To completion.

Ok, so about and hour and a half ago I started developing a few test prints, one with 50 magenta, one with 80, as soon as I poured the developer into the JOBO (of course) I got a phone call that I'd been waiting for. One thing leads to another and instead of 3 minutes in the LPD (ambient is a little low today) the prints got 90, dumped the developer and finished the process like normal and..... they are perfect.

In that time there is no doubt in my mind that they reached "completion", the only place I see an unexpected change v the test prints just before that is in the highlight detail, a little bit more detail there and both prints improved the same way. Enlarger exposure was set using an enlarger meter in the highlight.

So me thinks to my self, completion can't take the full 90 probably more like 4-6 or so and then the questions that pop into my head are:

Why in the world aren't I taking all my prints to completion (or somewhere close) all the time?

Why am I leaving that variable open when I can't see the print come up anyway?

markbarendt said:

Ok, so about and hour and a half ago I started developing a few test prints, one with 50 magenta, one with 80, as soon as I poured the developer into the JOBO (of course) I got a phone call that I'd been waiting for. One thing leads to another and instead of 3 minutes in the LPD (ambient is a little low today) the prints got 90, dumped the developer and finished the process like normal and..... they are perfect.

In that time there is no doubt in my mind that they reached "completion", the only place I see an unexpected change v the test prints just before that is in the highlight detail, a little bit more detail there and both prints improved the same way. Enlarger exposure was set using an enlarger meter in the highlight.

So me thinks to my self, completion can't take the full 90 probably more like 4-6 or so and then the questions that pop into my head are:

Why in the world aren't I taking all my prints to completion (or somewhere close) all the time?

Why am I leaving that variable open when I can't see the print come up anyway?

Click to expand...

I don't have evidence of this myself, but my memory recalls comments about different print color using partial development.

In LPD I always develop my prints 3 minutes. If something is missing I go back to the exposure stage. After 3 minutes I usually don't see any meaningful difference.
Maybe the paper makes a difference?

If you over develop a warm tone paper you kill the warmth and with all papers you'll affect the tonal range and may well increase base fog.

Ian

markbarendt said:

Ok, so about and hour and a half ago I started developing a few test prints, one with 50 magenta, one with 80, as soon as I poured the developer into the JOBO (of course) I got a phone call that I'd been waiting for. One thing leads to another and instead of 3 minutes in the LPD (ambient is a little low today) the prints got 90, dumped the developer and finished the process like normal and..... they are perfect.

In that time there is no doubt in my mind that they reached "completion", the only place I see an unexpected change v the test prints just before that is in the highlight detail, a little bit more detail there and both prints improved the same way. Enlarger exposure was set using an enlarger meter in the highlight.

So me thinks to my self, completion can't take the full 90 probably more like 4-6 or so and then the questions that pop into my head are:

Why in the world aren't I taking all my prints to completion (or somewhere close) all the time?

Why am I leaving that variable open when I can't see the print come up anyway?

Click to expand...

Not quite sure I understand what you are saying here. Are you talking about black & white print development time and developing for 4 to 6 minutes at 20C/68F?

cliveh said:

Not quite I understand what you are saying here. Are you talking about black & white print development time and developing for 4 to 6 minutes at 20C/68F?

Click to expand...

Yep.

Not a good idea. You will push up base fog and increase grain size most noticeably in the highlights. I would stick with 2 to 3 minutes max.

Ian Grant said:

If you over develop a warm tone paper you kill the warmth and with all papers you'll affect the tonal range and may well increase base fog.

Ian

Click to expand...

Not normally using a warm tone paper, but that is good to know. That's a good reason to avoid completion.

In this case it's Adorama's house paper VC RC pearl. That was part of my surprise, I expected fog but the whites are gorgeous even after 90 minutes, not that I'm making that a habit, so I'm probably safe under 10. I also see no tone difference between the prints at 3 and 90, just a bit on the warm side.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I don't have evidence of this myself, but my memory recalls comments about different print color using partial development.

In LPD I always develop my prints 3 minutes. If something is missing I go back to the exposure stage. After 3 minutes I usually don't see any meaningful difference.
Maybe the paper makes a difference?

Click to expand...

The 3-minute thing is kinda what I found too. Kinda thinking that the LPD and Adorama's paper may just max out close to 3. 4-6 may be overkill.

