Screwed up but I might have recovered from my mistake

[mtnbkr]

I set out tonight to develop a roll of Fuji Acros 100 in Legacy L110 at Dilution H. Given the temperature in the room, the Massive Dev Chart called for 8.5 minutes.

So far so good.

Until I dumped the bottle of concentrate into the tank instead of my diluted formula. I realized my mistake halfway through pouring. Oh well, I'm committed now. I decided a 3 minute dev might be enough with the concentrate, so I did that with a couple agitations, then followed my normal process but with a bit more water stop bath time.

The negatives don't look half bad. They're a bit dense, but I can clearly see detail and I think they'll scan without too much difficulty. We'll see what they look like after hanging overnight.

But, that means the only developer I have on hand is the Dilution H I mixed up.

Chris

 

[BrianShaw]

Good recovery!! We’ve all made some sort of seemingly fatal error and sometimes we live to see another day. Congratulations.

 

[Don_ih]

That is truly a special kind of mistake.

Your diluted developer probably won't last more than a day or two, by the way.

 

[mtnbkr]

Good recovery!! We’ve all made some sort of seemingly fatal error and sometimes we live to see another day. Congratulations.

Thanks. We'll see how much of a recovery it is, but I was fully expecting to pull a completely useless strip of film out.

That is truly a special kind of mistake.

Your diluted developer probably won't last more than a day or two, by the way.

Yeah, it was. It was entirely my fault. My old bottle of developer wasn't air-tight so I put it in a new bottle of the same design but half the size of the one I use for my diluted developer. For some reason, I grabbed the smaller bottle.

As for the diluted developer, I have used it upwards of a week after mixing with fine results. However, I don't expect I'll finish the current roll in my camera in time. I ordered a new bottle of L110 tonight and will probably just dispose of the mix.

At least there was only one roll in the tank and this roll wasn't particularly important. The loss is minimal and more of an annoyance.

Chris

 

[Don_ih]

You may have been able to use the developer you accidentally used. It's only one-shot diluted. Its concentrate may not have depleted much from one roll of film.

Not worth the risk, though.

 

[mtnbkr]

You may have been able to use the developer you accidentally used. It's only one-shot diluted. Its concentrate may not have depleted much from one roll of film.

Not worth the risk, though.

Yeah, I thought of that, but also decided the risk wasn't worth it. A new bottle is only $22 shipped.

Chris

 

[jim appleyard]

We won't discuss the goofs I've made...

 

[mtnbkr]

They came out ok and didn't require any special treatment. I scanned them with my M43 camera and used Irfanview to crop, invert, and slightly enhance. I don't think my negative holder was holding the right side quite flat or my camera must have been ever so slightly canted because the images tended to be soft on the right side of the frame, but that's not a development issue.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Nice save. May you always be so fortunate with your mistakes.

 

[mtnbkr]

Nice save. May you always be so fortunate with your mistakes.

Thanks!

FWIW, I calculated out the dev time for full strength developer at the ambient temperature in the room at the time. Assuming the inverse of the rule for HC-110 that going from Dilution B to H is a simple doubling of time, I decreased dilution by half until I got to 1:0 (ie no dilution), halving my dev time each time. When I got to 0, dev time was about 4 seconds! I'm sure there's additional time to be added to allow the developer to soak into the emulsion and agitation rate will have an impact, but 3 minutes is way higher than the math indicates.

It makes me wonder if there's a minimum time value that you have to reach regardless of the strength and how much lower I could have gone timewise and still have a decent negative.

Chris