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Stand Development and Lab-Box

agentlossing

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May 11, 2023
Messages
50
Location
Seattle
Format
35mm
Simple question: has anyone used the Ars Imago Lab-Box to stand, or semi stand, develop? Or for that matter, any similar tank which stands the spool vertically? I'm wondering if the way the film lays, horizontally on the top and bottom parts of the spool, will cause uneven development. Also wondering if the total volume of the Lab-Box is a little small for enough developer for this style of development.
 
I think it's asking for trouble, yes. I wouldn't recommend this. For experimenting with (semi-)stand, use an upright tank.
agentlossing said:
Also wondering if the total volume of the Lab-Box is a little small for enough developer for this style of development.
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Evidently, the tank needs to be filled to the point that the entire reel is submerged. Again, an upright tank works best for this.
 

It's not hard to fill the Lab-Box to the point that the reel is completely submerged. I'm experienced with using the Lab-Box. I'm more concerned about the position of the reel.
 
Me too; semi-stand/stand development is already a bit of a precarious balance between the (alleged) benefits of local depletion and the risk of uneven development. Having the reel in a horizontal position doesn't sound conducive to even development. You'd have to try to be sure it works OK, and assess the results critically before adopting this as a standard practice.
 
Gotcha. I was hoping someone daring out there had already given this a try. I hesitate to put the time and film roll into an experiment. Guess I'll stick with normal development unless I hear something different.

I could repurchase a Paterson tank, of course. I might if I decide to do more stand developing at some point.
 
I never tried stand development with the Ars Imago Lab-Box. But if I remember correctly the ARS web site in Italy has recommendations for stand development.
Click to expand...
 
It won't hurt to try. I'd be curious on how bromide drag looks when film is in a horizontal orientation. I guess like if you stand developed sheet film in a tray?

Unfortunately, with the reel on its side, half of your film would be near-vertical orientation, half near-horizontal, so you'd have a mix of both going on in a roll.

There's a good chance that semi-stand could yield decent results as I've found it reduces or eliminates the majority of drawbacks. Rodinal 1+100 is the most popular.

If you like the lower contrast of stand-development, you might just try pull-processing instead.
 

After a LOT of testing, I came to the conclusion that high dilution, low agitation film development will only consistently avoid bromide drag if gravity is allowed to pull away the development byproducts and that the film have minimal contact with its support structure.,

For this reason, I process roll film of any kind in a double height standard tank filled to the top with developer using a Nikor style stainless reel resting on an inverted funnel. This minimizes the risk of developer trapping between the reel and the underlying support structure as well.

You can do it other ways, but sooner-or-later, bromide drag will get you.

Notes here:

tundra/Stand-Development

gitbucket.tundraware.com
 
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