Speeding up mundane Film Developing

Fintan · Apr 18, 2006

When my new baby arrived last september I knew my darkroom time would take a hit. Looking back I've seriously underestimated how little time I've got to spare.

I love printing but hate film developing and looking for suggestions to cut my time developing. I have a rotary jobo thingie [cpe2] which I suppose should make things easy for me BUT I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions to improve the process in terms of time and effort spent.

I mostly develop 120 film.

argus · Apr 18, 2006

I don't think that a JOBO without lift will help you a lot. You still need to change chemicals an keep your eyes on the times.
From what i've read, a more advanced model with lift goes from presoak to final wash without interference (please shoot me if this is not correct).

Keeping exposed film until you can fill up the whole JOBO drum and developing them together will minimize the time you have to be busy with film development.

Our first baby is 2 months old now, she still sleeps a lot and is very calm so the influence on spare time is still minimal

G

Magnus W · Apr 18, 2006

Stand or semi-stand developing.
It frees up time that you can spend printing.

-- MW

Fintan · Apr 18, 2006

I have the lift thing on my jobo, it makes it a bit quicker to dump out the chemicals, thats it really.

argus · Apr 18, 2006

I do (semi)-stand development for sheet film but have not tried it yet for rollfilm: I dump the sheets in Rodinal just before we go washing the baby ;-)

G

Tom Kershaw · Apr 18, 2006

What about using Ilford XP2 and getting it processed by a lab?

df cardwell · Apr 18, 2006

Semi stand lets me set one timer for total time, and one timer for 5 minutes.

It fits APUG very well, but sometimes I become agitated.

.

Ed Pierce · Apr 18, 2006

Bottles of baby formula fit nicely in the Jobo:}.

I encountered the same time crunch issue when my daughter came along seven years ago. I've adapted by doing as much prep work as possible before the developing session. When I have a few extra minutes, I'll go clean the darkroom or mix up some fixer or whatever. You can load the reels at any time. Get as much done as possible beforehand and the developing session itself will be shorter.

rbarker · Apr 18, 2006

You should have received a copy of the owner's manual (for the baby). There's a helpful section that discusses how to cope with the fact that you're not supposed to sleep for the next 18 years.

There are, as noted by the other suggestions, little things you can do to divide the work associated with developing into little, discontinuous bits. That enables you to change a diaper, heat a bottle, etc. in between steps. That's also good multi-tasking training for handling other aspects of "normal" life.

There's also the extreme-stand approach described by Mortenson, I believe, where the loaded and filled cannister is simply placed in the fridge for a couple of weeks. (I'd call this "store" developing, rather than "stand".)

Then, there's the alternative of finding a custom lab to do your film developing, allowing you to concentrate on just the printing.

avandesande · Apr 18, 2006

Also with semi stand if you miss an agitation interval just add one on at the end. It is very forgiving.

Nick Zentena · Apr 18, 2006

It's been mentioned but save up your film and run full tanks. I don't remember how bit the CPP is but it'll likely handle at least six rolls of 120. It's the same time to do six rolls versus one. Of course the real time saver is to get a second processor and run both at once -)

PhotoJim · Apr 18, 2006

My solution: shoot few types of film, and use large tanks. I have a 5-roll and an 8-roll tank so if I have enough film of the right type, I can get 13 rolls of film developed in a little over an hour. Using an all-alkaline process helps, too; no stop bath to mix, no hypo clearing agent to use, and a shorter wash, too.

Fintan · Apr 18, 2006

Thanks for the replies. A second tank and some reels sounds like a good idea. I use plastic reels too which often are troublesome to load, I think I'll change them also.

Sorry for posting this in Product Availability, I've no idea why I did :confused:

Speeding up mundane Film Developing

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