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Pan F 50 120 and which developer?


andy_evans

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I recommended Pan 50 120 size to a student who wanted maximum detail from her 16x20

enlargements. Now I'm feeling a little bad, because Delta 100 or Acros may be more

flexible and forgiving, right? She's not a spot-meter and densitometer-checking type,

after all.

 

In any case, we work with Ilfosol, which gives a recommended 4 minutes at 1+9-- way to

short for even development, right? 1+14 gives a more manageable time, but Ilford

emphasizes that dilution as economy, not quality. Of course, half the searches I do for

Ilfosol say it's garbage anyway.

 

I have a couple bottles of Rodinal lying around. Manufacturers give a time for 1+25

dilution, but other forum posts say Rodinal doesn't get interesting until you dilute it more.

So perhaps we should shoot at 25 to give her extra shadow 'safety', then pull back the

highlights with a higher dilution so they don't get blocked?

 

I'm worried about using Rodinal for the first time because we're talking about mere

millilters, right? Am I going to run into streaks or developer exhaustion?

 

We use Patterson tanks, and most students agitate by inversion, which seems

counterintuitive to me-- the solution will just slosh back and forth into the funnel

mechanism, and you're going to lose some of it. The twisty method--moving the film

within the developer instead of sloshing the devloper around, with all the attendant debate

(how many times? how vigorous? how quickly?)-- seems better to me. But my first

experiment with it, also my first with Rodinal 1+50, and plenty of solution, left the first

frame or two with streaks.

 

What in any case is Rodinal effect that makes so many people love it? It must be the

tonality, because the Acu-suffix, and F39 developers, etc. are much, much sharper, right?

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Pan F+ is excellent in both XTOL and Rodinal. Actually, it's great in just about anything. Ilfosol S is a high energy odd duck with a short life span. But it's simply brilliant with Pan F+, perhaps the film it's really made for. Lovely combination. Use it at 1:14, ignore the "economy" label. It maybe slightly more grainy at that dilution (not that you'd notice with this film), should in principle be slightly sharper (not that you'd notice with this film), definitely more consistent than at 1:9.
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I've been shooting a lot of Pan F+ 120 and developing in Rodinal 1+50 for 9 min. Using a steel tank I agitate for a minute then a few gentle inversions for 10 seconds every minute. I'm very pleased with the results. My prints are coming out great on a #2 filter with no buring or dodging needed.

Regards,

Marc

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If you have it handy, Perceptol 1+2, 13.5 mins at 20c. This is rating the film EI32. Xtol as mentioned above, too. Both provide some compensation for a film that is easy to lose highlights on. Not a good film IMO for a student who is not inclined to use a light meter.

 

Rodinal is great. Measure it with a syringe. I would not worry about exhaustion, a little goes a long way. I use it sometimes at 1+200 which is just 3 mils in 600mils of water for a 120 roll. 2 hours, or thereabouts, at 20c, if yer interested.

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Not a lot of experience here - just developed my 2nd roll of panf in Ilfosol S. I liked the first batch a lot. Ilfosol is Ilford's one shot preferred developer of choice for slower tradional films (i.e. not the delta stuff) I chose the 1+14 mix to lengthen dev times to 6 min. as was previously stated. I don't think you can go wrong with Ilfosol. (that is if you use it up in a few months)<div>00ELRf-26730284.jpg.6211f044d239e99aec89c23a8c8af89f.jpg</div>
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I have to agree with Andre's response. I've been happy with Pan-F and Ilfosol 1+14. Not as contrasty as DD-X 1+4 while retaining fine grain and good detail. Good tonality, too. Ilfosol's not a good all-purpose developer - it does best with Pan-F and FP4, only so-so with Delta 100, and is far inferior to ID-11/D-76 or DD-X with HP5 or Delta 400.
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Yes Joe 9 minutes for iso 50. I forgot to mention that. I came to that figure by trial and error. Longer times just made my skies too difficult to burn in. I do bright afternoon street shooting. 9 minutes gets my skies to a nice soft gray while still maintaining decent (at least to me) shadow detail.
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Andy,

yes, 4 minutes is too short. Development time should be at least 5 minutes to get repeatable results.

 

Rodinal: yes, we are talking about millimeters here. You need at least 10 ml of Rodinal concentrate for one film, with a dilution of 1+50 this means you will have 510 ml of working solution.

 

There will be no streaks and no developer exhaustion if ou use at least 10 ml of Rodinal concentrate per (135 or 120) film. Agitation every 30 or 60 seconds.

 

Inversion: Yes, the solution goes back and forth. That's what inversion agitation is about: mix the developer. I don't know the Patterson tanks, but I don't think there will be a loss of significant amounts. There should be a lid on the tank though ;-)

 

Why do people love Rodinal: It's easy, it doesn't die and it has this special tonality and "bite".

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