Pros and Cons of Stand development?

I have read various posts about stand development, but I am still trying to find out the pros and cons of this method. Can you enlighten me?

Henrik

I posted a very similar post about 1 hour ago.... hopefully between the two of us we'll get a response!

Yes, I noticed, but yours had some more specific questions, and I did not want to steal your thread.

It's about the use of highly dilute developer. This in itself causes high acutance due to localised exhaustion of developing agent(s) in the emulsion, it's also a good technique for controlling high contrast

The pros can be increased acutance, and very good control over high contrast lighting situations.

The cons, that acutance can be excessive and ruin an image. The image tonally flat due to the compensation effects. Also uneven development and streaking (bromide drag)

It's also format dependant, the main proponents of stand devlopment use Large and particularly Ultra Large Format cameras and contact print the negatives. What works well for contact printing can look terrible when a similar negative is enlarged, so you need to balance the process to your needs.

Ian

Can someone also explain how its done? I always just see times for normal development using agitation.

The only difference between stand & semi stand development and more regular development is the dilution of the developer and the infrequent or total lack of agitation.

So typically a developer like Rodinal is used at 1+200 and after some initial agitation the film is left in the dev for perhaps 45 minutes, an hour. You'd need to do your own tests. The actual volume of developer needs to be larger than usual because there has to be sufficient developing agent.

Sandy King uses "Semi stand development" with Pyrocat, where he might agitate 4 times in a 15-20 minute developing times.

There are so many variables that every one uses their own tried & tested methods. In reality it's the extreme dilution of the developer that's more important than the minimal agitation.

Ian

If I may put it another way: Development recommended by the majors involves continuous or regular agitation to ensure that the exposed emulsion is always swimming in fresh developer. On a microscopic scale, developer exhausts in the process of converting silver halides to silver metal, and produces reaction-damping byproducts. So for complete development with the smoothest tonality, regular agitation is recommended.

However, many have reported a curious apparent sharpening, or 'edge' effect if they don't agitate. Hence the term 'stand'. It will generally take longer for the film to develop to completion. This edge effect -- or 'fault line' between two regions of differing density can be seen as an artifact of the development process on a local scale.

Different developers handle reaction byproducts differently, and even dilution matters. Just one example: D-76 full strength is able to absorb development-damping byproducts much more readily than D-76 diluted 1+1. So it would seem that diluted D-76 would exhibit a greater edge effect than full strength.

So those that prefer the effect have experimented to find the film emulsions, developers, dilutions, times, and agitation regimes that accentuate this effect.

That, I think, is the big picture.

David William White said:

Different developers handle reaction byproducts differently, and even dilution matters. Just one example: D-76 full strength is able to absorb development-damping byproducts much more readily than D-76 diluted 1+1. So it would seem that diluted D-76 would exhibit a greater edge effect than full strength.

So those that prefer the effect have experimented to find the film emulsions, developers, dilutions, times, and agitation regimes that accentuate this effect.

That, I think, is the big picture.

Click to expand...

Your example of D76/ID-11 at 1+3 is a good example, in fact Perceptol, Microdol-X, Xtol etc all behave the same way once diluted to 1+3.

In these cases the increased edge effects/acutance is brought about purely by dilution and not reduced agitation.

Ian

About 15 years ago I went through a phase of testing all sorts of different films and developer combinations. I'm sure we all go through this ;-)

I always liked high acutance effects, so I tried various high acutance techniques. According to the 'old books' on photography, the early BJP manuals, the Wellington and Ilford manuals from before WW2 and so on, high acutance and enhanced edge effects can be had by developing in very dilute developer for very long periods without agitation - often they advocate overnight - hence 'stand' development. This would be with glass plates and 'thick' old fashioned emulsions. Actually, the compensating effects to offset the guestimated exposure on slow contrasty plates in the days before exposure meters may have been a bigger incentive. Thing is, even in these early books there appears to be some controversy, with some writers suggesting that the same effects can be obtained without such prolonged times. I'm sure the Ilford manual implies the technique was all a bit anachronistic and unscientific - and that was in about 1930!

My own experience was disappointing. I tried prolonged stand development of FP4 in various developers without anything particularly amazing happening. Pushing it to the extreme seemed more likely to ruin the film than do anything useful. The best acutance effects I got were easily obtained with Paterson Acutol using 'normal' development times, concentrations and minimal agitation every 60secs. Maybe my mistake was that FP4 plus is already a high acutance film anyway, so maybe doesn’t lend itself to demonstrating the advantages of high acutance techniques? Experiments with an old style emulsion like Adox CHS 25 or 50, or a something like T-Max 100 which doesn't seem to show much edge effects, might be more interesting - especially in large format.

