Rodinal stand development, etc, good for all developing or not?

Alex Benjamin said:

You have to click on "Overview" to reach the original ressource.

One note I always found interesting is the following: "Standing agitation is a misnomer. Few old timers ever witheld agitation completely over long periods of time, as is often attempted today. The necessity of agitation was well documented and understood. The use in this test of 5 minute resting cycles is safe, in my experience with Rodinal, for 35mm and 120 negatives and steel reels. Some experts limit their cycles to 3 minutes. Little is gained, I have found, by using longer resting cycles while the risk of negative defects are increased."

Shaping the tone curve of a Rodinal Negative

You can shape your film's tone curve by balancing exposure and development time with agitation. Agitation is used to control the highlights of a negative. More agitation raises the highlight density, less agitation lowers highlight density...

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Thanks. Try it and you will be surprised how nice the density build up will be.

baachitraka said:

Thanks. Try it and you will be surprised how nice the density build up will be.

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I have been planning to try FP4+ in Rodinal 1:75 with a 3-minute agitation cycle to see if I could reach a "best of both world" situation, but haven't had time, and I can't find a way to figure out a good starting development time from which to work.

I've used 3-minute agitation cycles with Parodinal at 1:50 and 1:100 for years. I find it gives me a speed boost over normal agitation (especially at 1:25) when I develop at "Push +2" time, but the reduced agitation reins in the contrast to about normal. I've done the same thing with stronger developers, too -- D-23 replenished stock, and Xtol replenished stock. Similar results; 40% longer development with five inversions every third minute gives the shadows of a 2 stop push, but normal contrast.

I did try stand development with Parodinal, 45 minutes with agitation only five inversions at start -- and didn't see any advantage with it. Better consistency and film is done sooner with my method.

Donald Qualls said:

I've used 3-minute agitation cycles with Parodinal at 1:50 and 1:100 for years. I find it gives me a speed boost over normal agitation (especially at 1:25) when I develop at "Push +2" time, but the reduced agitation reins in the contrast to about normal. I've done the same thing with stronger developers, too -- D-23 replenished stock, and Xtol replenished stock. Similar results; 40% longer development with five inversions every third minute gives the shadows of a 2 stop push, but normal contrast.

I did try stand development with Parodinal, 45 minutes with agitation only five inversions at start -- and didn't see any advantage with it. Better consistency and film is done sooner with my method.

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It depends on the dev times, if they are in the 5-7 min range agitate once per min
When they go into the 10+ min range yes every other or every 3 minutes gives you a little compensation and control of contrast

titrisol said:

It depends on the dev times, if they are in the 5-7 min range agitate once per min
When they go into the 10+ min range yes every other or every 3 minutes gives you a little compensation and control of contrast

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Almost every film I use goes above 10 minutes when I add 40% to the time (my darkroom is often a bit below 20C as well).

I’ve tried semi stand developing in Rodinal several times, including with underexposed film where I let it sit for 90 minutes with inversions every 30 minutes. I’ve been nothing but satisfied. I don’t know much though, I might not be able to identify deficiencies that are obvious to others.

I usually assume people here saying "stand development" are really meaning "semi-stand". I have never used total stand development, but have used Rodinal 1:100 "semi-stand" a few times. The results varied from excellent to terrible (bromide drag). My best luck was with PanF+ in 120 using Rodinal 1:100 for 1hr. with three "tilts" of the tank at equally spaced times. When I was shooting Kodak TechPan I would use Rodinal at 1:200 in a larger tank so as to have enough developing agent for the amount of film being developed. That worked very good, but not as good as the real Kodak TechPan developer in the film speed department.

This probably wasn’t supposed to be a serious thread in the first place but two pages in and still no fighting. Not bad for stand development, or Rodinal for that matter.

Don Cardwell thought that 5 min resting cycles were about the upper limit and he only gave results for Rodinal 1:50 but with these limitations results were good.
But this is maybe outside the range of what is called stand development these days, ie, generally 1:100 or more with an agitation at half time.

koraks said:

difference and the possible influence of film characteristics

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The thing that none of the perennially repetitious claims about stand developing like to deal with is the rather difficult fact that the vast majority of emulsion engineering for the last 6-7 decades has been geared towards engineering emulsions that deliver sharpness at least equal to absolute standstill conditions (essentially no agitation whatsoever) while receiving a high enough threshold level of agitation to deliver absolutely even results. All of the drag artefacts etc that people complain about resultant to very low levels of agitation are essentially byproducts indicating that the emulsion/ developer interaction is in fact releasing large amounts of adjacency effect inducing byproducts. Rodinal is popular for stand development mainly because it doesn't interact that strongly with many emulsions, but it definitely isn't highlight compensating (those that do tamp down highlight density will often produce hideous drag effects if not agitated enough) or maximising shadow speed.

Further to that, almost all the claims over supposed better highlights etc are really just indicative of end users having such terrible time/ temp process control unless the process is set up such that it can only run to completion/ exhaustion at moderate average gradients (dilute Rodinal does just that). Adequately tight control of exposure/ time/ temp and continuous agitation (just make sure it's randomised!) have consistently delivered markedly sharper negs (with better granularity) than any of the overly complicated agitation schemes people keep proposing.

And, yes I agree that old-fashioned 'Universal' developers seem to be pretty good at getting an upswept curve shape.

Lachlan Young said:

markedly sharper negs

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This is if you measure real sharpness instead of acutance (which latter is strongly affected by those edge effects). XTOL stock or 1+1 delivers the highest resolution and real sharpness with all or almost all modern film stocks, and will be in top three developers for the old school (like Fomapan 100 or 400) -- but it shows almost no edge effect with continuous, 30 second, or 60 second agitation cycles. Dilute Rodinal has distinct edge effects, as do developers like D-23 1+1 or 1+3, or D-76 1+3.

