HP5 at 3200 in Rodinal : doable ?

Good evening to you all !

I'm new here, but didn't find any "introduce yourself" thread, so just a quick word : I'm Yael, a 43 year old French guy who started on slide film when I was a teenager, dropped photography altogether for years, had a digital phase for a few years but now wants to get back to (mostly) black and white film. I'm just starting home development and have read a lot about it but have zero experience in this department. I scan my negatives at home on a V600.

I know that Rodinal is not recommended for pushed film, and not even for 400 speed film from what I've read, but it's what I bought because I don't have much money, because I wanted an all-purpose developer with a long shelf life, and because I don't really mind grain (as long as it doesn't look like static).
I shot a roll of HP5 during a band rehearsal in a low light setting, and decided to push it to 3200. I used an incident light meter for all the reading, exposing for the faces of the musicians (between 1/60th and 1/125th at f/2.8). The light never changed much during the shoot.
From what I found on the Massive Dev Chart and on some other sites, I have basically 2 options :
1) Rodinal 1+25, about 18 minutes.
2) Rodinal 1+100 semi stand, probably around 90 min or even a little bit more maybe.
Since I have no experience developing film, I am tempted to stick to "normal" development. I read somewhere in here that maybe lowering the temperature to 18°C (65°F) and agitating (rotating) very slowly only once every minute could help achieving a decent result without a horrible amount of grain.

What would you recommend, considering the infos I gave ? Normal or stand ? How long should I develop the film if I choose 18°C instead of 20°C (I couldn't find any reliable info online for Rodinal times and temperatures) ? Should I mentally prepare for unacceptable levels of grain and blocked shadows (I don't mind the latter much, tbh, but am afraid of getting "static" grainy negs) ?

Thanks beforehand,
Yael.

Stand is probably going to give you flat and thin negatives. Go for the first option, I’d say.

If you are willing to experiment, there is some options for getting more shadow detail.
Run the film through the camera again, post flash or latensify it (weak short exposure or very very weak long exposure. Do a search).
There is also hydrogen peroxide hypering. But for that you need a steel tank.

Rodinal 1:25, regular inversions. You will get good, useable negatives out of HP5 @ 3200.

You will have “horrible amount of grain” but I’d rather call this “Good amount of Beautiful grain”

Well, you're way off the map here. A 3-stop push in Rodinal is going to give you plenty of grain and contrast, and blank shadows. That's just the nature of film.
I doubt you'll find anyone, even here, who has tried that and can report their results. I'd follow the MDC recommendations; at your experience level simple is better.
An idea for the future- when I spent many Friday nights photographing musicians in my local bar (in the mid-2000s) I used TMZ3200 @1600 and developed in XTOL 1:1. That combination gave me good results.

Welcome to Photrio.
Lots of musicians have been well photographed with lots of contrast and grain, so I would suggest celebrating what you have!
This post is a good introduction, but you could always post as well in the sub-forum specifically set aside for that: https://www.photrio.com/forum/forums/introduce-yourself-to-the-photrio-community.35/
I would not recommend stand development for this project. I'm not a big fan of stand or semi-stand approaches, but if they are going to work, they usually only work in the hands of people who are quite practiced at them.
Hopefully your results will turn out as well as these images (some of which may very well be from pushed in Rodinal HP5+) of another French musician:

I tried HP5+ at EI 1600 in Rodinal, once. Too many years ago, so I don’t recall time, temperature, or dilution. It was a music performance in a dimly-lit club, one of my favorite subjects. But this roll was not a success; simply gigantic grain and no shadow detail at all.

Keep it simple, as others have said. Normal development, with given time and temperature. Of course you'll get grain and little shadow details because that's what pushing a 400 film to 1600 or 3200 in Rodinal does. Just be gentle with the inversions and it'll be more than manageable.

Regarding experiments, remember that you need a standard on which to base them. If not, you'll have nothing to compare your experiments to. That's why, when starting, best to stick to the proven methods.

Alex Benjamin said:

Keep it simple, as others have said. Normal development, with given time and temperature. Of course you'll get grain and little shadow details because that's what pushing a 400 film to 1600 or 3200 in Rodinal does. Just be gentle with the inversions and it'll be more than manageable.

Regarding experiments, remember that you need a standard on which to base them. If not, you'll have nothing to compare your experiments to. That's why, when starting, best to stick to the proven methods.

Click to expand...

