Monobath Developers

I've been playing with Don Qualls' monobath and found good results on 4x5 film in a tray. Today I tried it on a roll of 35mm Plus-X. The negatives look lovely, except for marked drag marks at the sprocket holes. I had read the instructions for the New55 commercial version of this recipe, which recommend no agitation. I did a couple of inversions at the start and knocked the bubbles out with some tank-taps. Now I have to decide whether to do no agitation at all, or increase agitation. I think the latter is the right course. Any thoughts?

Chris

More agitation should speed up the action of the fixer with respect to the developer, so it should reduce contrast.

David A. Goldfarb said:

More agitation should speed up the action of the fixer with respect to the developer, so it should reduce contrast.

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Both development and fixation are diffusion controlled reactions. So increasing agitation will increase both reactions. So changing the agitation is not really a reliable method for controlling contrast. The only ways to decrease contrast with a monobath is to (1) decrease the amount of developing agents with respect to thiosulfate or (2) decrease the pH. Haist describes this for his MM-1 monobath in his book The Monobath Manual. Other formulators have varied the amount of thiosulfate to do this.

It wouldn't be easy enough to control to use reliably, but my suggestion is that, while increased agitation will speed up both reactions, it won't necessarily speed up both of them equally. If one tries to solve a development issue by increasing agitation, it's likely to cause a different problem.

In case anyone wants to know, the Plus-X today came out beautifully. No stripes at all. I decided if I was going to agitate I would do it properly, so made up 200ml of Qualls' monobath and developed the film in a Rondinax with continuous rotation. The film is drying now, and when scanned I can add a link to an example.

Next, some Tri-X.

Today's effort (in the Rondinax):

David A. Goldfarb said:

Most of the formulas I've looked at use sodium hydroxide, which is no longer available at the grocery store, but can be obtained from suppliers of bulk chemicals.

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I known only one working monobath formula without hydroxide

Sodium sulfite 50g
Hydroquinone 4g
Sodium Carbonate ang 80g
Phenidone 1g
Sodium Thiosulphate 70g
Water 1l

starting dev.time. Neopan SS 100 @200 7min

Decided to do something silly today - develop XP2 (actually the fake Chinese stuff that Freestyle used to sell) in Qualls' monobath. Rather low contrast negs, but salvageable.
Nikon F6, 85mm and 50mm lenses, KM5400 II scans.





Chris

I have tried twice to develop a film with no agitation at all, as New55 recommend. I still get surge marks simply from pouring in the solution (they are on one side, at the edge that was at the bottom of the tank). I went back to the Rondinax and processed a roll of Acros 100 with continuous rotation. Here they are hanging up to dry - on the right is Tri-X with surge marks, and on the left the Acros with none:



Easy to see which is which!

Try agitating a little at the start of development to even out the initial 'surge' and then letting it rest. A pre-soak may also help to even out the initial development.

The surge marks aren't from pouring in the solution, so much as uneven development from "bromide drag," which happens over the course of development as the developer moves even in a still tank. It's definitely something you don't want.

It's hard to judge contrast from a scan, and it seems like the two rolls were exposed under different lighting conditions, but you've got way more contrast in the film that had more agitation. I'd guess it's too much, but you have to judge that from how they print using whatever method you use.

With FX6a, I agitate 5 sec for each minute--enough to avoid bromide drag without increasing the contrast too much.

drmoss_ca said:

I have tried twice to develop a film with no agitation at all, as New55 recommend. I still get surge marks simply from pouring in the solution (they are on one side, at the edge that was at the bottom of the tank). I went back to the Rondinax and processed a roll of Acros 100 with continuous rotation. Here they are hanging up to dry - on the right is Tri-X with surge marks, and on the left the Acros with none:

Easy to see which is which!

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Agfa's instructions for their daylight tanks did not say continuous rotation.

Instead required a turn of knob of more than 180 degrees every two seconds.
Cannot recall exact text from 1960.
They provided times and temps for Agfa developers and Agfa films in these circumstances.

Ive not had surge marks with stainless, Patterson or Agfa daylight tanks. I normally stand by pouring soup in and setting a kitchen timer, the daylight tanks are harder work.

Except with inadequate fixing as they go away with more fixing...

Just for the record, I did successfully run some Tri-X through the Rondinax with a monobath. Slow steady rotation for the entire six minutes and no surge marks. I see I'm not the only person to get surge/drag marks from monobath development; the Flickr monobath group has quite a few affected images. I though the Rondinax would help as the movement of developer as the reel rotates is parallel with the edge of the film, and if a streak does form from a sprocket hole, it ought to be along the unused edge of the film. I think it might be possible to avoid them in a Paterson tank by spinning the reel with the twiddle stick as the solution is poured in. I may try that if I ever get bored!

I found this reference in a 1969's book named 101 Experiments in Photography.



Has anyone tried this?

If you are interested in monobaths then get Grant Haist's The Monobath Manual. Haist was a Kodak engineer that did a lot of work with monobaths. However be aware that his final conclusion was that they were not worth the effort. There was no special advantage other than a slight decrease in total processing time.

