Developing B&W sheet film

[Joanna Carter]

Paul, I regularly develop Acros in a CombiPlan, 6 sheets at a time, and have never had any problems with uneven development, either with or without presoak. The inlet spout has a deflector inside the tank and this helps direct the dev so that it tends to fill up from the bottom.

I know that 30 seconds seems a long time to fill the tank but if you empty the tank through the same top spout that you used to fill it, you should get approximately the same dev time for all parts of the sheets.

I agitiate by inverting the tank sideways about 4 times, every minute and it is this direction of inversion that avoids problems with sheets becoming dislodged.

I used to develop Acros in DD-X 1+4 for 8:30 but have now changed to 1+6 for 10:50; the reason being that this gives me more control when doing N- devlopment.

I also started to presoak the film for about 2 mins because I seemed to be getting the occasional "comets" on the neg which I presumed to be splashes of the more concentrate 1+4 dev as it was filling.

Finally, I have stopped using stop bath, replacing it with 2 fills of plain water.

The overall results give a "flatter", easier to scan neg instead of the usual, relatively high contrast results I was getting.

[Baxter]

Paul

I too used a combi-plan tank for ages. Initially I couldn't get on with it, persisted and ended up very happy with using it.

Always went for 6 sheets and had no bother.

Yes it does take ages to fill. BUt fill and empty from the top, this evens out development time.

I used pre-soak and range of developers, (Ilfosol, Di-Xactol, Exactol and PMK).

HTH

[PBimages]

I hand processed my 4 x 5 negatives yesterday in a Yankee Developing Tank!

I was not happy with the design of the tank, so basically I removed the lid from the tank and in complete darkness developed the film.

I had no problem with this technique, the negs all came out perfect to be honest it's no different than if I were in the darkroom at college!

Ok it's a bit of a hassle, but I constantly raised and lowered the film into the chemicals every 10 seconds or so!

I Used the new Ilfosol 3, but i mixed it a tad hot, it came out at 24 degrees C, so instead of 6:30 minutes I just developed it at 4:30 minutes!

I used the watch I go jogging in, as it light up for about 5 seconds at the press of a button then goes dark.

The only hassle with my process, is that I needed to mix up 1.5 litres of solution, which could get expensive!

[steve c]

I use the combi-plan and have settled on Kodak HC-110 at Dilution F (1:79). I use just 15ml of developer to make 1200ml (the amount needed to fill the combi-plan tank) of working solution and use as one-shot. A 1 Litre bottle will last me some time!

I make that 80 developing sessions at 4 sheets a time = 320 sheets from a 1 litre bottle of HC-110. Pretty sure you could do 6 at a time to increase this.

Oh, I am getting great results with Tmax 100 in HC-110 (18 mins @68).

Steve

[Petenk]

Hello,

Thanks to a link in this thread, I have been made aware of a portable darkroom tent and table.

Has an forum member used these items and if so, how do they rate them?

Peter

[vanman]

Go to Hobbycraft and buy some half sphere plastic bead like things. Superglue some of these to the base of your Patterson Orbital tank. This will stop the film sticking to the base of the tank. Make sure that that the sheets of film can't overlap during processing by gluing bits of plastic to the base of the tank (I've used the bases of a couple of 120 film spools). It ain't pretty, but it works! Use 300ml of chemicals, developer, stop, fixer (watch them all chime in and say that you can use less, ignore this really helpful advice) 300ml will ensure that the sheets are covered at all times (when the doorbell rings, when the wine glass needs toping up etc.) A Combiplan uses 1 litre of chemicals and loading can be a problem (to me anyway). Use the Combilan tank to wash the film. Great film washing device!
Best wishes,
Vanman.