How fussy are you about 68F?

68° F is a little chilly to me. I adjust the development time to the ambient temperature.

The climate left of the mountains in the US Pacific Northwest can be depressingly dreary, but one advantage is that my ambient cold temperature peaks each August at 66-67F, with the winter low being near 43F. This allows me to use an Intellifaucet year-round, so my processing temperatures are always precisely 68F.

When I lived in the Los Angeles region back in the 80s my ambient was almost exactly as Roger describes for the Atlanta region. Then I used a large dishpan tempering bath fed using dedicated ice cube trays from the freezer. I preferred not to adjust time as that sometimes dragged processing below 5 minutes, thus magnifying any timing errors.

Ken

Stickler for 68 degrees. Super easy for me because my well water is always well under that.

Should we ever move to a place with tap temps above 68, I'd adjust the water.

The flip side to living in the country and having that nice, cold, well water... is that I also have a septic system. I'm comfortable putting B&W chemicals into that, but C-41 chemistries are probably beyond the pale.

I use a Zone VI compensating developing timer in my darkroom in the States; so I use times for standard temperature and just let the timer do the adjusting. This is one of the best tools Zone VI ever put out.

However, when developing film in Europe, I usually adjust temperature to 20°C for all solutions. My apartment there stays at a pretty comfortable range of temperatures except for the summer, when I'm usually not there. I've found that there is very little temperature drift even if the room temperature is a couple of degrees one way or the other for the developer if I use a water bath around my developing tray. I develop 4x5 sheet film in a 5x7 tray which sits in an 8/10 tray of 20°C water. Some time ago I measured the drift on a 23° day; in 15 minutes the developer changed less than half a degree, most of which I attribute to the heat of my (gloved) hands in the solution. The other solutions stay well within a degree C for a couple of batches this way.

However, whenever the ambient temperature is significantly warmer or colder, I'll use that for processing and adjust development time.

The main thing when developing film is keeping the temperature range small so you don't get grain clumping or micro-reticulation. Whichever method makes this easiest to achieve is the one that should be used. Within a certain range, the actual temperature is not important.

Best,

Doremus

hi bvy
it really depends
if it is client work
i make sure my water bath, developer and fixer, rinse + perma wash are all the same
temperature ( 68ºF ) final wash too..
if it is my personal work, i use ambient temperature and process everything
for about 8 mins ... que sera sera ...
for clients i use fresh film and sprint developer .. the other stuff coffee and dektol.
if i am worried about developing times, i also have a green light and know how to develop by inspection

For B&W negative, I do what jnanian does for his personal work. I just let the mixed solutions sit out long enough to reach room temperature. It is fine for my purposes, though I'm just taking snapshots. I will care more when I do reversal, C-41, and E-6.

I usually just adjust developing time (I only do B&W). In the temperate climate of SE Pennsylvania, my darkroom is nearly in the center of the basement area and has no outside walls (or heat/air conditioning vents). In spite of weather as hot as 95ºF outside, the temperature in the darkroom seldom gets to 72º and occasionally dips as low as 63 or 64º in the dead of winter. If my developer gets that cold, I may zap it a few seconds in a microwave oven.

I have one of those oil-filled radiator sorts of electric heaters that were the rage years back, and it's in the darkroom. My problem is remembering to turn it on a day or two before I do some processing.

Around here in the summer months tap water is right at 76-78 degrees. Options are to put what you can fit in the fridge with thermometer and watch every five minutes to check...real PITA so, I've gotten to just adjust the time. Even if I had developer, stop, fix, at 68 by the time I got to the hypo clearing and Photoflo it will be room temp which for me is 74 degrees. Being on three blood thinners you get a mite colder more easily and 68-70 is most uncomfortable.

For BW I adjust development time, although if the time is too short errors of 10 seconds - pour empty times - can get significant. Then I cool developer to make the time longer, although with D 76 1 to 1 this need rarely arises. If the wash water is much colder I try to use a tempering bath.

I know that wash temp too high is risky, what is the problem (if any) with cold wash water??

Color? I haven't done color in many years, but when I did I maintained the recommended temp as close as possible.

I usually can get to 20 C with no problems, apart from maybe a month or two in late summer when I will settle for maybe 24 C and adjust development time accordingly.

As I use HC-110 in a replenishment regime, my black and white chemicals are always used at ambient room temperature. I only find it necessary to adjust:

1) development time; and
2) wash water temperature.

GRHazelton said:

... I know that wash temp too high is risky, what is the problem (if any) with cold wash water?? ...

Click to expand...

The problem is a sudden large temperature difference, in either direction. The emulsion and the film base expand/contract at different rates and that can cause damage and in extreme cases cracking of the emulsion. Also sudden temperature changes affect grain clumping and can give grainier negs.

Best,

Doremus

Doremus Scudder said:

The problem is a sudden large temperature difference, in either direction. The emulsion and the film base expand/contract at different rates and that can cause damage and in extreme cases cracking of the emulsion. Also sudden temperature changes affect grain clumping and can give grainier negs.

Best,

Doremus

Click to expand...

Sounds reasonable. Of course the question is how large a difference is risky? I'd image 5 or 10 degrees would be no problem.

I have the impression (mostly intuitive) that a large jump going hot might be worse than going cold. But at any rate, I use my cold tap water, which is from a well, untempered, and have not seen any problem. Right now it's about 61ºF, so it's not that far away from my usual 66 to 68º processing temperature. My most frequently used films are Acros and 400TX, with some occasional HP5, FP4 and yes, Fuji X-ray film -- and more rarely 1988 vintage Panatomic-X! It is my understanding there are some films that are more prone to problems than others.

Today the temperature was 75°F so I put water in the Jobo Processor and lowered the temperature to 74°F which move the developing time from 4 minutes to 4 minutes and 15 seconds.

If you are developing 1:1 it is easy to adjust the water temperature to hit 68F nearly all the time. But if not variations in time at + or - 5 degrees either way is OK by me.

Roger Cole said:

Unless it has a chiller that wouldn't work here even if I had an Intellifaucet and wanted it to. My "cold" water often comes out of the tap near 80F in the summer and I have seen it come out at 82F.

Click to expand...

Elkay EWR 32 GPH water cooled

I adjust the time to the temperature. I worry though about washing with water that may be too warm. I use cooled down distilled water for chemical dilution to get a temp below 75 degrees, then adjust time as necessary. But our city (Tucson) water temp in the summer reaches 80 - 85 degrees. I have used it for print washing without apparent harm. My solution for film is to just not process it during the hot months.

Dave

I try to get as close as possible to 20C/68F, but ambient temp and water temp often negate my attempts, in which case I'll use ice cubes to bring the temp down as far as possible (Or hot water to bring up the dev temp) and then use the chart listed on the first page to adjust my times accordingly.

I've got notes on all the films I use and the dev times (depending on brand), so it's not really that hard to develop at other temps. With regard to how far out I'll go - obviously not so high that I can't control agitation; lower temp is much easier to control than extremely high in that regard.

+/- 5C is my attempted range for processing, although in the heat of an Australian summer this can be difficult and ice cubes/refrigeration helps greatly.