In "Modern Photographic Processing, volume 2" Grant Haist has the formula for MM-2
Part One

Phenidone -----------------8 grams Panatomic-X Plus-X Tri-X Pan
Hydroquinone------------24 grams Part I 500 ml 250 ml 240 ml
Sodium Sulfite, anh--100 grams PartII 180 ml 275 ml 225 ml
Sodium hydroxide 6 grams water 320 ml 475 ml 533 ml
Water to 1 liter

Part II
Sodium Thiosulfate 5H2O 400 grams
water to 1 liter


I tried mixing the 2 solutions but Solution I simply was too concentrated and had zero keeping qualities.
By using arithmetic, I calculated the amount that would be in a liter of water for each film. I tried it on Ilford HP-5 with the Tri-X proportions and it worked fine.
8 minutes at 75 F with 5 seconds agitation 1/minute.
And if needed glutaraldehyde was suggested for hardening soft emulsions, 8 ml of 25% glutaraldehyde per liter of working monobath. Emulsions were softer back then compared to present emulsions.

Panatomic-X Plus-X Tri-X
Phenidone--------------4 grams-------------2 grams-----------------1.92 grams
Hydroquinone----------12 grams-----------6 grams----------------5.76
Sodium Sulfite anh 50 grams----------25 grams---------------24 grams
sodium hydroxide-----3 grams----------1.5 grams----------------1.44 grams
Sodium thiosulfate
5H2O----------------------72 grams---------102 grams---------------90 grams
water to 1 liter " "
Check my arithmetic before mixing it.
The book was published in 1979. And there have been some changes in film over the decades.
I hope this does not duplicate a post from the past. I just ran across this thread recently and did not have time to read all the pages before this.

Most modern films do not need a prehardener.

PE

Tom Hoskinson said:

Yes Pat, and if you couple this technique with stand or semi-stand development you will get very high acutance and excellent micro tonality as well.

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that sounds really interesting; got to give this a try.What is the rest of the processing sequence?... stop ,fix, wash?

raraldehyde was

RalphLambrecht said:

that sounds really interesting; got to give this a try.What is the rest of the processing sequence?... stop ,fix, wash?

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all you need to do is wash. The fixing is already done in a monobath. It should also wash faster. as for hardening IF needed, glutaraldehyde would be added to the monobath. But as PE says, most modern films do not need the hardening agent added to the monobath, and it would not be a "prehardener", but added directly to the monobath. That is why I said if needed.
For those interested in monobaths, I suggest you find a copy of Monobath Manual by Grant Haist. It goes into considerable detail about the properties of monobaths.

birdreader said:

raraldehyde was
all you need to do is wash. The fixing is already done in a monobath. It should also wash faster. as for hardening IF needed, glutaraldehyde would be added to the monobath. But as PE says, most modern films do not need the hardening agent added to the monobath, and it would not be a "prehardener", but added directly to the monobath. That is why I said if needed.
For those interested in monobaths, I suggest you find a copy of Monobath Manual by Grant Haist. It goes into considerable detail about the properties of monobaths.

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Here is another formula, by Harvey A Hodes published as Low Gamma Photographic Developer for Rapid Processing of Aerial film
Mr. Hodes came up with a "straight" developer for use in the Kodak Versamat processor, which was able to process film faster with low gamma.
He called it H-1
Phenidone----------1 gram
Hydroquinone----2 gram
Na Carbonate----10 grams
Sodium Sulfite--30 grams
processed 4.5 meter/minute at 35 degrees C and a gamma 0.55 and speed 160(EAFS, not asa) using Plus X Aerographic 2402.

His formula H-2 monobath is as follows
Phenidone-----------------1 gram
hydroquinone--------------2 grams
Sodium carbonate------10 grams
sodium thiosulfate------50 grams
polyethylene oxide
grade 4000--------------4 grams
water to-----------------1 liter
80F 4 minutes 0.66 gamma speed(EAFS, not regular ASA speed) and fog 0.16 for Tri-X Aerographic 2403
95 F 3 minutes

The "Polyethylene oxide" was added as a developer accelerator and a way of preventing the monobath from sludging.
Perhaps PE can comment:Wikipedia says some chemists call it polyethylene glycol, and some call it polyethylene oxide. As the formulation dates from 1977, today's films just might have the Polyethylene oxide built into the synthetic materials used to make the coating of the film.
IF Polyethylene glycol is the same as polyethylene oxide, perhaps substituting the polyethylene glycol U. S. P. from the drugstore would work.

Another monobath
H-3 monobath
Phenidone---------------1 gram
hydroquinone-----------2 grams
sodium carbonate------40 grams
sodium sulfite---------30 grams
cysteine hydrochloride---10 grams
water to--------------- 1 liter

Trix Aerographic 80F 5 minutes Gamma 0.62 and EAFS 320 witha fog of 0.18
For those with access to professional journals, here is the reference
Journal of Applied Photographic Engineering, Volume 3, number 1, winter 1977 page 49 Mr. Harvey A. Hodes Low Gamma Photographic Developer for Rapid Processing of Aerial Film.