Semistand Ultimate?

As I said in my previous post I just did some 120 Tmax neg's in pyrocat-hd 1:1:100 for 16 minutes @ 72 degrees. My agitation is up and down and at the same time slowly turning the tank. The agitation is for 1 1/2 minutes. These neg's are great. I have done this process with Plus x also. I would have to look up the times.
I develop my sheet film the same way. 4x5 and 8x10 so far. I use the appropriate tank and hangers. Never had a problem. I've been doing minimal agitation with these neg's. I'm going to test some semi-stand development as Steve describes. I shoot in low contrast light quite a bit and when this process is done right your neg's do "sing"! I've managed to do some that made me a believer.
Thomas, give it a try I know you will do it all the time.

Jim

Thomas Bertilsson said:

Steve, thank you for your follow-up. I will try your technique, but since I use roll film, do you know of any differences? It appears to me that you're shooting sheets, and developing them in deep tanks on hangers. How do you suggest agitating with a daylight tank for roll film? I just do gentle torso inversions, trying not to stir the chemistry too much to create air bubbles.
I probably would use Pyrocat for Plus-X too, but I've had problems. But Rodinal is a good compensating developer too, and I yesterday started playing around with HC-110 just to shake it up a little. I like what I see so far at high dilutions.
- Thomas

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Hi Thomas,

I have never done roll film. I have a good friend who does roll film with Rodinal diluted 1:100 and gets terrific results.

The one thing I would be cautious about with roll film is degree of enlargement, I always imagined that when using roll film that edge effects would have to be lessen due to enlargement. Only an educated guess as I have never seen any prints first hand.

Lastly, Pyro based developers are superior to non pyro based for most development applications. Rodinal will work fine, however, I would not use HC 110, this has a higher sulfite concentration which promotes silver migration which is the exact opposite of edge effects. Better to settle on one film and developer combination and not stray from that formula.

Good luck!

never blew highlights
What do YOU mean by this ?
a. The film shoulders off and there is no more separation, so more print exposure does not result in more tonality
b. The scene was over scaled for the film
c. The film was overdeveloped.

Saying the 'negative was blown', or the highlights were 'blown out' or some such thing is meaningless because it is commonly used to describe contradictory effects. It is kind of like using terms like 'bug' or 'glitch' instead of 'error', or 'defect'. The negative is always the product of our technique, it doesn't 'blow out'. We, meaning I, CAN make an error in visualisation, can choose the wrong film or developer for the image, or just not understand why the highlight is white, or gray, depending how the term is intended.

On long agitation cycles and roll film.

Ages ago, I tested a number of developers (Rodinal, FX-2, PMK, ABC, Beutlers, etc., etc)
and found that 5 minutes agitation-rest cycles did not produce a density gradient across the film. Ten minutes often did.

I also found that limiting agitation-rest cycles to 5 minutes produced substantial acutance FX, although less than absolutely still development. 5 minute cycles also produced very practical tonal FX.

For that reason, 5 minute cycles for 120 roll film are probably all one should plan to use. Longer rest times with 120, that do not produce gradients and other unpleasant artifacts, seem to be a function of film, developer, phase of the moon, etc., etc., etc.

35 mm can use longer rest cycles because the film is smaller, and the tonal gradient is less apparent.

edge effects would have to be less due to enlargement
Nope.

Ansel & HC-110
Adams gave minimal agitation some creditability when he discussed using it in The Negative
as an alternative to water bath development, and 2 bath development. His high dilution was very effective, and still is, but he wasn't LOOKING for acutance FX, just a practical way to use his normal working methods to solve a common problem.

Minimal agitation for tonal control works very well with HC-110, XTOL, and other developers that do not produce acutance FX, and a good thing for portrait shooters ! The same principles hold, and even make sense when we remember that minimal / standing development has only been used recently to produce FX; it is traditionally a way to vary agitation to fulfill the Visualisation of the image.

df cardwell,
You seem a little hostile. I'm not sure where you're coming from. I often times write something and without inflection and context it comes across very differently than I intended so I'm assuming that's the case here.

Anyway,
I'm just now beginning to get my head around the semi-stand process and have used it to make some of my best prints to date. Let me reiterate, I can't recommend Steve's advice about this process with sheet film enough. I judge processes based on the outcome of the final print. Steve Sherman's silver prints are technically the finest I've ever seen.

Does anyone use semi-stand for platinum/ palladium printing? Would this method work well for someone like me, shooting with old lenses in low-contrast scenes and then printing with straight palladium(no contrasting agent)?

Shawn Dougherty said:

df cardwell,
You seem a little hostile. I'm not sure where you're coming from.

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Shawn,

I'm not hostile. Sorry.

When we are discussing specific techniques it is helpful for us to be consistent with our terminology. That's all.

'never blew highlights' - I could have been more specific maybe, but to me that means that my highlights were always printable and with tonal separation. That's the understanding I had of blowing versus not blowing highlights.
I did not say that the 'negative' was blown. That's a completely different word than highlights and I ask you to go back and re-read my post. In the same sentence I even emphasized that the highlights were extremely compensated.

Thanks for the tip on roll film.

- Thomas

df cardwell said:

never blew highlights
What do YOU mean by this ?
a. The film shoulders off and there is no more separation, so more print exposure does not result in more tonality
b. The scene was over scaled for the film
c. The film was overdeveloped.

Saying the 'negative was blown', or the highlights were 'blown out' or some such thing is meaningless because it is commonly used to describe contradictory effects. It is kind of like using terms like 'bug' or 'glitch' instead of 'error', or 'defect'. The negative is always the product of our technique, it doesn't 'blow out'. We, meaning I, CAN make an error in visualisation, can choose the wrong film or developer for the image, or just not understand why the highlight is white, or gray, depending how the term is intended.