That is the standard advice, but the way I see it you can spend forever doing proven stuff to “normalizing yourself and getting experience”, essentially just repeating what others have done before you not really learning much.

If you really are open to experimentation there’s no better time to start than now.

It all depends on how much he really cares about those frames.
Because there is of course the possibility that things would go horribly wrong.
Latensification and peroxide hypering are pretty simple and proven methods though.

Sodium Ascorbate when added to Rodinal is supposed to produce much finer grain image than plain Rodinal. Does this hold true even when push processing? Would OP get much nicer grain if he uses Rodinal+Ascorbate to push process HP5+ shot at 3200 instead of plain Rodinal?

Microphen will give you more of a fighting chance of getting something usable at that EI than anything Rodinal can deliver (or any poorly thought through modification of Rodinal).

Thank you all for your answers !!

I will stick to the normal development then, with gentle inversions I'll be sure to let you know how it worked and to share a few results (if I don't screw up the process completely ).

@Helge : I do care about those frames, and I do not feel at all ready to experiment anything But I will make researches on what you mentioned, even if just for personal knowledge, so thanks !

@NB23 : To give you an idea :
That, I can totally live with : https://www.laurapartain.com/therecordingsessions/8mwcu4fkvw03k45iu0v3g9hps3xd4q
That is closer to the static I'm dreading : https://medicitv-c.imgix.net/movie/stephane-grappelli-1_d.jpg?auto=format&q=85

@MarkS : thank you for the advice ! I do plan on trying 3200 speed film, and I'm interested in XTOL from the results I've seen with different films. I just thought it would be better for my budget to use Rodinal first, and easier since it's a liquid and not powder. But I'll keep in mind what you said !

@MattKing : thank you for your welcome I will post a quick introduction thread in the right section ! Thank you for the link also. As I mentioned to NB23, there's one picture of Grappelli that I would consider "unusable", according to my standards. Complete blacks in some areas, or even in most of the picture, I don't care, as long as the face is decently exposed. Grain, I can live with, as I said, but this one was really what I would consider "too much".

@neeksgeek : Thank you for your answer ! I have used HP5 at 1600 before, with good results, but I had sent it to a lab to develop and have no idea to this day what developer they used.

@AlexBenjamin ; thank you for your advice I do plan on sticking to the basics

@Raghu Kuvempunagar : I've read about this. I've also read about stand dev in a fridge, and things like that. I just don't feel comfortable trying all that with a roll I care about, especially considering how little I know about development.

@Lachlan Young : Thank you for your answer ! I know that Microphen (or DD-X) are much better suited. And I will certainly try them in the future, but I only have Rodinal, and since I already broke the bank to buy part of the gear I needed for development... I know that Microphen is quite inexpensive, but some months, those 10 euros here and there add up quickly...

OP: please don't mistake me, I didn't give you any development advice. . My question was a technical question on grain in push processing to the experts and enthusiasts, motivated obviously by your requirements. Now, if I were in your situation, I would send the roll to a reliable lab than try a developer+agitation combination that neither the film manufacturer nor the chemistry manufacturer recommends for this film+exposure combination. A roll that you care for is really not worth putting at risk. Whatever you choose to do finally, I wish you good luck.

MattKing said:

Hopefully your results will turn out as well as these images (some of which may very well be from pushed in Rodinal HP5+) of another French musician:

Click to expand...

Nice video of Stephane producing those amazing sounds from his violin but I couldn't see any mention of Rodinal and HP5+. Was that just your feeling that that combo might have been used. Matt?

Thanks

pentaxuser

I don't do stand development, so can't help you on that. But I've used a lot of Rodinal, and can tell you for a fact that at 1:25 you are going to get lots and lots of grain. I like grain, but am not crazy about it w/ HP5. It looks a lot better w/ Tri-X to me.

pentaxuser said:

Nice video of Stephane producing those amazing from his violin but I couldn't see any mention of Rodinal and HP5+. Was that just your feeling that that combo might have been used. Matt?

Thanks

pentaxuser

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Who knows about the film and developer used?
But Stephane Grappelli was certainly a French musician, and many of those images look to have been taken in the sort of lighting that musicians are often found in, and the images themselves certainly look like under-exposed and push processed film often looks.
So I thought I'd add some music to the thread.

