New to LF film development

[KEK]

Hi. I've just started with LF and I'm getting streaks in the sky.I'm using HP5/HC110 del. H. My first two negatives were tray dev. one at a time with aggitaiton for 5 sec. every min. for 10 min.

1. should I use cont. aggitation or am I rocking the tray to slow or fast. I've looked thru the archives and there are alot of ideas on dev. but I'm just trying to keep it simple for right now and get rid of the streaks

2. this is not related to dev. but how do you keep track of your negs so you know which you used a yellow filter, red filter etc. I'm going to be playing with the movements this weekend so I will have more than 2 negs to process.

Thanks Kevin

 

[resummerfield]

I use tubes with constant agitation instead of trays, and I have no streaks. I’m guessing here, but constant agitation with trays may minimize your streaks. Are your trays large enough?

Notch the film holders differently, number them, and keep notes. I use a binary numbering system on my holders, and can match each neg with it’s holder.

 

[rbarker]

Variations in density in large areas of even tonality are usually the result of differences in absorbtion of the developer or swirl patterns being caused during aggitation, or some combination of the two. Rocking the tray, for example, will often set up consistent swirl patterns around the film, resulting in local variations in effective aggitation. You may find that pulling the film from the developer, and fairly quickly re-immersing it will give you more even aggitation.

Tracking individual negatives through the development process is difficult, once they have been separated from any notes that might have been attached to the film holder. Usually, if the difference is just a filter, you can tell the difference in the finished negative (e.g. the shot with the filter will have more contrast between sky and clouds). If you have good in-the-dark skills, you might consider adding a notch on the corner of the film so you can identify individual negs, keeping notes about what you did. A hole punch is probably safer than scissors for this purpose. Wearing cotton gloves while handling the unprocessed film is recommended to avoid fingerprints.

 

[fhovie]

rock the trays in one direction and then rock them side ways - this sets up a cross pattern aggitiation. I never got streaks in tray aggitation but I also never used HC110.

 

[BradS]

The HC-110 is not the problem. It was, after all, good enough for St. Ansel.

 

[Konical]

Good Afternoon, Kevin,

I agree with the comments above. There have been lots of posts here on sheet film development; I suggest doing a search. My basic advice is that you get an 8 x 10 color-print processing drum (Chromega, Unicolor, for example) and a motor base to rotate it. This stuff is dirt cheap on E-Bay. An 8 x 10 drum will handle four sheets of 4 x 5; daylight processing, extremely even development, and little chance of damaging the film are the major plusses. If you get to the point of doing lots of sheet film processing, you may want to consider some more sophisticated systems, but the rotary drum approach is a good starting point.

Konical

 

[wilhelm]

I've read of people snipping the corners of film, so they could keep track of which sheet was which in tray development. You can get 16 different combinations of snipped/unsnipped corners (plain ol' binary counting), which should be more than enough for doing tray dev.

You'll, of course, want to keep notes of which sheet/holder/side is what filter/exposure/etc., and then as you pull them out of the holders, you can snip the corners as desired, and just remember which is which. It's not terribly hard to keep track of stuff in the dark; just orient and stack your holders in the light, and remember your orientation/stacking after you hit the lightswitch. And if they move or change orientation by themselves, your darkroom is haunted, and you've got bigger problems.

Will

 

[KEK]

Thanks for the replies

Eric I'm using an 8 x 10 tray for 5 x 7 film. I've seen alot about tubes in the archives, the most interesting were Sandy King's tube and tray and a double tube with a valve in the middle for daylight processing.

Ralph thanks for the hole punch idea. I thought I might use scissors but the punch sounds a little safer.

Fhovie I was rocking in one direction but turning the negative.I'll have to rock both directions with constant aggitation.

Konical If I decide to stick with LF ( the dim GG is hard to get used to) I'll have to look at the drums.

Thanks again Kevin

 

[papagene]

Thanks for the replies...
Konical If I decide to stick with LF ( the dim GG is hard to get used to) I'll have to look at the drums.

Thanks again Kevin

Good luck with 5x7 LF photography, I know that you will keep with it. Try looking into a SatinSnow GG, for the price they are a great addition to your camera. The first time I took my 4x5 out with a SatinSnow GG, I was tempted to switch over to shooting color.

gene

 

[George Collier]

Another tray method (8x10 tray for 4x5 film) that I used for many years (I'm starting to use tubes now), recommended by Fred Picker:
Take the film out of the holders, keep in a neat stack, like in a film box lid emulsion up. Put them in cross-ways so they sit up out of one side. Clip one corner of the first sheet.
Submerge them, 1 at a time, in water, emulsion up - hold the stack in the left hand, drop 1 at a time, pinky of the right hand pushes the sheet gently down into the water to the bottom. After all are in rotate stack carefully top to bottom once or twice, ending with the clipped corner on the bottom.
Pick up the stack and put into the developer, whole stack, then rotate top to bottom. When the end of development nears, find the first sheet (clipped corner), move the whole stack to the stop, rotate, etc, and then to the fix, keeping the first sheet at the bottom for each move.
A couple of times during development, rotate the stack clockwise, just for good measure.
I did this for years with no problems, 10 sheets at a time max. Oh, I did scratch one film with the corner of another the first time - never again.

For tracking the holders - there is something I learned in the Army photo days - I still do it and so do others:
If you can get ahold of small pieces of film with numbers-no bigger than 2mm in height (just big enough to read), they can be taped onto the inside of the flap at the end of the holder (the one that gets secured by the dark slide) so that they lay against the unexposed film and block the light during exposure - the number is exposed into the bottom corner of the neg. I make this the knotched end of the film, and on that side of the holder. If that area is clear on the neg, it might not work, but you can usually figure out which one it is from the others. It's a bit of work to do, (they are called friskets), but once you've done it (and label the outside of the holder for good measure) you never have to do anything else.