Two Big Pros!

First; typically stand development uses developer
very stingily.

Second; with the lengthy intervals twixt agitation
one has time for other pursuits. Dan

i stand develop all my roll film ( 35mm and 120 ) and infrequently
i have done this with my sheet film. i like to stand develop
with a coffee based developer and a little bit of print developer mixed in.
it is not highly dilute, but pretty concentrated.
i enlarge my film, but not too big ... i haven't found a good way to
stand develop sheet film other than the taco method, but since i usually have
more than 1 or 2 sheets of film to process at a time i opt to do it in trays ...
(i usually tray process anywhere between 8 and 35 sheets at a time )

i process my film like this ( for about 25-30mins ) not because of all the techno-speak
that swirls around this method, but because i got bored agitating my film 10 seconds ever 1min ...
AND because the developer i use smells pretty bad ...

have fun!
john

jnanian said:

... i haven't found a good way to
stand develop sheet film
john

Click to expand...

Try a CombiPlan tank, I use it with good results with PyrocatMC 1.5+075+200, EFKE PL100, semi-stand for 60min (1min agit. at the start, than every 15min 10sec agit..per Sandy King)

best,

Cor

thanks cor ...
does that system use hangers, or are there little rails
to slide the film into in the dark ?
i have a pair of FR tanks, and can't stand using them
mainly because it is nearly impossible to load the film into it ..
it has slots on the side of the tank, the film slides into ...

john

The Combi Plan film holder looks like this:



curved slots that hold the film with the 5 inch side vertical.

Semi-stand has also worked well for me with the Summitek Cradle for 4x5. The currently available equivalent is the Photoformulary version:

http://www.photoformulary.com/Deskt...tabindex=2&categoryid=78&selection=0&langID=0

Lee

I've never been able to figure out why other than to be able to do it. If you have to use extreme dilutions and processing times with your developer to get an image or effect, its time to change your developer. There is a reason why manufactures have recommended film speeds, exposures, chemistry dilutions and processing times.

Ian Grant hit the high points in his first post on this thread. I just processed a dozen rolls of Acros 120 in Pyrocat-HD, some rolls using it as a divided developer and some with minimal agitation (1/4, 1/2, 3/4 of development time after initial agitation.) My results were mixed. The negatives are very sharp and display good edge effects. However, those negatives with blank sky show a whole lot of swirly drag marks. I fault technique over developer choice in this case. I plan to alter my initial agitation a bit to get things developing more smoothly. Negatives without sky or other large areas of similar tone are fine. It takes a bit of practice.

Peter Gomena

I think it's important to remember that both Ilford & Kodak made High Definition developers, Ilford Hyfin & Kodak HDD (never available in North America). Both developers were high "acutance" and gave strong edge effects but neither company recommended stand development, and in fact advocated a fairly normal agitation routine although perhaps less vigorous.

"Continuous agitation for the first 10 seconds then 5 seconds every minute" This agitation didn't stop the adjacency effects, but did prevent uneven development.

Ian

pgomena said:

Ian Grant hit the high points in his first post on this thread. I just processed a dozen rolls of Acros 120 in Pyrocat-HD, some rolls using it as a divided developer and some with minimal agitation (1/4, 1/2, 3/4 of development time after initial agitation.) My results were mixed. The negatives are very sharp and display good edge effects. However, those negatives with blank sky show a whole lot of swirly drag marks. I fault technique over developer choice in this case. I plan to alter my initial agitation a bit to get things developing more smoothly. Negatives without sky or other large areas of similar tone are fine. It takes a bit of practice.

Peter Gomena

Click to expand...

Fuji Acros seems to be especially prone to uneven development in the highlights with two-bath development. This may also be true of all modern thin emulsion, slow speed films.

For two bath development of Acros in Pyrocat-HD I would suggest a pre-soak of 2-4 minute, and agitation every thirty seconds in both Solution A and Solution. And very vigorous at the start of both baths.

The acutance you can get with Acros with two-bath development is pretty extraordinary, much more so than I every was able to get with minimal and semi-stand development.

