Warmer temps upside for C-41, downside for Tri-X

Romanko said:

Same here. I use a cooler box (Esky) and keep several ice bricks in the freezer. I fill the cooler with water, put my chemistry bottles, the development tank with loaded film(s) and one or two ice bricks in it and wait till the water bath temperature drops 1 or 2 degrees Celsius below the target temperature. Then I remove the bricks and wait a bit more for the system to come to equilibrium. It is a chore as you said, but you can use slow developers and not worry about temperature drifts if you return the tank into the cooler after agitating.

Developing at ambient temperature is another option that I use during cooler months. I assume summers in Texas are as hot as here and developing for 1 minute at 47 degrees Celsius does not sound like a good idea to me.

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Very good plan using a cooler with ice for temp control. I bought a Souis Vide for warming and your plan will work well for summer! Thanks

After years of digital work, getting back to film processing will help in clearing out my freezer space and help get back to this as a
great hobby. I'm thinking that with different development times and exposures according to contrast zone requirements this can be better done by development time rather than temp variations. That's why I was asking what I did. Thanks for all the ideas! So I'm going to get a taller water jacket. It's always a good thing to understand that advanced amateurs are usually way beyond many professionals.

Melvin J Bramley said:

If your darkroom cannot sustain a 20C temperature beware of temperature creep with long developing times with dilute developers!
If its hot try filling your tank ( no film) , going through the process then checking your start and finishing temperatures!
Remaining consistent is the way to reliable negatives.

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Melvin. thanks. I've got the negatives under control now but as I am about to start printing, my doubts lie there.

MattKing said:

There are two reasons I am reluctant to try developing at temperatures above 24C.
The first is the relative lack of good manufacturers' recommendations for developing times. If you have access to the sort of experience based knowledge that Maris has, that concern is less important.
The second is that I live in one of the most temperate climates around, and I absolutely hate working when temperatures approach 30C.
Depending on where you are in Spain - a country I visited once, 45 years ago - you may be completely used to working where and when temperatures care high, and may not be bothered at all!

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Matt, you made my Friday... thank God I am doing something right.

hahaha

Where I live isn't the hottest part of Spain and as it is costal, we have a breeze most times... unfortunately in the last few years the breeze has come up from the Sahara and just pushed the temperature higher than normal. We are in a seven year-long drought even though we have had heavy-ish rains recently, that does not signal an end to the drought. Summertime we sit on 30º 35ºc +/- but hitting 40ºc is not uncommon.

Flashcam said:

As I learned from a top commercial studio, keeping the temp from start to finish to within a degree or two at most, including wash, keeps the grain as minimal as possible

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I believe we are talking about reticulation here not grain. I don't see how grain can be affected by temperature differences of the subsequent solutions.

Flashcam said:

As it gets warmer around here we will be able to process chromogenic film at room temperature in about a month! Cooling everything down for B&W film processing, like for T-Max or Tri-X
in the summer time is much more of a chore in the home darkroom here, unless you like lots of grain... The freezer is full of film and ice cream. Any ideas on an affordable type chiller?

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You might try a different developer. I have been processing Tri-x (and just about every other B&W film) at 24C since the 1990s.

Romanko said:

I believe we are talking about reticulation here not grain. I don't see how grain can be affected by temperature differences of the subsequent solutions.

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Technically it's been called Incipient or Micro reticulation, Kodak call it surface artefacts. It does not change the actual grain structure, but the surface effect do increase apparent graininess. The worst case I've seen was with 120 Tmax 400 where it affected the gelatin anti-curl layer as well as the emulsion super-coat.

Ian

"I believe we are talking about reticulation here not grain. I don't see how grain can be affected by temperature differences of the subsequent solutions."