On long agitation cycles and roll film.

Ages ago, I tested a number of developers (Rodinal, FX-2, PMK, ABC, Beutlers, etc., etc)
and found that 5 minutes agitation-rest cycles did not produce a density gradient across the film. Ten minutes often did.

I also found that limiting agitation-rest cycles to 5 minutes produced substantial acutance FX, although less than absolutely still development. 5 minute cycles also produced very practical tonal FX.

For that reason, 5 minute cycles for 120 roll film are probably all one should plan to use. Longer rest times with 120, that do not produce gradients and other unpleasant artifacts, seem to be a function of film, developer, phase of the moon, etc., etc., etc.

35 mm can use longer rest cycles because the film is smaller, and the tonal gradient is less apparent.

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Steve, thanks again. I printed some HC-110 negs and I like it a lot for lith printing, but agree pyro looks better with standard chemistry. The benefits of great contrast for lith printing do not outweigh the consistency of the pyro developers. I think that the compensating developers cover up a bit for my inconsistency in metering. I shoot a lot of pinhole, old folders with unreliable shutters, and Holga...
With FP4+ 35mm in Pyrocat-HD, I have prints in 12x16" that I can barely see grain, but the edge effects are very tangible. I wouldn't call it an increase in apparent sharpness, but in areas of sharp tonal transition there is a definite glow or halo that I think is very neat for some subject matter.
File is attached to show a print from a Tri-X / Pyrocat negative in lith chemistry.

I might try PMK too. I hear recommendations that this developer might be better suited for enlarging negatives than the pyrocatechin developers, I remember Sandy stating that even. From what I understand the effects are similar for extreme minimal agitation.

- Thomas

Steve Sherman said:

Hi Thomas,

I have never done roll film. I have a good friend who does roll film with Rodinal diluted 1:100 and gets terrific results.

The one thing I would be cautious about with roll film is degree of enlargement, I always imagined that when using roll film that edge effects would have to be lessen due to enlargement. Only an educated guess as I have never seen any prints first hand.

Lastly, Pyro based developers are superior to non pyro based for most development applications. Rodinal will work fine, however, I would not use HC 110, this has a higher sulfite concentration which promotes silver migration which is the exact opposite of edge effects. Better to settle on one film and developer combination and not stray from that formula.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Jim, thank you. I don't know what the problems with Plus-X and Pyrocat is, but I've tried twice now and ruined negs both times. Tri-X that was in the same tank during the same development cycle was fine. It's really weird, so my faith in that combination isn't what it needs to be to continue trying. I really like what I see with Rodinal. I like HC-110 for lith printing, and I'm going to order some PMK to play with once my stash of already mixed developers start to diminish. I am pretty hooked on the grain masking of Pyro, and the extremely compensating results I'm getting. It enables me to play in a wider range of lighting conditions and my results from funky cameras are much more usable.
- Thomas

Jim Fitzgerald said:

As I said in my previous post I just did some 120 Tmax neg's in pyrocat-hd 1:1:100 for 16 minutes @ 72 degrees. My agitation is up and down and at the same time slowly turning the tank. The agitation is for 1 1/2 minutes. These neg's are great. I have done this process with Plus x also. I would have to look up the times.
I develop my sheet film the same way. 4x5 and 8x10 so far. I use the appropriate tank and hangers. Never had a problem. I've been doing minimal agitation with these neg's. I'm going to test some semi-stand development as Steve describes. I shoot in low contrast light quite a bit and when this process is done right your neg's do "sing"! I've managed to do some that made me a believer.
Thomas, give it a try I know you will do it all the time.

Jim

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PhotoBulley said:

Does anyone use semi-stand for platinum/ palladium printing? Would this method work well for someone like me, shooting with old lenses in low-contrast scenes and then printing with straight palladium(no contrasting agent)?

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Pt/Pd printing was always my attraction to Reduced Agitation Dev. Increase the micro contrast to a degree where it caused a noticeably different look to Pt/PD which characteristically look flatter than silver prints. I have always liked the tactile look of silver and Azo prints and hoped to bring that to the Pt/Pd process.

DF

In my comments about Reduced Agit. Dev... Having never developed roll film with RAD form of development I made an educated guess that one might not want as great an edge effect as those who contact print. Until I see results I would not be inclined to change my educated guess.

As far as Ansel and HC 110, been there and done plenty of that process. Learned the technique from Ray McSavenny who suggested combining dilute HC 110 with water instead of the more risky 2 part water bath development process which Ansel speaks about. I have scores of successful negatives of high contrast scenes where scene contrast was dramatically compressed; along with drastic highlight compression came micro contrast compression. To the point where I regularly photographed scenes with extreme contrast and then turned around and printed the negatives on a high contrast paper. A bit of photographic contradiction, but as Shawn said all that matters are the final prints.

Lastly, HC 110 is a great all around film developer, I used it for years, but it is not pyro. I needed no more convincing than a friend who is into testing much more that I sent me a dozen or so hi resolution scans of FP 4 & Tri-X developed in several different developers. Without question the negatives with the least amount of acutance were those developed in HC 110. In those scans one can easily see the effects of silver migration. Extend development times with HC 110 and I image the effect will be even more pronounced.

From one dinosaur to another, there are many roads leading to the same location.

Steve: mis-understood what your concerns were about enlarging FX negs. (breathing too much fixer) You're right, it can be VERY icky !

df cardwell said:

(breathing too much fixer)

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