strange development problem

[fran_ois_courtois]

Hello,

 

I just finished developping a Rollei PAN 25 exposed a few days later in the Hexar AF: the good news is that no problems are to be reported, so it seems the camera is OK, and probably the problem comes from a bad film or the door being inadvertently opened: both options are quite mysterious to me, but that's life.<p>

 

Thanks for you interesting inputs to all of you<p>

 

PS: for you information, I could not find any "times" for the Rollei PAN 25 in Rodinal, so I "guesstimated" it to 10 minutes, 1+50, 20 degrees, film exposed for ISO 25: it seems to be a very good time as far as I am concerned

[fran_ois_courtois]

Radu wrote: <i>13 minutes is way too much. I use around 8-9minutes at 20C and 7minutes at 22-24C. </i><p>

 

For some reason, the times given by manufacturers and digitaltruth, which are to be understood as "starting times", are always 1 stop too short for me.<p>

 

I think this is due to an additive combination of factors.<p>The first reason is that I use a Leica M6 camera whose cell is calibrated for slide film: it is a known fact that M6 typically under-expose by a third of a stop;<p>

 

Another reason is my light metering method: I do not expose for shadows as many do in b&w; rather I expose for the subject, as I would do for slides. Since many of my subjects are portraits, where the skin is usually lighter than the standard grey, it could also lead to less exposure, although this is not true in the summer when people usually have a nice suntan;<p>

 

The way you agitate during development is quite important too. Typical agitation is 5/10 seconds at the beginning of each minute, this is the agitation I recommend for D76 or Calbe A49 or any other fine grain developper. But when you use Rodinal, which is an acutance developper, you are looking for edge effect to enhance sharpness. This increased sharpness is due to the localized exhaustion of developer in more heavily exposed areas of the film. These exhaustion effects increase the more infrequently you agitate, thus development times need to be lengthened. For Rodinal, I tend to go for 5 inversions every 2 minutes, instead of every minute.<p>

 

The last point is the enlarger head: I use a diffusion head and develop in order to print on grade 2-3 as standard

[mukul_dube]

The camera's door being opened can be ruled out, as someone else besides me also pointed out. It's unlikely but possible, as yet another someone else said, that you got a single bad roll. Were all from the same batch, by the way, and stored in the same conditions?

 

Since you could not repeat what happened, you must live in dread of its next occurrence. Alternatively, you could call in the sort of people who study UFOs and such like mysteries.

 

M

[david j.lee]

francois : right. but the great thing about the cpe-2 is that you can process as much of 5

rolls of film. when i do hp-5 or fp-4 is not a problem, but when using rodinal on my apx

100 i have to do them one by one, that's where the pita comes from !

p.s. the 10ml rule was confirmed to me by agfa, but given your more than obvious

expertise with apx100+rodinal i think i will give it a try and process them together.

[fran_ois_courtois]

ok David, I did not know that your could process 5 films at the same time. Good luck with your processing and long live APX100 (a belgian film) now still available as Rollei Retro 100, but for how long?

[david j.lee]

thank's Francois. i will let you know how they came out.

[nikos peri]

In the future if you do your "split pouring" of 300ml followed by 300ml... pour in 300ml of

water FIRST and then follow by the Rod diluted 1:25, not the other way around you have done

it. This will ensure both films get cooked at nearly the same dilution and time.

[david j.lee]

ok Francois. all 4 rolls came out great using 11.7ml of rodinal and 588ml of water. (1+50).

i stand corrected.