Sandy King

I turned to a minimal agitation scheme, and the more dilute developer, as a result of the rather high temperatures I have to develop in. With regular development, the times were so short, I was prone to timing errors. I also like the edge effects.
juan

Sandy -

I followed your instructions in the APUG articles section closely. 3 minutes presoak, 2 inversions initial agitation, two inversions at 1/4, 1/2,3/4 of the 6 minutes in A and B. My next guess was more vigorous agitation at the initiation of each bath, so more vigorous agitation it will be, and more frequent. Thanks for the suggestions!

Peter Gomena

Lee L said:

The Combi Plan film holder looks like this:

curved slots that hold the film with the 5 inch side vertical.

Semi-stand has also worked well for me with the Summitek Cradle for 4x5. The currently available equivalent is the Photoformulary version:

http://www.photoformulary.com/Deskt...tabindex=2&categoryid=78&selection=0&langID=0

Lee

Click to expand...

thanks lee
the FR tanks use the same sort of thing to hold the film
but the curved slots are inside the tank and can be moved in for smaller
films ( 2x3, 3x4 ) ... i have used it and it was OK for few sheets,
but the last time i used it, i had 10+ sheets, and it was very hard
to load the films into the slots and only have 1 sheet per slot .... i worry that the combi plan tanks
would give me the same sort of troubles .. i will also look into the cradles
you linked to ..

john

Necator said:

Yes, I noticed, but yours had some more specific questions, and I did not want to steal your thread.

Click to expand...

*********
Some time back I made the (true) statement that in almost fifty years of photographing, I have never met one person who uses "stand" development.
I was informed by the cogniscenti that I just did not hang with the right people. Maybe so. I recall reading, in an old copy of Sussman, about minimal agitation and that some people even go as far as to use 'stand' development. That is the only mention I have ever read about the procedure until I joined APUG.
My dinosaur intellect tells me that noobs wanting to do "stand" development are in the same class as the noobs who barely learned how to load a camera with film; then before even developing the first roll, want to know how much to "push" the film.
It is far, far better to acquire a repeatable technique; practice it diligently with one film, one film developer, for a year--before sailing off to non-standard, tricky procedures.
There, I have said mah piece.

Anscojohn said:

*********
Some time back I made the (true) statement that in almost fifty years of photographing, I have never met one person who uses "stand" development.
I was informed by the cogniscenti that I just did not hang with the right people. Maybe so. I recall reading, in an old copy of Sussman, about minimal agitation and that some people even go as far as to use 'stand' development. That is the only mention I have ever read about the procedure until I joined APUG.
My dinosaur intellect tells me that noobs wanting to do "stand" development are in the same class as the noobs who barely learned how to load a camera with film; then before even developing the first roll, want to know how much to "push" the film.
It is far, far better to acquire a repeatable technique; practice it diligently with one film, one film developer, for a year--before sailing off to non-standard, tricky procedures.
There, I have said mah piece.

Click to expand...

John,

Even though you may have never heard of it before you joined APUG the history of stand development is almost as old as photography itself. One major photographer who apparently used it almost exclusively was Atget, as we have accounts from people who visited him while he was developing film.

I have never promoted stand development as a mainstream technique, but for some subjects, and with appropriate film, developer, dilution and time it can give remarkable results.

Yes, if you are starting out and just want to develop film, D76 1:1 gives great results.

But don't thumb your nose at a technique which has a long history of use in the media just because your own knowledge does not go there.

Sandy King

Even though you may have never heard of it before you joined APUG
*******
I said I had never known anyone who used it. I said I had heard of it.

the history of stand development is almost as old as photography itself.
******
Yup. Glass plates, too; just like Atget's used.

But don't thumb your nose at a technique which has a long history of use in the media just because your own knowledge does not go there.
*********
Well, if my nose thumbing helps a noob get the best possible results in a repeatable manner that shall be an help to them, methinks.

"nuff said on my end.

Sandy King[/QUOTE]

Anscojohn said:

Even though you may have never heard of it before you joined APUG
*******
I said I had never known anyone who used it. I said I had heard of it.


Sandy King

Click to expand...

[/QUOTE]

John,

Well, if you like to dance on the head of pins I will correct my comment.

"John,

Even though in 50 years you may have never know anyone who used stand development before you joined APUG the history of this method of development is almost as old as photography itself."

And for the record, the noob asked for comments about the pros and cons of stand development, not general advice about film development from someone with no clue about stand development.


Sandy King