What I've always been told, or read, which makes sense to me, is that as the emulsion (organic material - gelatin) expands and contract with temperature variation, the grain shifts with it, encouraging clumping and other movement oriented behavior. (I think somewhere in there was a statement that the silver halides, or developed silver particles, tend to be attracted to each other, promoting clumping. This all makes sense to me, just a guy who took organic science and chemistry in high school.

But the larger thought, to me, is, why not keep the temperature constant? It's easy and cannot hurt.

George Collier said:

"I believe we are talking about reticulation here not grain. I don't see how grain can be affected by temperature differences of the subsequent solutions."

What I've always been told, or read, which makes sense to me, is that as the emulsion (organic material - gelatin) expands and contract with temperature variation, the grain shifts with it, encouraging clumping and other movement oriented behavior. (I think somewhere in there was a statement that the silver halides, or developed silver particles, tend to be attracted to each other, promoting clumping. This all makes sense to me, just a guy who took organic science and chemistry in high school.

But the larger thought, to me, is, why not keep the temperature constant? It's easy and cannot hurt.

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Well if you go back to generations of film like FP3 & HP3, films reticulated easily. There's no grain clumping from temperature changes, the emulsion simply shrinks or swells, it's the gelatin super-coat that is stressed. The exception is severe temperature shocks causing full reticulation which is cracking of the emulsion, rarely seen now as modern films are far better hardened.

There is a précis of a BJP magazine article in the 1927 BJP Almanac, it talks about these surface artefacts I mentioned earlier in this thread. The suggestion was wet mounting miniature negatives with glass, which reduces any issues, Ctein wet mounted his negative as it improved his print quality.

Ian

I use an ice bath for chemistry, does not take much to bring water down to 68 or 70, largest issue is wash temps, in summer my taps runs over 90s degrees. I made a water chiller, a copper pipe coiled into 5 gallon bucket. On one end a hose that attaches to my shower outlet, shower head removed, the other the top of the copper coil, the the coil out let to a rubber tube that connects to either a roll film washer or a 4X5 tanks that I modified as a washer. I start with a 1/2 of a 8 pound bag of ice then add ice as the ice melts. I try to keep the wash water between 75 and 80 degrees. As I use T4 fix and Perma wash I can get way with a 4 mint wash. I have done a fixer reside test and the film is achiral after washing. Due to the cost of the ice develop up to 6 rolls of 35mm and 4 rolls of 120 at at time, the 4X5 tank will take 15 sheets on hangers.

Paul Howell said:

largest issue is wash temps, in summer my taps runs over 90s degrees.

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I use Ilford wash method for my film to both save water and avoid (micro-)reticulation. The tap water for washing goes in the same water bath (cooler) as the developer, wash/stop and fixer.

With modern film it should be safe to wash at higher temperatures as long as you avoid sudden temperature changes. Sometimes I fill the tank with the first wash (same temperature as fixer) and leave it to warm up to tap water temperature. After that I can wash in running water.

I tried this a few times when I experimented with "fridge development" of very expired film.

My first paper darkoom endeavour was today. Edifying but tiring... I was on my feet for more than five hours but a problem I have is not knowing when to stop (at anything) and usually only do so when a catastrophe occurs.... today I almost exposed a precious box of 5x7 Ilford MG RC... a close shave.

The bathroom-cum-darkroom go to 24ºc but I managed to keep the chem temps stable once they got to 22-23º by putting a cooler pack beside each.... (I don't know what they are called in English... the blue brick thingies you keep in the freezer...) quite efficient.

A great sense of purpose and resolve today and rewarded with a set of four base prints which I will now analyse and work on until they are exactly what I want. It may take years... who cares?

24C should not be a problem with chemicals for printing. If you are faced with that ambient temperature, you can dispense with the cooler packs. And yes, they are called that in English.
If necessary - and in most cases it won't be necessary - just use slightly more dilute developer to slow things a bit. The rest of the chemicals will be fine.
I would heartily recommend using a paper safe - a box specially designed to be both easily opened and closed, but also light tight.
Failing that, another paper box and inner light tight envelope.
To use those, you transfer smaller quantities of paper into the paper safe/2nd box, and work with that. That way you risk less paper when you are handling the paper as part of the printing process.
Otherwise, congratulations. Even 50+ years into it, I still get a thrill/have fun with the process. I hope it works the same for you.