With 90 minutes of sloshing around the developer probably oxidized to some low activity level too.
So it may have been just 10 or 20 minutes of active developing.
Just guessing though.

bdial said:

With 90 minutes of sloshing around the developer probably oxidized to some low activity level too.
So it may have been just 10 or 20 minutes of active developing.
Just guessing though.

Click to expand...

That's possible.

Michael R 1974 said:

I suppose in the end, within reason, all that matters is consistency.

It will of course depend on the paper, developer and dilution, but generally speaking, extending development time will have subtle effects on highlight values, although the curve shape may change a little too. Following that there is likely an amount of time during which essentially no further visible change occurs (although tiny changes might be measurable). I'd call this "completion", after which further extension of time results in fog. As Ian pointed out there might also be changes in print colour (although these would tend to be subtle within a normal dilution/time range).

Richard Henry did some fairly exhaustive testing of all this for his book, although he was using Dektol and graded Ilfobrom.

Click to expand...

My normal LPD mix is 1+4.

I was expecting to see two foggy pieces of trash and instead got that little extra highlight detail, a happy surprise. That's the part that makes this worth bringing up and experimenting with a bit more for me.

This jibes with what I've read and experienced (although I have yet to get anywhere the 90 minute mark yet!). After the print is fully developed, that's it, it's not going to get more developed. I've read of fog but never seen it happen. Somewhere down the line I read that the most important thing is to develop consistently, which is why I give fiber papers 3 1/2 minutes? Why 3 1/2? I'm not sure. They are probably developed in 2 to 3 minutes, so I decided on 3 1/2. I did once try it for 5 minutes and saw no difference, so that's what they always get, all the time, 3 1/2 minutes .

With fibre paper, you better be prepared to lengthen your wash time, in order to get that developer out.

And with RC paper, do you see any signs of the paper delaminating at the corners, due to the extended immersion time?

MattKing said:

With fibre paper, you better be prepared to lengthen your wash time, in order to get that developer out.

And with RC paper, do you see any signs of the paper delaminating at the corners, due to the extended immersion time?

Click to expand...

No sign of the paper coming apart or emulsion coming off.

I do the occasional fiber sheet or two and will keep that in mind.

Michael R 1974 said:

Although the darker tones can move around a little, one way to think about extended development is as a decrease in total print contrast as the highlight values gain density. Test carefully for fog though. In Henry's tests, just to give you an example, he found 8 minutes was the maximum he could develop Ilfobrom in Dektol before getting fog.

The effects Ian mentions are worth testing for and experimenting with too. Generally speaking as development proceeds and the aggregations of developed silver increase in size/density, the reflected colour of the silver goes from warmer to cooler. Within reasonable time/dilution ranges giving relatively full development, the changes are likely more subtle with todays materials than they once were. But who knows what you might find if you go far enough in either direction.

For example, I always meant to ask Ian if he had ever tried Ilford's ID-24 developer, the directions for which included a huge range of [exposure time/dilution/development time] combinations. With lots of extra enlarger exposure, lots of dilution, extra bromide, and very long development times, apparently you could get chalk red prints. I wonder if it works with any current papers.

Click to expand...

ID-24 sounds interesting! Listening Ian?

I am truly not interested in repeating the 90 minute time but if I can stay under the 8-minute mark and get that same effect this could be a nice tool for certain prints.

The results seem to me to suggest that it is a bend of the curve rather than an overall contrast reduction as the mid-tones changed exactly as I expected with the changes in magenta when compared to the previous prints.

Michael R 1974 said:

For example, I always meant to ask Ian if he had ever tried Ilford's ID-24 developer, the directions for which included a huge range of [exposure time/dilution/development time] combinations. With lots of extra enlarger exposure, lots of dilution, extra bromide, and very long development times, apparently you could get chalk red prints. I wonder if it works with any current papers.

Click to expand...

markbarendt said:

ID-24 sounds interesting! Listening Ian?

Click to expand...

I haven't tried ID-24 or the later Warmtone formula ID061 mainly because I have no Glycin, it's not been readily available in the UK for quite a few years. I keep meaning to order some from the US but there's no point until I have my new darkroom setup. (I'm in the middle of moving house and everything's in storage).