Donald Qualls said:

This is if you measure real sharpness instead of acutance (which latter is strongly affected by those edge effects). XTOL stock or 1+1 delivers the highest resolution and real sharpness with all or almost all modern film stocks, and will be in top three developers for the old school (like Fomapan 100 or 400) -- but it shows almost no edge effect with continuous, 30 second, or 60 second agitation cycles. Dilute Rodinal has distinct edge effects, as do developers like D-23 1+1 or 1+3, or D-76 1+3.

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I think you're confusing coarser visual granularity with greater edge effects (a very commonplace error). It also (unintentionally) actively denies the existence of a vast chunk of imaging science work post-1950ish that has informed all the big manufacturers products at the most fundamental levels.

Kodak (and everyone else) was/are measuring edge effects using microdensitometry (and double blind visual analysis too) and there is clear evidence (backed up by Richard Henry's work) that even stock D-76 is as good as Rodinal for edge acutance/ sharpness, but Rodinal has much coarser granularity (which limits information transmittance at high frequencies). Some of the answers seem to lie in the bell curve plot that describes pH against edge density - which peaks about 10 and where D-76 and Rodinal lie almost parallel. Neither D-23 nor D-76 will produce edge effects from their developing agents alone - too concentrated in D-23 for exhaustion effects, and the HQ in D-76 (effectively HQMS) acts against Metol exhaustion effects (PQ is different) - the adjacency effects they have are from the solvency of the sulphite acting on the emulsions, releasing byproducts (Iodide, some Bromide, and other possible addenda). Having made 40x enlargements off negs developed in D-76 (with appropriate enlarging lenses and well damped / braces enlarger), I can definitely say that the grain off D-76 is not unsharp, but it is quite fine. Things like Ilfosol 3 ramp up the adjacency effects, so while the granularity size difference with D-76 is not much different, it is more visible, grade for grade. The claims about Rodinal etc date from the era of inefficient polydisperse emulsions with the iodide buried in the structure - as opposed to the much more controlled emulsion structures that emerged from the mid 1950s onwards. And Kodak, Ilford etc could have made Rodinal easily (and probably more cheaply) - but they chose not to, for good scientific reasons. Rodinal's survival probably owed more to it fitting the same niche that amateur/ hand-line small in-house labs were using HC-110 single shot for (and the fact that Agfa's attempt at an HC-110 was called Rodinal Spezial in some markets suggests that Agfa was pretty aware of this) - an exotic product that had acquired a (frankly rather bizarre at this distance) cachet as a fine-art silver bullet that was relatively cheap single-shot and had immense life expectancy as a concentrate.

Lachlan Young said:

relatively cheap single-shot and had immense life expectancy as a concentrate.

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Those qualities alone could have kept Rodinal running for 130 years, given that many amateur photographers are well removed from "wealthy". They're developing their own film because it's cheaper than paying someone else to do it.

Alex Benjamin said:

I have been planning to try FP4+ in Rodinal 1:75 with a 3-minute agitation cycle to see if I could reach a "best of both world" situation, but haven't had time, and I can't find a way to figure out a good starting development time from which to work.

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@df cardwell's advice is very good. I would give 12 mins with 5 min stand and 3 inversions after that.
I would also do the continuous agitation at the start.

baachitraka said:

@df cardwell's advice is very good. I would give 12 mins with 5 min stand and 3 inversions after that.
I would also do the continuous agitation at the start.

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Considering that Ilford recommends 15 minutes at 1:50, 12 minutes for 1:75 would probably be way too short.

Agfa recommended 20 minutes at 1:100 with their own agitation pattern (resulting in low contrast negs). I think the 1:75 time should lie somewhere in between.

Alex Benjamin said:

Considering that Ilford recommends 15 minutes at 1:50, 12 minutes for 1:75 would probably be way too short.

Agfa recommended 20 minutes at 1:100 with their own agitation pattern (resulting in low contrast negs). I think the 1:75 time should lie somewhere in between.

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If the developer is linear in building up the contrast then I could interpolate the concentration and the dev times.

When I first tried it, I stuck to 1+50 and developed a roll shot in Venice on a bright day and it came good and decent prints can be make without much effort.

You could give a try to that experiment by cutting a roll into two and develop each half with 1+50 and 1+75 for the same amount of time and see what suits you the best.

eli griggs said:

So does anyone here have an opinion of using stand development only to get the best of any or all films?

If so, why?

If not, why?

What are the pros and cons of stand developing for you?

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No, use something else.

Do yourself a favour, and skip stand. Instead, try semi-stand (or EMA).

Andrew O'Neill said:

Do yourself a favour, and skip stand. Instead, try semi-stand (or EMA).

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Please detail the benefits and pros and cons of semi vs. stand development.

Member @chuckroast made a quite comprehensive study relating to this, see the link in post 10 here:

eli griggs said:

Please detail the benefits and pros and cons of semi vs. stand development.

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Alan Johnson said:

Member @chuckroast made a quite comprehensive study relating to this, see the link in post 10 here:

'Development to Completion' vs. Stand or Semi-Stand?

Hello: Years ago I read something about a development process or method called 'development to completion'. This might have been in the context of two part or monobath developers. It's very easy to find many details on all the other terms I've used above, except the D.T.C. part. I am trying to...

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For those of you still tracking this document, I do periodically add to the "Updates" section as I discover new things.