MattKing said:

24C should not be a problem with chemicals for printing. If you are faced with that ambient temperature, you can dispense with the cooler packs. And yes, they are called that in English.
If necessary - and in most cases it won't be necessary - just use slightly more dilute developer to slow things a bit. The rest of the chemicals will be fine.
I would heartily recommend using a paper safe - a box specially designed to be both easily opened and closed, but also light tight.
Failing that, another paper box and inner light tight envelope.
To use those, you transfer smaller quantities of paper into the paper safe/2nd box, and work with that. That way you risk less paper when you are handling the paper as part of the printing process.
Otherwise, congratulations. Even 50+ years into it, I still get a thrill/have fun with the process. I hope it works the same for you.

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Hey the paper safe is a great idea. I can't afford to lose paper... I used up more than my fair share to get my prints today but that was to be expected, so losing more to silly mistakes is not on the game plan. The temperature issue I understand but I do want to create habits rather than be tempted to push my luck. Stepping outside the habit zone if that is what I decide to do for a specific instance, but only then.
Thanks Matt.

ps. I did have fun!

hoganlia said:

The temperature issue I understand but I do want to create habits rather than be tempted to push my luck. Stepping outside the habit zone if that is what I decide to do for a specific instance, but only then.
Thanks Matt.

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One of the benefits of having experience is that it means you have had the chance to learn and understand the relative importance of things. And from that you can understand what things need to be in your "habit zone" and what things don't. And experience can be shared on places like Photrio.
My experience and the experience of others leads to the conclusion that you truly can't do any harm printing under conditions of warm temperatures - at least temperatures that are within the range that permit you to be comfortable enough to be able to enjoy darkroom work.
If the developer is quite warm, it will just speed things up a bit - it won't hurt anything. If that becomes inconvenient, it can be slowed with a bit of dilution, but you probably won't bother.
That is because when you develop prints, you are developing essentially to (practical) completion. In other words, you develop until adding some more time doesn't make an appreciable amount of difference. During a long printing session, that time may slowly change anyways. It is fairly easy to tell when a print is developed enough, even when inexperienced, and it doesn't require exact precision.
All that working with warmer developer does is get you to where you want to be slightly quicker. For that reason, you really don't have to include precise temperature control in the printing darkroom as part of your "habit zone". At least not with respect to moderately warm temperatures.
It is a bit different if you are one of our friends from places like the UK, because some print developers start misbehaving when they are too cold. In essence, if you need to wear a sweater when in the darkroom, you need to warm your trays.
The situation is very different when developing film, where you need to stop developing when the film density is just where you want it to be - not more, but not much less either.
Save the cooler packs for film developing!

I mix up my chems first, then I put them in the freezer. After that, I go in the darkroom, load the film into the dev tank, come out and fill the tank with room temp tap water to wash away the dyes. After all that the chems in the freezer are usually pretty close to 20C. I don't bother matching temps for the stop bath and fixer. They'll generally be room temp (since they are already mixed, tap water temp doesn't impact it.) Room temp here is usually about 25C when the AC is working.

Ian Grant said:

Technically it's been called Incipient or Micro reticulation, Kodak call it surface artefacts. It does not change the actual grain structure, but the surface effect do increase apparent graininess. The worst case I've seen was with 120 Tmax 400 where it affected the gelatin anti-curl layer as well as the emulsion super-coat.

Ian

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Exactly! As I'm sitting with just a whole lot of that exact film while reading this...

Flashcam said:

Exactly! As I'm sitting with just a whole lot of that exact film while reading this...

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Just checked, what 's in the freezer is mostly T-max 100. !