However I have and do use the controls Michael mentions with other warm tone developers however modern warm-tone papers don't have the extreme flexibility of the old Cadmium incorporated papers. You didn't need to use a Glycin based developer Ilford 1D78 & Kodak D156 (both once available commercially), Agfa Neutol WA, Ilford Warmtone developer will all give similar results, although Phenidone based developers are slightly warmer (ID-78, Neutol WA (liquid) - the powder version of Neutol WA was an MQ version. Ilford Warmtone developer is closely related to ID78 but uses Potassium Carbonate & Hydroxide instead of Sodium Carbonate, this substitution is typical for concentrated liquid PQ developer.

I used Neutol WA (liquid) with Agfa Record Rapid (older type with Cadmium) a few years ago (mid 1980's) to do some testing to see exactly how red-brown it would go with extra exposure and shorter development times (or extra dilution) and it worked quite well, but I wasn't interested in using the extremes preferring a more subtle effect.

There's still sufficient flexibility with Modern warm tone papers to suit my needs, I prefer Polywarmtone but the Ilford Warm tone paper & Foma warm tone papers all have a good degree of flexibility to bend the colour palette for greater warmth purely by development. The late Peter Goldfield, who'd assisted Minor White, used to demonstrate this at workshops.

Ian

Somewhere I have a curve that shows paper density response relative to development. I can't seem to dig it up, but the gist of the thing was that, for most papers, increasing development time after a certain point has essentially the same effect as increasing exposure. Most papers do not increase contrast after development has reached an optimum point. Extended development, therefore, just slowly increases paper speed. The fact that Michael got acceptable prints after 90 minutes shows just how slow the process is after Henry's eight minutes.

FWIW, I use this property to "tweak" print exposure by small amounts. Often, the difference between a three-minute and a three-minute-fifteen-second print is quite visible.

I would think that fog would be a problem after 90 minutes, but the fact that Michael's prints show little points to just how forgiving some emulsions can be.

Best,

Doremus

Exposure Manual by Dunn and Wakefield has an illustration with a curve set that demonstrates that Doremus.

In that illustration at 1-min the curve hasn't "stood-up" fully yet and is relatively straight from tip to toe, at 1.5 and 2-min the curve is standing and both look the about same with a pretty good s-shape, with 2-mins it's just slightly taller.

4-mins is slightly taller yet but the S shape is getting more pronounced.

The illustration does demonstrate the change in speed.

How much developer was in the JOBO? I've never used one, but it sounds like it was one shot?
If so, exhaustion might have played a part in lack of increased change. My experience is similar to what Doremus says - just more density everywhere. I suspect that if I left a print in a tray with 1 - 2 liters of developer, with some agitation, for 90 minutes, I would see much much more difference than at 3 minutes, including base fog, than what you got.

George Collier said:

How much developer was in the JOBO? I've never used one, but it sounds like it was one shot?
If so, exhaustion might have played a part in lack of increased change. My experience is similar to what Doremus says - just more density everywhere. I suspect that if I left a print in a tray with 1 - 2 liters of developer, with some agitation, for 90 minutes, I would see much much more difference than at 3 minutes, including base fog, than what you got.

Click to expand...

I was using 220ish ml of 1+4 mixed LPD to develop two 4x6 test prints. I replenish (top-up) before each run which typically means about 10-15ml fresh is added. The capacity of 220ml without replenishing is probably 5ish 8x10's so I doubt that I reached exhaustion of the developer.

I'm betting exhaustion saved the prints too, now that I think about it more, despite your observations about capacity. If you had had a sufficient amount of active developer, the prints would have certainly gone too dark in 90 minutes. Perhaps oxidation played a role as well.

As development continues past the minimum necessary to get full density range from the paper, the effective paper speed increases. At the optimum point for a given print exposure, maximum contrast is reached. After Dmax is reached and the highlights start to fog, however, contrast decreases with extended development. Optimum development time, within a certain window, is a function of print exposure.

What I do is compensate for small inadequacies in perfect print exposure by extending development time and thereby increasing paper speed a bit. This is easier than making very small time adjustments in print exposure, especially once dodging and burning is correct. In this case, I'm underexposing the print a bit and using extended development to bring the exposure up to optimum. One could probably make a graph of development time vs print exposure and find a range of optimum times.

Overdeveloping after a certain point should fog the paper and make a worse print. Everything I've read points to this, although I've never tested it myself. Maybe someone can leave a second print in the developer for half and hour and confirm this. I won't be printing for a good while now and can't test it myself.

Best,

Doremus

Ok, had not tossed the developer yet so just ran another sheet.

Totally blank.

So yes exhaustion seems to be part of the equation.