should compensate seven seconds per degree C. So if your time at 20C is 2:00, you should give 2:07 at 19C. Howard measures this kind of stuff and he's usually pretty accurate. I would expect that this relationship only works over some small range of temperatures.

I'm quoting this from memory so I could be mistaken.

David A. Goldfarb · Feb 6, 2007

If your developer temperature varies significantly, you might look at what Adams says in the _The Print_ about factorial development.

The basic idea is to see when the image emerges in the tray, and treat total development time as a factor of the emergence time. So with a metronome running you might count 25 seconds for the emergence time and with a certain paper/dev combination your preferred factor might be 4, so you would develop for 100 seconds. Now say it's a half hour later into your limited edition of 250 prints and the developer has gotten warmer, but it's also oxidized somewhat--what's the development time? The factorial method attempts to account for these complex changes in the developer (presuming the developer hasn't become completely exhausted). So if a half hour later the emergence time is 30 sec, the total time in this case would be 120 sec.

Tom Stanworth · Feb 6, 2007

temp does affect time noticeably. The reason why the printer had no prob is that he likely made his test prints at the same temp as his final prints, so he still gets what he sees. I tend not to bother worrying about temp unless i ma making prints that I want to repeat later. In that case I do switch on my nova slot processor and get it to its set temperature (mine is 22 degs C as I know this is always warner than the house. If I set it at 20 and the house is 21, I cannot reduce it....). This way I dont have to adjust time in developer for the next batch later on...or months apart.

fhovie · Feb 6, 2007

I have never monitored my paper developer temp - It would of course follow the temp of my darkroom at 70 - 80 deg F. I notice that hot developer will increase the contrast by as much as 1 or maybe evern 2 grades. I use PC-TEA or Amidol. Those are the only two developers I use. I use mostly Fiber paper.

rjas · Feb 6, 2007

I used to have a running water bath at 20 degrees to keep my developer even. One day I got sick of the dripping water sound and turned it off. Haven't noticed a difference since.

pentaxuser · Feb 6, 2007

Schlapp.I just had a look at my Nova Developer which the label says will work from 16C to 34C. It gives a sliding scale of times. The graph is quite small but it seems to indicate a 7/8 second compensation per 2C. It varies slightly( gets less than 7/8 secs per 2C) as you go up the scale.

I'd have thought that for reasons of chemistry and comfort that you wouldn't want to operate at less than 16C.

I hope you like your island life. It'll certainly be different from Mossley.

pentaxuser

dancqu · Feb 7, 2007

fhovie said:
I notice that hot developer will increase the
contrast by as much as 1 or maybe even 2
grades. I use PC-TEA or Amidol.

Now that's interesting. Those looking to up their
paper's contrast a grade or better should take notice.
The two developers you mention do not contain
hydroquinone yet an increase in contrast does
occure with an increase in temperature.

I thought that might be the case although
hydroquinone and it's published characteristics
is the only developing agent which fit the picture.
Well that's how much I know of the activity of
phenidone-ascorbic acid and Amidol at various
temperatures. Is amidol the sole agent in
that developer you use? Dan

DaveOttawa · Feb 7, 2007

I have recently noticed that Ilford MG paper developer does NOT work as expected if the solution temperature goes too low. Ilford recommend 20C/68F and I cannot find any information from them discussing compensated times for other temperatures. My recent experience was that at ~55F the developer did not produce strong blacks or the expected contrast in 60seconds using Ilford MGIV RC paper; all returned to normal as soon as the same solution was warmed up to 20C (using a water bath tray to put the developer tray in). I now leave a thermometer in the tray and keep an eye on the temperature. Conclusion: developer temperature does matter, you may want to plan on a way of maintaining the solution close to 20C at least if you use the materials I mentioned.

Schlapp said:
I recently spent a day with a renowned printer in the UK and he didn't monitor his developer temp at all - and the prints were wonderful. Now, everything I read about printing tells me I need 20C for developers in most cases.
I'm soon to set up my own darkroom in a stone built outhouse which is joined to the house which itself is on a Scottish island. Needless to say, it's not always so warm there. Will the lower temps I am likely to have matter?

catem · Feb 7, 2007

I do keep an eye on the temperature and don't let it drop too low, or too high (depending on time of year!) - which happens rapidly at this time of year if I'm running cold water from the wash, so I tend to wash after - it's better if your trays are on stands. It's easy enough to bring the temperature back to working temp quite quickly by running warm/cold water locally over the base of the tray, or stand it in a larger try of warm/cold water. I do try to keep between 20 - 25 degrees (tho it will drop a little below this at times).

I'd say temperature definitely can have an effect on the final result and if it fluctuates too much it makes it difficult to repeat prints exactly, or get final tweaks right, which I like to do quite precisely for toning after. The temperature is one variable among others, and you can to a certain extent in theory compensate using a different time in the developer but I prefer to keep as many constants as is practical, and just keep an eye out for developer that is getting tired or exhausted.

fhovie · Feb 7, 2007

This is the Amidol formula I use.

30g Sodium Sulfite 3g Citric Acid
11g Amidol
.2g Potassium Bromide

dancqu said:
Now that's interesting. Those looking to up their
paper's contrast a grade or better should take notice.
The two developers you mention do not contain
hydroquinone yet an increase in contrast does
occure with an increase in temperature.

I thought that might be the case although
hydroquinone and it's published characteristics
is the only developing agent which fit the picture.
Well that's how much I know of the activity of
phenidone-ascorbic acid and Amidol at various
temperatures. Is amidol the sole agent in
that developer you use? Dan

nworth · Feb 7, 2007

My darkroom is anywhere between 66F and 85F depending on the season. The developer (usually 54-D) generally runs between 66F and 80F. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the temperature, although I will cut back 15 seconds or so on a hot night. The reason is that a lot of compensation goes into the way we make prints. Prints are developed to completion. In fact, they are developed to the point just before fog sets in. That gives a pretty good fudge factor. Next, we make test prints and adjust the exposure and contrast to give the results we want. For a given negative, I suspect it might be different on a hot night from an cold night, but you adjust the print to your immediate environment in a very ad hoc way. In a production environment or with machine printing, you may need to pay careful attention to temperature. But for individual prints, you adjust mostly in the exposure process.

How critical is paper developer temp?

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