Rodinal stand development at 13 degrees celsius

I recently read that at low temperatures their is less grain/clumping when using rodinal. I found this to be true for Fomapan 100 sheet film when stand developed in 1:100 rodinal at 13 degrees for 2 hours. The following images were developed using this technique.

Senescent River Red Gum

Lilydale Lake in Fog

peterkinchington.com

I see3 variables.

Is the result from the low temp, dilution or the stand development?

Hi Gary,

I generally use stand development at 1:100 dilution of rodinal at 20 degrees celsius. So the result I am seeing is attributable to lower temperature.

Cheers Peter

Or maybe you could just use a developer that naturally gives finer grain than Rodinal? D76, Microphen, HC-110, etc., etc.

Hi Joe,

I like rodinal because it is forgiving in a variety of circumstances and the concentrate is very long lived. My other go to developer is Beutler's high acutance developer. I am going to try the Pyrocatechol staining developer described in Ansel Adam's book - "The Negative".

Cheers Peter

I think Rodinal can be a bit unreliable because of its formulation. It uses unbuffered caustic soda as the alkali accelerator, which has three consequences: Firstly, a high pH solution softens and expands the gelatin of the emulsion, allowing grain growth to be larger and faster. Secondly, a high dilution to reduce said pH results in the alkalinity, and hence activity, becoming uncertain due to local water pH variation.

Thirdly, any very dilute developer runs the risk of 'burning out' its developer content and becoming a compensating developer, with consequent low contrast.

I suppose if you're very careful with its dilution and temperature, and only use distilled or DI water, then results can be consistent, but if you just use tap water the results might vary unexpectedly.

Personally, I'd rather use a formulation that has a buffered and well-regulated pH that doesn't depend so heavily on high dilution ratios.

I think Rodinal can be a bit unreliable because of its formulation. It uses unbuffered caustic soda as the alkali accelerator, which has three consequences: Firstly, a high pH solution softens and expands the gelatin of the emulsion, allowing grain growth to be larger and faster. Secondly, a high dilution to reduce said pH results in the alkalinity, and hence activity, becoming uncertain due to local water pH variation.

 

Thirdly, any very dilute developer runs the risk of 'burning out' its developer content and becoming a compensating developer, with consequent low contrast.

 

I suppose if you're very careful with its dilution and temperature, and only use distilled or DI water, then results can be consistent, but if you just use tap water the results might vary unexpectedly.

 

Personally, I'd rather use a formulation that has a buffered and well-regulated pH that doesn't depend so heavily on high dilution ratios.

It makes you wonder why it's still being used after being introduced in the XIX century:D

The old reason for lower development temperature was that the gelatin would melt at higher temperature.

I suspect that the main difference now between 13C and 20C is that cooler takes longer.

Development is pretty well Arrhenius:

Arrhenius equation - Wikipedia

so, give two point on the time/temperature scale you can compute others.

Ilford has some charts which make this even easier.

I think Rodinal can be a bit unreliable because of its formulation. It uses unbuffered caustic soda as the alkali accelerator, which has three consequences: Firstly, a high pH solution softens and expands the gelatin of the emulsion, allowing grain growth to be larger and faster. Secondly, a high dilution to reduce said pH results in the alkalinity, and hence activity, becoming uncertain due to local water pH variation.

 

Thirdly, any very dilute developer runs the risk of 'burning out' its developer content and becoming a compensating developer, with consequent low contrast.

 

I suppose if you're very careful with its dilution and temperature, and only use distilled or DI water, then results can be consistent, but if you just use tap water the results might vary unexpectedly.

 

Personally, I'd rather use a formulation that has a buffered and well-regulated pH that doesn't depend so heavily on high dilution ratios.

Hi again Joe,

I would rather have low contrast than high contrast negatives as I can compensate with high grade papers (I used to like Gr.5 agfa brovira? paper) or by scanning the neg. and adjusting in photoshop. In Australia we generally have high contrast ambient light.

Cheers Peter

It makes you wonder why it's still being used after being introduced in the XIX century:D

- I wonder that too!

It's hardly a fine-grain developer, and not known for great tonality either.

Anyway, I was just pointing out some of the pitfalls of using Rodinal at high dilution ratios. IIRC the minimum volume of concentrate recommended is 7ml per film, which needs a tank volume of over 700ml of solution at 100:1dilution. That's a big tank for a small amount of film!

I am not a big fan of Rodinal, either, but I do like to use stand development if I feel the need for it. I use HC 110 1:120 per some recommendations I stumbled on somewhere. My film of choice for the past couple of years has Ultrafine Extreme 400, mostly in 120. I find that I have had to pare my time back to about 40' in a Paterson two-reel tank. My working solution is well over the capacity of my tank, but considering the minute amount of developer used, its ok. Has anybody else out there used HC 110 stand?

Jim