Need advice: Tri-X and Rodinal development

I have developed film in the past and compared to the lab, they all look terrible.

Grain size and amount was crazy, images lack sharpness and contrast so i wonder, what could i possibly do to improve my developing? How do you develop this combo in order to get good results? I shot the Trix at 400 ISO (135 film).

My Setup:

Patterson tank (2 rolls)
Rodinal developer
Adofix fixer
Adoflo wetting agent
Ilfostop stopper

I hope this is not too vague of a description. Thanks!

TriX is a comparatively quite grainy film anyway, but to develop it in Rodinal is only going to make things worse. The principal of Rodinal is it is formulated as an accutance developer, by which this means that it is designed to give sharper edges on an image. These edges are not confined to visible parts of an image, such as the edges of clearly defined objects, but also to the grain itself which will make it look more prominent. The agitation with Rodinal (as stated by the original Agfa company) was 30 seconds constant at the very start and one inversion every 30 seconds for the remaining time. Any more agitation and this will make the situation worse and at the same time increase contrast past easily printable levels.

My advice would be to use one of the other readily available developers such as Ilford ID11, D76. Both of these come as a powder so if you use Ilfosol3 the developer is ready for use after dilution. There are other developers similar to ID11/D76/Ilfosol so the choice is quite wide.

I use Rodinal but never with a fast film, only FP4+. I expose it at 100iso, not 125iso, but reduce the development time by 15 seconds and this gives me good printable negs every time. The dilution I use is 1-25.

Good luck.

BMbikerider said:

TriX is a comparatively quite grainy film anyway, but to develop it in Rodinal is only going to make things worse. The principal of Rodinal is it is formulated as an accutance developer, by which this means that it is designed to give sharper edges on an image. These edges are not confined to visible parts of an image, such as the edges of clearly defined objects, but also to the grain itself which will make it look more prominent. The agitation with Rodinal (as stated by the original Agfa company) was 30 seconds constant at the very start and one inversion every 30 seconds for the remaining time. Any more agitation and this will make the situation worse and at the same time increase contrast past easily printable levels.

My advice would be to use one of the other readily available developers such as Ilford ID11, D76. Both of these come as a powder so if you use Ilfosol3 the developer is ready for use after dilution. There are other developers similar to ID11/D76/Ilfosol so the choice is quite wide.

I use Rodinal but never with a fast film, only FP4+. I expose it at 100iso, not 125iso, but reduce the development time by 15 seconds and this gives me good printable negs every time. The dilution I use is 1-25.

Good luck.

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+100

Stick with Kodak's recommendation for this film which I might point out is now called 400TX to distinguish it from the older Tri-X. Personally you can't go wrong with HC-110.

Gerald C Koch said:

+100

Stick with Kodak's recommendation for this film which I might point out is now called 400TX to distinguish it from the older Tri-X. Personally you can't go wrong with HC-110.

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Hey, i looked at the datasheet and there is no example listed with Rodinal/Adonal development, which surprised me since its a common developer. I used the example provided by Graeme Mitchell in (there was a url link here which no longer exists) and the film i just developed looks pink-ish

Cant wait for it to dry and scan, haha

A good and safe developer is Ilford Ilfotec DDX (although a bit expensive).

Do you know what developer your lab is using? If so, try using that if you have liked the results.

Rodinal will tend to accentuate the grain, developers like Kodak Xtol, D-76, HC110 and Ilford ID-11 will tend to minimize it, to varying degrees.

I used to always develop TriX in rodinal, 1/50 for 14 minutes, continues agitation for the first minute then 2 inversions every 30 seconds, always worked fine for me, nice clear crisp negatives, today I develop Fomapan in rodinal, You will always get grain with any fast film in rodinal and 35mm, but the grain you get is not that bad, in fact I rather liked it,

Same for me Mr Gould, same recipe but noting that the inversions are very gentle roll overs that take a few seconds each then a tap. The only thing I don't like about this combo is the lighter tones have a bit of the pepper grain effect making them look a bit too grey or dirty compared to D76/ID11. Personally I don't get any more grain with this combo than lab developed tri-x in ID11, the big advantage of home development is you can dial it in whereas labs seem to overdevelop which can lead to very heavy grain and long print times.

Also if one looks at the grain using a grain focuser you can see IMHO that it isn't bigger or smaller, with the Rodinal 1/50 the edges look fairly prominent and the grain pops into sharp focus, with the D76/ID11 the grain has a softer edge to it but it looks the same size to me.

OK, the results are in and they are defenitely too contrasty. Heres what i did:

1:50 Rodinal developer
15ml Ilfostop stopper with 285ml water
60ml Adofix fixer with 240ml water
1 little sprinkle of Adoflo wetting agent

Development: 12 minutes with 2x agitate (gently) every two minutes
Stopper: 1 min, 1 agitation
Fixer: 3 mins, 1 agitation per minute
Washer: several rounds of fresh water at the same temperature (does temp even matter when washing?) until the bubbly from the washer was gone

I would be willing to switch developers but i dont like powder stuff so what developer would you recommend? I liked DDX with HP5 plus btw so i wonder if thats a good combo. Thanks.

I am baffled. No film today is what can be called grainy. Not even Delta3200 is grainy by film standards of the not so long past.
Tri-x is a very fine grain film and grain is about the film, first and about the developer by a very distant factor.

