Stand Development with Phenidone + Ascorbic Acid Developers

I've been using Patrick Gainer's Phenidone + Ascorbic Acid + Borax developers for quite some time, most recently the 'SPF-3' version, with very good results. I have been trying stand development with Caffenol-C and Parodinal and the results have been very good as well. One aspect that particularly appeals to me about stand development is that I can expose a single roll of film at various EI's (+/- 3 stops from box speed) and get very usable negatives. I would like to try stand developement with PCB developers, have been searching the forums for info, and have not come up with anything useful. My first question is, would stand development even work with PCB developers? My second question is, if I were to try stand development, what would some good starting points be (dilutions, times, etc.)?

I thought I had found a formula for every developer on the net, but I do not have SPF-3. Could you post it or a link to it???

Thanks!

CBG said:

I thought I had found a formula for every developer on the net, but I do not have SPF-3. Could you post it or a link to it???

Thanks!

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I don't have the exact link but it is one of Patrick Gainer's formulations that I stumbled across. The recipe is as follows:

Phenidone - 1 tbs (15 mL) of 1% solution (0.15 g)
Ascorbic Acid - 1 1/2 tsp (6 g)
Borax - 2 tbs
Water to make 1L

Use same start times as D-76. Re-use the developer as it can develop at least 10 rolls of film.

Hmm ... looks like I'm on my own with this one. I'll try something like PC-Glycol for an hour since working strength solution is quite dilute.

I wonder if it would work as a 2-bath. Might give it a try.
juan

Please do report back your results, as I'm sure there are others who, like me, would be interested.

PC-Glycol might work better at half strength, as does FX-2.
http://www.jackspcs.com/fx2.htm

In my tests on 2-bath development, carry-over of phenidone/ascorbate on the film,tank and reels means that the B solution itself,not just that absorbed on the film,does the development.It produces an image but is not 2-bath development as usually meant.
www.apug.org/forums/forum37/33170-phenidone-ascorbate-2bath-developer.html

Well ... just tried 1-hour stand in PC-Glycol at 1:100 (twice the normal dilution) and the film is completely blank. Next up is the 1:50 (normal) dilution.

MichaelMadio said:

One aspect that particularly appeals to me about stand development is that I can expose a single roll of film at various EI's (+/- 3 stops from box speed) and get very usable negatives.

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Usable perhaps but probably not the best negatives. Stand development is a useful technique when the photographer is faced with a high contrast situation. This technique compresses the tonal scale of the image to fit that of the negative. It is not a panacea for sloppy exposure. For average or low contrast lighting it will not produce negatives that accurately reproduce the tonal scale of the original scene.

That being said stand development is dependant on the type of film and developer used. Some films work well others do not. The standard method uses a very dilute developer such as Rodinal 1:200 or even more dilute. The theory being that without agitation to supply fresh developer the developer will become exhasted in the denser portions of the negative. This prevents highlight detail from becoming blocked while preserving shadow detail.

A better starting question would be "Which films respond best to stand development." Once you have a film, do some tests with developers that interest you.

MichaelMadio said:

Well ... just tried 1-hour stand in PC-Glycol at 1:100 (twice the normal dilution) and the film is completely blank. Next up is the 1:50 (normal) dilution.

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I think this is an experimental error.
I found stand development in half-strength PC-Glycol for 1 hour ,agitating every 10 min to avoid streaking, gave rather dense negatives with 100 T-max.
It might be better to try 1/4 strength PC-Glycol, I did not try it.
Usually the high pH phenidone-ascorbate developers give high shadow speed.

Gerald,

Totally agree with your points about exposure and choosing a film but I'm coming at it from a slightly different perspective. I'm using roll film (135 and 120) and I found shockingly good results using Caffenol (the C-C-L variation) with stand development. This gives me the flexibility to deliberately make exposures at varied EI's on the same roll and be able to get high quality results. I could just stick with the Caffenol-C-L as it works well for me but since I like the PC developers in conventional use I figured I would try to get similar results with them as well.


Alan,

You may be right about error on my part. Semi-stand development as you propose may be a better approach. I did slow inversions for the first minute then let it sit for an hour. It could be that the activity of PC developers is sensitive to agitation ... I don't know. I haven't had time to do more testing but I'm going to try PC-Glycol 1:50 with my normal stand procedure and also try PC-Glycol 1:100 with semi-stand agitation (maybe every 20 mins).