Thank you for your answers

@Raghu Kuvempunagar : I understand, and I didn't mistake you You're right, the safer solution would be to send it to a lab (the one I send my films to does manual development and offers a choice of developers, including DDX and XTOL). But that would : 1) cost me 12 euros for one roll (the price of my bottle of Adonal). 2) delay my goal of developping myself and "prevent" me from learning a potentially valuable lesson (ie : don't use Rodinal with pushed HP5 ). I care about this roll, like I care about all the pictures I take, even when I test a new camera (I don't like to just "waste" a roll, I try to get decent pictures anyway). But ultimately, like the singer of the band said : "don't worry. If the pictures are unusable, you'll come back for another rehearsal"

@momus : Thank you for your advice ! Yes, I do love the grain and "feel" of Tri-X, but it costs about twice the price of an Ilford roll here in France, so I decided to turn to HP5 and FP4 instead. Analog photography is not always easy when you're counting the cents each month...

@MattKing : it's true that it's often the kind of look you find when looking at musicians' shots. Which is also why I included a picture from Laura E Partain, a photographer I really admire, who mainly shoots musicians on film (but MF, so a little more forgiving with grain).

Yaeli. Please show us the negatives after you develop them in Rodinal . We and you might be pleasantly surprised at how good they are

I hope they turn out OK

Thanks

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

Yaeli. Please show us the negatives after you develop them in Rodinal . We and you might be pleasantly surprised at how good they are

I hope they turn out OK

Thanks

pentaxuser

Click to expand...

I will definitely do

Ok, slight change of plan, probably. I was surfing on Flickr on the account of a guy whose photos I really like (a fellow French), and saw a bunch of pictures on HP5 at 3200 in Rodinal, but at 1+50 dilution. I asked him what "recipe" he was using, since that combination was nowhere to be found on the MDC or on Filmdev, and he said : "52 minutes, continuous agitation for the 1st minute then 10 seconds each minute. The results are good. In general though, I prefer Microphen for this exposure index".
He also explained why 2 of the 3 photos with this combo had a lot of grain, and one really didn't have much : "the 2 where the grain is very pronounced are printed on an old 'creamy' paper, with a grade 5 filter, and they were underexposed. The other is from the same roll, printed on Foma 112 paper". Sooo, I'm thinking I'm going to follow his recipe, because the grain on the "correctly exposed" photo of his is very subdued (as you see here : https://www.flickr.com/photos/chomski69/49444745288/).

Yaeli said:

they were underexposed.

Click to expand...

Everything on HP5+ at 3200 is underexposed. Y poi u may or may not like the inevitable and substantial loss of shadow detail, which simply cannot be prevented no matter what antics you throw at it during development.
Rodinal would be down at the bottom of my list for an experiment like this. Try xtol or something like that.

Yaeli said:

Good evening to you all !

I'm new here, but didn't find any "introduce yourself" thread, so just a quick word : I'm Yael, a 43 year old French guy who started on slide film when I was a teenager, dropped photography altogether for years, had a digital phase for a few years but now wants to get back to (mostly) black and white film. I'm just starting home development and have read a lot about it but have zero experience in this department. I scan my negatives at home on a V600.

I know that Rodinal is not recommended for pushed film, and not even for 400 speed film from what I've read, but it's what I bought because I don't have much money, because I wanted an all-purpose developer with a long shelf life, and because I don't really mind grain (as long as it doesn't look like static).
I shot a roll of HP5 during a band rehearsal in a low light setting, and decided to push it to 3200. I used an incident light meter for all the reading, exposing for the faces of the musicians (between 1/60th and 1/125th at f/2.8). The light never changed much during the shoot.
From what I found on the Massive Dev Chart and on some other sites, I have basically 2 options :
1) Rodinal 1+25, about 18 minutes.
2) Rodinal 1+100 semi stand, probably around 90 min or even a little bit more maybe.
Since I have no experience developing film, I am tempted to stick to "normal" development. I read somewhere in here that maybe lowering the temperature to 18°C (65°F) and agitating (rotating) very slowly only once every minute could help achieving a decent result without a horrible amount of grain.

What would you recommend, considering the infos I gave ? Normal or stand ? How long should I develop the film if I choose 18°C instead of 20°C (I couldn't find any reliable info online for Rodinal times and temperatures) ? Should I mentally prepare for unacceptable levels of grain and blocked shadows (I don't mind the latter much, tbh, but am afraid of getting "static" grainy negs) ?

Thanks beforehand,
Yael.

Click to expand...

Rodinal? of course and if you play golf,You'll have all the golfballs you'll need.

