Strong Wild Agitation and Soft Agitation Difference ?

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

My photography course lecturer - she never lectures , only develop print film - suggested to the listeners wild strong agitation. I dont know why but within that period , nobodys got beatiful images , I got a new minolta 7xi with 28-80 power zoom and circular kenko polarizer and applied 1 minute soft agitation at the start and two soft inversions per 30 seconds and we got the sharpest negatives with fomapan 100 and 1+1 d76 11 minutes.
Did soft agitation saved the day ?

 

[koraks]

With intermittent agitation schemes (i.e. one cycle every 30-60-90 seconds) it doesn't really make a difference whether agitation is wild or gentle.

Too gentle agitation can result in effectively insufficient/no agitation, but you'd have to be reaaaallly gentle to get that.
Too wild agitation can result in damage to the film as it shifts on the reels. But you have to be reeaaaalllly wild to get that.
So in practice, there's a very wide bandwidth that results in virtually identical outcomes.

The reason your classmates got poor photos is likely elsewhere. Prime suspects are:
1: What they pointed the camera at
2: Whether they used the light meter in a competent manner

 

[romosoho]

Define "beautiful." Do you mean sharp? Tonality? Are you asking whether images are less sharp due to agitation strength?

 

[miha]

Hi Mustafa, I would strongly suggest you read these papers from Ilford and Kodak on film processing. Here are the excerpts from the documents on the agitation scheme:

Beginners Guide to Processing Film

Processing film need not be daunting. Our guide on covers the equipment, chemistry and methods for anyone new to processing films.

www.ilfordphoto.com

https://125px.com/docs/techpubs/kodak/z-133-2003_03b.pdf