I'm really out of my element when it comes to stand development. I tend to stick with "normal" processing but I tried Parodinal stand development and was pleasantly surprised then tried Caffenol-C-L and it was like "wow". I'm just trying to get similar results with PCB developers if possible. I really appreciate any guidance and input.

My only worry is with low contrast scenes not producng negatives with sufficient contrast to make a good print. The best prints come from negatives that have received the proper exposure.

Remember no developer or intensifier can create shadow detail where none exists.

The only time that I would use this method is with film exposed with a simple camera without exposure control.

You might have better results with a two bath developer particularly where some development occurs in the first bath. Then by varying the time in each bath you have more control.

After being away from this for a while, I finally managed to test PC-Glycol 1:50 (standard dilution) using 1 hour stand development. I haven't had time to print or scan but the negatives look really good. I can make out shadows and highlights in frames that are +/-3 EV from normal with full tonal scale in between. Based solely on the negatives, the results look better than Rodinal (I know, I know, heresy) and quite close to Caffenol-C-L. I'll have to experiment more and make prints but it looks like we may have a keeper here.

Michael, I just came across this thread. This sounds very good! What, and how much alkali did you use? Any agitation at all?

For alkali I used borax at 2 tbs per L. Agitation was 20 slow inversions during the first minute then let it stand for 59 mins.

I used PC-Glycol with carbonate alkali,that accounts for the difference in results.
www.photosensitive.ca/wp/easy-film-developers
With borax it would be similar to PC-TEA I daresay, they have a similar pH.

I saw where a guy on flickr used the borax and one hour, too. It makes a lot of sense, intuitively, to me.

I have a roll of Arista Premium 100 that I've ignored for almost two years. I can't even remember the subject matter(s). This stand sounds like a good way of covering all the bases.

I've done more testing with this and have made some interesting observations. First, I have slightly changed my developer (this is after much testing). I have gone from using PC-Glycol + borax one-shot to what I'll call PCB (18g borax, 6g ascorbic acid, 0.15g phenidone, water to 1L - based on posts from Patrick Gainer) that is re-used. I see no real difference between the two and find PCB more economical.

My first observation is that full stand development does not make that much of a difference with phenidone/ascorbate developers. When comparing full stand to minimal agitation (60 sec initial agitation, 10 sec agitation every 5 mins) there is no appreciable difference while minimal agitation makes for much shorter development times. Using PCB with minimal agitation for 20 mins I get a solid EI 1600 from 35mm Tri-X with good shadows and good highlight control. However, I do see a noticeable difference when using PCB like normal (D-76 times and normal agitation) vs minimal agitation. Regular pushing to the same EI using PCB has more contrast and looks pushed while minimal agitation preserves shadow/highlight detail but grain is more pronounced (still fine though).

My second observation is that dilution does not necessarily behave as expected. I learned that keeping the pH and ascorbic acid levels up plays a more important role than the amount of phenidone. If you just keep diluting PC-Glycol and the alkali you will get a slower developer but this is mainly because of the lower pH. I found that you need to keep the alkali and ascorbic levels up while the amount of phenidone can be shockingly low and still be very active (less than 0.01g/L phenidone still works).

So I finally found my phenidone/ascorbate compensating developer ... PCB with minimal agitation. Just changing the agitation and time makes it behave differently ... no extreme dilution required. This makes PCB economical and flexible.

Yet another addendum, while I like PCB, I still wanted a phenidone/ascorbate developer that can do full stand development (not minimal agitation) without issue just to satisfy my own curiosity. I'm not looking for any sort of edge effects but am looking for highlight/contrast control, particularly when pushing film. I have also looked again at one-shot PC developers as I'm using some interesting film with a very messy anti-halation layer that leaves everything blue. My first thought was to go back to a weaker PC-Glycol (it's convenient) and what I found is that I sometimes get uneven results when using full stand development. It also occurred to me that adding potassium bromide may help even things out a bit. After some trial and error, I arrived at the following PC-Glycol variant:

PC-Glycol (10% ascorbic acid, 0.25% phenidone) - 8mL
Borax - 6.92g
Sodium Hydroxide - 1.45g
Potassium Bromide - 0.2g
Water to make 1L

It's an 8 min developer when used normally. Push development behaves as expected and increases contrast. I did full stand development (60 sec initial inversions only) and found that 90 mins gives a real +2 push with good highlight and contrast control. I've tested with Neopan Acros, Neopan 400, Plus-X, Tri-X, and Shanghai GP3 with very good results.