ID-11, Rodinal comparison...

I got my first bottle of Rodinal yesterday. I've been wanting to give my Dead Link Removed some usage and make sure my exposure charts were somewhat accurate.

This made me feel it was time to compare the differences between Ilford ID-11 and Agfa Rodinal..

Now, my testing procedures arent that strict and this was my first attempt at anything like this, so I would have to say this thread is more about wondering if my results are consistant with other peoples...

Both images were shot on Ilford HP5+ rated at 400. 4x5 sheet film, developed in a small tank.

Both images were exposed for 7minutes 43seconds in the pinhole camera, with an f/stop about 345..

The ID-11 was 1+1 at 20C for 14 minutes 30 seconds. Inversion agitation for the first 30 seconds, for 5 seconds (3 inversions) at the 1 minute mark and then for 5 seconds (3 inversions) each minute thereafter.

Rodinal was diluted 1+50 at 20C devevloped for 14minutes. Inversion agitation for the first 30 seconds, one inversion at the 1 minute mark and then 1 agitation every 30 seconds thereafter.

water stop bath, 30 seconds, Ilford Rapid Fix 1+9 for 4 minutes.

both images were contact printed onto Ilford MGIV RC Glossy without a contrast filter on an Aristo V54 cold light head at the same time on the same sheet of paper for about 7 seconds at f/11

I used a Kodak gray card to judge exposure, its in the photo as well, the white square is the reverse side of a Kodak gray card, 90% reflectance

The top image of the attachment is developed in Rodinal, the bottom image in ID-11...

It seems to me the Rodinal has whiter whites, and blacker blacks than the ID-11 while keeping the mid tones the same as the id-11, this seems to be backed up by the histogram in photoshop, both images had the same result when measuring the grey card with the histogram... a median of '109'

What does everyone think of this? Are my results consistant with everyones own experience?

Change the development time and you can get a match.

Then the difference will be rodinal will have more grain. Maybe some slight differnce in curve shape that won`t be visable unless you have side by side samples.

Dear Christopher,

I'm not exactly sure where you are going with this. At first blush it appears you have a high contrast result with Rodinal (from the suggested times in the Ilford data sheet the results do not seem unreasonable, although the different agitation techniques further complicate the comparison), but that does not mean that Rodinal will not produce a better negative when exposed and processed differently.

Sounds to me as though you've taken the first step of an enjoyable project.

Neal Wydra

I guess I should have made this more clear in the initial post as to why I was doing this.

This mostly was an excersise to see how closely these two developers would match eachother using development practices outlined in the directions given by the companies who made the developers, with slight changes to the recomended agitation times to more closely match the way I agitate the film, (i.e. 10 seconds of agitation suggested by ilford, where I agitate for about 5 seconds rougly, give it a bang, it ends up being around 10 seconds where the solution is moving around total, yet only 5 where its really being sloshed hard)

At this stage there wasnt that much intent to match each films exactly. Thats likely going to happen next weekend, matching agitation and development times as closely as possible to see what effects are visible.

Yes, as mentioned, this is a first step of an enjoyable project!

But, as for what I was trying to do this weekend, I think I accomplished part of what I had intended to find out; what results would I get following Agfa and Ilfords development directions using development times and agitation cycles they recomended.. I was suprised that either film was in the ballpark of one another, I didnt expect them to be as close as they were which is a suprise to me. I had suspected the more vigerous agitation of the rodinal developed film would have changed the density of the grey card as well as the rest of the image, to my suprise the only thing it really altered was the lights, and darks... seemingly leaving the mid tones alone...

Im not sure if any of this will be useful to anyone else, and I would guess it would have been much more useful if I had pointed this out inthe beginning, but yes! either way, I think I already have learned a lot from the replies (and lack of them!) to this thread.

Thanks for suffering me in my learning process! ;-)