Yaeli said:

HP5 at 3200 in Rodinal, but at 1+50 dilution. I asked him what "recipe" he was using, since that combination was nowhere to be found on the MDC or on Filmdev, and he said : "52 minutes, continuous agitation for the 1st minute then 10 seconds each minute.

Click to expand...

Anything over 20-30 mins in Rodinal is a waste of time and effort - it largely ceases any useful development activity after about 20 mins or so. You may well hit a Contrast Index in that 20 mins or so with HP5+ that would let you get away with squeezing the print on to G5.

Hi Yaeli,
35mm HP5+ in Rodinal at a real EI of 3200 is a terrible idea.
Rodinal is a speed losing developer, and it's a developer for slower films in general.
If you exposed at EI3200, you gave your film a 16th part of the light it needs to work well: you have no way to recover that.
Microphen and DD-X can give you "decent" tone if exposure was perfect: but at EI3200 many light sources and even white walls fool meters, so it's common some frames end up being exposed at 6400, 12800 or 25000, so the situation is often even worse.
And Rodinal produces a type of tone with darker middle grays than other developers do, so it is seriously the worst option in the world after gross underexposure.
Good luck!

Another way to see it, Yaeli:
When we use a film, we relate the EI with the developer... We expose in a certain way, because we already decided the developer, or, we expose the way we need to expose, and then we decide the developer because of the way we exposed.
Consider the famous three powder developers by Ilford: Perceptol, ID-11 and Microphen. If you expose HP5+ at 400-800, your best option is ID-11, but if you used EI200, you can get with Perceptol better image structure than with ID-11, and if you exposed at EI1600-3200, common developers would make your film (tone, grain, sharpness, detail) suffer too much, so a speed enhancing developer like Microphen is the only option, because it was designed precisely for development after underexposure.
Rodinal is another family: acutance developers (sharp present grain) and most of those require EI200 for ISO400 film.
That's why it's common to use two or three developers, even if we use a single film...
So, what you did to your film, asks for Microphen, and even with Microphen, your results would be of medium quality if you exposed and developed perfectly for EI3200... With ID-11 your results would be worse. But Rodinal is the other extreme, like Perceptol, the worst possible developer for your case: a developer that is used for those cases when you give your film a huge amount of light.
Historically, metol only developers (Perceptol, EI200) were the real thing. Then there was a discovery: when metol is used with Hydroquinone, those two developing agents join forces (MQ developers), and then it was possible, with a bit of image quality drop, to use films giving them a stop less light (ID-11, EI400). Those MQ developers are fine for a one stop push too (EI800). Then Phenidone was the new discovery: it gives films a bit more speed (close to one stop), so that new developing agent was used to make a new type of developer: one that assumes we are pushing 2 or 3 stops (EI1600 or EI3200): Microphen will always show grain growth and increased contrast because that's it's design, but it will hurt your film less than common developers if you underexpose film seriously.
Each one of us can decide the limits we accept... I can make HP5+ work at EI3200 in Microphen, but I don't really like it. Even at EI1600 I prefer the tone of ISO3200 film. EI1250 is decent IMO for a wild push with HP5+ in Microphen and DD-X.
For HP5+ and Rodinal, a good EI is 200, with minimal and very gentle agitation, and lowish temperature, close to 18C. Some people will tell you temperature doesn't matter: believe your tests... I like Rodinal's grain very much when it's small, sharp and tight.
Best HP5+ I do is EI200 in Perceptol.
So, you ask, is HP5+ doable at EI3200 in Rodinal?
It is, but you'll have the worst grain in history, in every frame.
And most frames will have very bad tone.
All resolving power and fine detail will disappear, just like shadow detail.
To get a decent image you'd need a very low contrast scene, exposed generously by mistake.
If the goal is scanning and creating digital files, it makes a lot more sense to capture digital images instead of using film.
There's nothing good in using film, only in using film perfectly for the tone it was designed for wet printing.

Like all received wisdom one should be sceptical about Rodinal losing potency totally after about 20 minutes of developing. I guess the volume of Rodinal concentrate used is the determining factor. If you play miserly and use just 3ml of Rodinal to make 300ml of working solution as many stand specialists do, then yes, twenty minutes is too long. I did a quick test - after developing a roll for 20 minutes in 500ml of 1:50 EZ Rodinal, I saved the used working solution. With this working solution I did a clip test on a film leader. It nicely blackened the leader. Yes, EZ Rodinal is not Rodinal, but it's not too hard to test with real Rodinal if you have it.