In order to make a film grainy I would be much more worried about the temperature of the developer rather than the kind of developer used. And yes, stand development gives bigger grain.

if too contrasty, cut dev time 10-15 %, but also what temp? For me, rodinal at temps over 75 had some reticulation [a bad thing]

Odot said:

OK, the results are in and they are defenitely too contrasty. Heres what i did:
...
Development: 12 minutes with 2x agitate (gently) every two minutes
. Thanks.

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i like tri-x and rodinal... i agree w. dasblute...

also check your agitation, you say "gently", is it? maybe only 1x is needed?

i'd continue to "dial back" until the results are what you want.

Depending on the scanner you use, that combo might appear very grainy scanned. Most of my negs (trix/apx100 + rodinal) look very very ugly when scanned with a Coolscan. Very rough, ugly, big artifacts. Printed in the darkroom they look beautiful....

If your target is a scanner, I'd use TMAX/Delta and develop to a low-contrast/low-density neg, disable ICE, and do "the-look" in post.

I found Rodinal at 16-18C gives a little finer grain (although I don't know if this is technically so, just appears that way). Nothing dramatic though.

Andi

I use Rodinal for just about everything - I do lith prints and love how the lith just sort of bonds with those negs. Even HP5+ comes out very smooth tonally.

My development:

Pre-wash with 18°c water; Mainly to get the tank and film to temp. Rollei IR does specifically need a pre-wash, some films don't, I just pre-wash everything, and yes, I'd read the 30-page APUG prewash fistfight...

1+50 or 1+60 for most shadow detail and minimal grain, as strong as 1+25 when I want the lower mids to get a more "punchy" look - hard to describe, but the curve definitely changes. Stronger dilutions bring more grain (I've tested, believe me). For pinhole images, 1+60 since I find the highlights really go off with my pinhole.

Rodinal with distilled at 18°c; Agitate first 30, then 5 seconds each minute, agitate last 20, and pour for final 10. (I don't know if temp makes a grain difference - the difference as I tested between 20 and 22° was not noticeable to me. I dev at 18°c because it turns out my thermometer reads 2° hot, and all my testing notes are based on that, years of data!)

MY AGITATION: sort of like swirling a wine glass, very gentle. No inverting, just gentle wrist motion with maybe a 30° angle to the tank. I do fill the tank and I use a little piece of PVC pipe to press the reel down so it can't slide up and down. I just want to get fresh developer to the film.

Stop: 18°c distilled water, no agitation, 60 seconds. I picked this up from various old-timers who said with a compensating developer, the trace amounts of developer will eke out a bit more shadow detail. Never done an A-B test of this, every time I develop I think "I should really test this sometime". Rinse, fix, etc.

By the way, your fixing worries me, 3 minutes with one ag. per minute. You should constantly agitate for at least the minimum time it takes to clear a scrap of leader, and fix for 2-3 times that tested time, with several ags. per additional minute. I really "scrub" the film with the fixer. Look how little space is between the coils of film on the roll - it's a different ballgame than a piece of leader floating in a dish of fix. You can't over-fix (reasonably speaking), but you sure can under-fix.

I do use hypo clear on all my non-test rolls (sodium sulfite is cheap, my time ain't), and test every roll for adequate fixing and residual hypo.

your images should look very sharp in rodinal - if they dont something's gone badly wrong.

I've only done in HP5+ but I'd be surprised if tri-x is that different - but you will get grain and a lot of it and it's either an effect you love or hate.

Also... If it ain't mixin', it ain't fixin'.

Fixer needs agitation. 5 minutes is a more typical time for fixing btw.

Odot said:

Fixer: 3 mins, 1 agitation per minute

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Rodinal is the worst developer available. Why are you asking this?

Rodinal is not meant to be used with fast / grainy films.
It accentuates grain on all films. That's ok with fine-grain films.

I've used probably hundreds of gallons of Rodinal over the past 60 years.
It's my standard developer. It works beautifully when used as intended.
I never shoot any film faster than 100ISO, usually 25 or 50.

- Leigh

dasBlute said:

Also... If it ain't mixin', it ain't fixin'.

Fixer needs agitation. 5 minutes is a more typical time for fixing btw.

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That's not what Papa Yeller says. I try to follow the Big Yellow Father's recommendations. I agitate for a bit then leave it be for a while. Never had an issue yet.

Basic facts, because there's far too much bs going around:

-Fixing needs regular agitation
-Agitation is Not a function of grain! Agitate as much or as little as you want, grain stays the same.

Make a print of these negatives to see if it is really too grainy - or if it's "scanner grain".

By the way, heres some results

They look spot on to me

I have also been using Rodinal for over 60 yrs with my still photography. Of course, just like most beginners for the first five years I experimented with practically every commercial developer available at Olden in NYC, which must have had every one in stock. For the most part, now i shoot Delta 100, a little 400 and occasionally HP5 in all formats: Minox, Minolta 16, 135, 120 and a little 4x5.
On a separate point, not every photograph needs to be grain free. Not all photographs need to be "technically" perfect.

I concur, looks good,

An example of a better scan with a consumer flatbed attached (TriX@200 Rodinal 1+25). Couldn't find the Coolscan example, probably deleted. I've been using Rodinal as my sole developer for 135 film (some D23/6x6 experiments aside for MF as well). It is very versatile. In contrast to the so called "fine grain developers" it does not dissolve the grain much. So whatever the emulsion provides...

Andi