Processing deepfrozen exposed Technical Pan: no rotation?

[charlemagne]

Hi there,

A while ago I found a sealed container full of Technical Pan 6415 (120 rollfim) in my dad's fridge, which he exposed 20 years ago. He never found the time (or need) to process them, so now I'm taking care of it. People say that it has good latent image keeping qualities. I also still have quite a lot of Technidol to work with, so I seem good to go.

But, to my surprise, the instructions with the Technidol say: "Do not rotate the tank". I thought rotating is the standard for hand-processing roll-film.
Question: Is there anybody who can give an explanation for not rotating the tank? What will happen if you do?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Jim Noel]

Most likely streaking will occur with rotation. The directions were to hold the tank at arms length, invert it rapidly 3 times and set it down until the next agitation.

 

[wildbill]

I process my tech pan (sheet sizes) in rodinal on my jobo (expert tanks) which uses constant rotation and don't have any defects. Different scenario but that's my 2 cents.

 

[Axle]

I've done Tech Pan in both Rodinal and PMK Pyro and used regular agitation, again different chemistry. Technidol is probably different, follow Jim's suggestion.

 

[StoneNYC]

I've done tech pan with technidol, if it's 35mm or 120 roll film, the instructions specifically say to shake it like crazy every 30 seconds, it's very different from any other development technique, you don't roll it, you shake it like a paint can...

See Page 6...

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/p255/p255.pdf

 

[charlemagne]

Thanks for the replies people.

I made a test in Technidol:

Equipment used: Paterson 4
Temperature: 24 degrees Celsius

I dropped the loaded reels into the developer solution and attached the top to the tank (as stated in Kodak's technical publication).
During the development of 8 minutes I inverted it 2 times every 30s (inverting it 3 rapidly times would seem too harsh to me).
I did the rest of the processing according to the tech pub.

Well, the result came out fine! No streaks or uneven development as far as I can see at the moment. Development time seems good.​

I also made a test in Rodinal 1+300 for 12 minutes with exactly the same procedure. It came out not as good as good as the Technidol-test, it is less dense, but pretty much all of the detail is there.
But the exposed parts in the TP-Rodinal-negative have a brown colour, while in the TP-Technidol-neg they are black. Does anybody know why it gets brown? Is it a typical Rodinal thing? Or has it got something to do with the 1+300 proportion?

Remarkable thing: the Technidol solution becomes 1 degree C warmer when I poor it into my developer tank.

 

[StoneNYC]

Thanks for the replies people.

I made a test in Technidol:

Equipment used: Paterson 4
Temperature: 24 degrees Celsius

I dropped the loaded reels into the developer solution and attached the top to the tank (as stated in Kodak's technical publication).
During the development of 8 minutes I inverted it 2 times every 30s (inverting it 3 rapidly times would seem too harsh to me).
I did the rest of the processing according to the tech pub.

Well, the result came out fine! No streaks or uneven development as far as I can see at the moment. Development time seems good.​

I also made a test in Rodinal 1+300 for 12 minutes with exactly the same procedure. It came out not as good as good as the Technidol-test, it is less dense, but pretty much all of the detail is there.
But the exposed parts in the TP-Rodinal-negative have a brown colour, while in the TP-Technidol-neg they are black. Does anybody know why it gets brown? Is it a typical Rodinal thing? Or has it got something to do with the 1+300 proportion?

Remarkable thing: the Technidol solution becomes 1 degree C warmer when I poor it into my developer tank.

The "harsh" technique is unique and specific to TechPan and Technidol, I don't really know WHY they want it to be intense shaking, but it does work and gave me good results, no bubbles, I was surprised too but I followed the harsh shaking all the same just because it says to do it.

Glad that you didn't have any streaks with not shaking as harsh. It specifically says not to invert and instead to shake it up and down, so there must be a reason.

Glad it all came out well.

~Stone

Not sure about the staining with Rodianl, only tried DD-X with tech pan other than Technidol.

 

[charlemagne]

I kind of followed Jim Noel's suggestion (also pointed out by Axle). I'm happy with the results. Since the test came out good, I am going to process the rest of the films in the same way.
The tech pub says that you can reuse the developer if you increase the development time of the second process by 1 minute, so I'll test that also. (Maybe even a third process?)

The subject on the film, by the way, is "antique": reproductions from old photographs, books and newspaper articles from the first half of the 20th century. They might have historical value.

Still, I wonder why some negatives have a brown stain whereas other negatives have not. Any thoughts on that? I've seen this effect before when overexposing and underdeveloping a negative.


Thanks again and greetings from The Netherlands

 

[charlemagne]

By now I've processed all the TP. With more than 20 rolls to handle my humble darkroom was like a real photo-lab! Because I hung them to dry overnight, it took me two and a half days. All the negatives look nice.

Next step is making contacts.