Stopping film development then continuing.

[Tobywan]

I was wondering about this while waiting for film to develop yesterday. If I'm halfway through developing film and an emergency comes up, can I dunk the film in stop bath and come back to finish the development later?

 

[bsdunek]

I have never tired it, but I suppose you could. I would give it a wash, maybe 10 minutes to clear out all the stop before re-introducing the developer. It would probably lengthen the developing time a bit too.
Better might be just to pour out the developer and introduce plain water. Then you wouldn't have to worry about washing out all the acid. This would be a little like Ansel Adams Water Bath method where he alternated between developer and water. Let us know how it works.

 

[pentaxuser]

Good question. This may seem to be an obvious question but strangely enough I think this may be the first time it has been asked. Well. that I can remember. All stop does is to stop the development so I see no reason why it cannot be continued later and it does seem that some such emergency is likely to have arisen with one of us at some time

I await other replies with interest

pentaxuser

 

[MattKing]

I doubt that you would be able to do this reliably.
How are you going to adjust for the fact that the emulsion of the partially developed film will have spent time being infused first with acid stop, and then with rinsing water?
At the very least the total developing time (time before interruption plus time after interruption) would most likely be different than the total time with interruption.
Who knows what the effect will be on the various addenda to film - the things that fine tune speed, contrast and spectral response.
A more practical question might be whether it is possible to leave developed, stopped and rinsed film for an extended period of time in rinse water before fixing.

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

It seems to me that using a plain water holding bath is safer/easier. Just put the film in the water bath and agitate a few seconds then return later and continue development with no wash needed to remove stop bath.

 

[pentaxuser]

Well it seems to me that in the event of some kind of emergency that cannot be left/ignored, it has to be a real pity if dumping developer and filling with water or stop which is then subsequently thoroughly rinsed out is not possible or such a poor substitute as to be largely useless

We need to hear from a photo chemical expert, don't we?

pentaxuser

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

Why couldn't one dump the developer into a container and finish using it on return?

 

[Sirius Glass]

I would not use stop bath; I would use water.

 

[removed account4]

if mortensen were here he might suggest you use his glycin variant for his 7D approach

water 750 ml
sodium sulfite 19 g
Glycin 4 g
sodium carbonate 19 g
water to make 1000 ml

he might also have you put the film in the developer
just put it all in the refrigerator and the next day it would be done.

you'd have film processed to gamma infinity if you do it right

otherwise i'd not use stop but heavily rinse the film in running water
and hope that when you redevelop it the next day it turned out OK ...

 

[Sirius Glass]

if mortensen were here he might suggest you use his glycin variant for his 7D approach

water 750 ml
sodium sulfite 19 g
Glycin 4 g
sodium carbonate 19 g
water to make 1000 ml

he might also have you put the film in the developer
just put it all in the refrigerator and the next day it would be done.

you'd have film processed to gamma infinity if you do it right

otherwise i'd not use stop but heavily rinse the film in running water
and hope that when you redevelop it the next day it turned out OK ...

No, no, no, not Mortensen, the anti-Christ!

 

[pentaxuser]

Normal stand development might be OK as well unless the emergency was your wife going into sudden labour. A trip to hospital, kissing baby and wife, getting flowers and back to the darkroom might just take up more time than is optimum.

Next time I see a thread on over-developed film my checklist questions on causes will include one on wife in sudden labour and a statement that while Matthews may have the better known player in the 1953 F.A. cup final( one of the greatest) Mortensen not only scored the goals but provided the solution to a 2018 film development problem which jnanian has reminded us of . Mortensen remains clearly "big in the U.S." even 65 years later. I think Mortensen's home town might have been PassWonNeverQuit. Close to where jnanian lives

Most of the above paragraph is aimed at U.K. ancient photographers who may see the humour. Others will think the poster has gone mad but that is a thread for the Soapbox

pentaxuser

 

[Bill Burk]

This so reminds me of the time I was developing this shot and my wife told me it was time to go...

I'd planned on giving it as much time as I could, but had to stop immediately "or else"...

In case of an emergency, I'd do the same again. Just take it where it is as-is and deal with it.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I've done this with 120 film, but used water instead of actual stop bath. I poured in water and dumped a few times. Then left it until the following morning. It worked fine.

 

[removed account4]

Next time I see a thread on over-developed film my checklist questions on causes will include one on wife in sudden labour and a statement that while Matthews may have the better known player in the 1953 F.A. cup final( one of the greatest) Mortensen not only scored the goals but provided the solution to a 2018 film development problem which jnanian has reminded us of . Mortensen remains clearly "big in the U.S." even 65 years later. I think Mortensen's home town might have been PassWonNeverQuit. Close to where jnanian lives

as long as you have a strong light source,
there is no such thing as over developed film !
morty doesn't live anywhere near me, i think he's doing the eternal-sleep-thing ...
it would have been great to meet him though, he was brilliant.

 

[Tobywan]

Thanks for all the replies! I have some "B" side large format duplicates about a month old that I did not need to develop so I'm going to give it a try using water and compare them to the originals.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

I'd worry about emulsion swell/soft emulsion damage with prolonged immersion times.

 

[Wallendo]

If you have to do this, I would recommend saving the original developer solution and reusing this. As developer is depleted as development proceeds, resuming development with fresh developer could result in overdevelopment.

I have never had to do this, but have thought about it at times, especially when my mother was dying, I would always worry that "the call" might come while I was developing film.

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

If you have to do this, I would recommend saving the original developer solution and reusing this. As developer is depleted as development proceeds, resuming development with fresh developer could result in overdevelopment.

I have never had to do this, but have thought about it at times, especially when my mother was dying, I would always worry that "the call" might come while I was developing film.

+1... and I share the worry/sentiment.

 

[Arklatexian]

If you have to do this, I would recommend saving the original developer solution and reusing this. As developer is depleted as development proceeds, resuming development with fresh developer could result in overdevelopment.

I have never had to do this, but have thought about it at times, especially when my mother was dying, I would always worry that "the call" might come while I was developing film.

If I were in that situation, the damn film would just have to wait. I could always develop it later when my mind would be on developing film, not more important things......Regards!

 

[Agulliver]

I had something close to this happen recently. I'd loaded three reels of Fomapan 200 into my Jobo 1520+extension and the interface between the tank and extension wasn't tight....the developer spewed out so the reel on the top only got a wetting. I realise I should have washed everything with water....but in fact in a bit of a panic what I did was pour the developer in the tank back into the original bottle (ID-11 so reusable)...take the whole lot to my changing bag, separate the 1520 from the extension leaving the latter in the bag with a dark blanket on top.

While I developed the two reels in the 1520 the third lay inside the bag/blanket still wet with some developer. I would guess around 20-25 minutes while I processed and washed the two rolls in the 1520 tank. Then I went back and carefully introduced that final reel into the tank for development, shaved 30 seconds or so off the development time and hoped for the best.

Apart from a small density difference on the top half of every frame there's no problem...and it's only visible where there's sky in the picture, and in all likelihood not noticed by anyone I shared the photos with on social media. Had I washed everything with water I expect it would have been 99% perfect.

So...I think the answer is that if there's an emergency and you must stop development with more than 20% of the dev time left.....try to wash your films then keep them away from light until you can continue.

There might be issues if you're coming back days later rather than 30 minutes or an hour or two. But that would need an expert or experience to tell.