Ever had a dilution fail with HC-110?

<p>I have been using HC-110 for many years and Dilution H and more for the last few. Now Kodak says never use less than 6ml fer roll of 35mm 36 exp or a roll of 120. I have gone less than this many time and never ever had a fail.<br>

So as the title ask Anyone? Maybe we can go with Rodinol fail in this also. As I never had that happen in 40 years.</p>

<p>Larry</p>

<p>Last roll I developed a couple of days ago was Kentmere 400 (24exp) in 300ml water with 3ml of HC-110 for 18 minutes, first minute continuous agitation then 10 sec every 3 minutes. Great negs!</p>

Never a problem with HC110, Rodinal, or FX-39 (when it was sold in USA). HC110 and Rodinal have great shelf lives in

concentrated form so I think a failure might come from incorrect dilution or tap water that is too acidic.

<p>I really don't recall any issue that wasn't "my" doing. </p>

<p>For 35mm in a single-reel tank, I use 5ml of HC-110 concentrate with 8oz of water. That's around a 1:47 dilution. Never had a problem with poor development doing this. I've even used 5ml with 16oz of water and gotten good results using semi-stand development.</p>

<p>I think you'd have to compare identically exposed negatives developed at the recommended by Kodak minimum to your negatives developed at less than Kodak's minimum to really know whether your dilution is "failing". Your negatives might appear to be developed correctly, but suffer in gradation compared to negatives developed to Kodak's recommendations. I've found I can develop film to normal contrast in as little as 1ml Hypercat concentrate to 300ml of solution, but gradation suffers compared to negatives developed to the same contrast in 3ml of concentrate to 300ml of solution. It's important to have a standard by which to judge.</p>

 

<p>Jay brings up a very good point. I think I'll try an experiment next weekend using dilutions B and H, H having less than the recommended minimum, of the exact same subjects on the same roll of film. I'll do 120 film, so we have great big negatives to compare.</p>

<p>Like Frank, I've gone with 3ml (500 ml solution, dilution H) many times and had no problems, but it was with 24 exposure 35mm. The 6ml number is for 36 exposure 35mm or 120.<br />I also use Rodinal and the lowest Ive gone is 1+200 in a 500ml solution. It again worked with 24 exposure 35mm.</p>

<p>Racking my brains, I can't recall ever trying an unusually dilute solution of HC-110. During the '80s when souping film for newspaper publication I'd normally use Dilution B in a single reel 35mm stainless tank. No problems. And I've had no problems with the more dilute Dilution H in a single reel medium format stainless tank. In both cases the amount of HC-110 concentrate is slightly more than 6 ml.</p>

<p>Rodinal seems to tolerate extreme dilutions too, tho' I'd recommend that anyone test for themselves before relying on my anecdotes.</p>

<p>Before trying stand development in extremely dilute Rodinal (1+200 or 1+300) on an important roll I experimented with some non-critical rolls. In one particular case I developed a roll of 35mm film in a single reel tank with Rodinal at a more normal dilution (don't recall whether it was 1+50), then reused the same diluted Rodinal for one or two consecutive rolls just to see whether it would show unexpected failure. It didn't. The subsequent rolls indicated only a little additional time would have been needed to match the results of the first roll.</p>

<p>That was encouraging enough that I tried Rodinal at 1+200 or 1+300 in a single reel 35mm stainless tank with stand development for two hours (initial agitation of 60 seconds, no further agitation for two hours). I fully expected to see drag marks and uneven development. Nope, it turned out fine. But if memory serves I've used extremely dilute Rodinal and stand development only with Tri-X.</p>

<p>I did see some uneven development with extremely dilute Rodinal and stand processing in plastic tank/reel systems, but that appeared to be due to the higher, squarish reel guides and flanges. Those tanks seem better suited to normal intermittent or continuous agitation. With stainless reels I haven't seen that problem. My best guess is the round wire reel guides are better suited to stand development.</p>

<p>Incidentally, another useless anecdote about recycling dilute Rodinal: For who-knows-what-reason, several years ago I experimented with a witches brew of recycled Rodinal from film developing sessions as a print developer. But I'd added it to a week-old batch of Ilford print developer. If I'm recalling correctly I reused that batch of mystery stew for a few weeks - intermittently and on non-essential prints - just out of curiosity to see when it would fail. It didn't fail completely or suddenly and I tossed it after becoming bored with the experiment. A useless anecdote because I didn't use any sort of methodology that someone else could try to repeat the experiment. Mostly I tried it after having read numerous web complaints about "sudden failure" of this or that developer. I finally concluded that most complaints of "sudden failure" were probably due to folks mixing up their solutions and fixing the film first or making some other basic mistake.</p>