HC110 - three queries

[ian_stuart]

Good evening (British Summer Time), everyone.

 

I have bought a bottle of HC110 concentrate (American style - the stuff that

dilutes 1+31 for dil B), and I now have three questions:

 

1) From reading previous posts, it seems like I can use dil E (1+47) with a

starting development time of 1.5 times the dil B dev time. I use Ilford HP5+,

which has a dil B time of 5 minutes, so dil E would be 7.5 minutes. Is this correct?

 

2) People suggest that less dilute HC110 has a solvent action, and more dilute

HC110 has both accutance and compensating actions. Is this correct?

 

3) What is the minimum volume of syrup I need to develop 1 film? I've read both

6ml and 3.7ml.

 

Many thanks

[User_502260]

Your starting point times seem right. test them and see how they work. When I used HC-110 I mostly used Dilution B. The short times did not seem to cause a problem. HC-110 must have very little solvent action even with Dil. B. It's a glycol base which contains a form of phenidone. Thre just isn't enough sodium sulfite at any dilution for much solvent action. It isn't as much an acutance developer as Neofin Blau, for example, but the phenidone makes things look somewhat sharper than metol developers. What about minimum volume? This is usually someting people ask when they plan on developing the film for 2 days at some very high dilution. If you use the HC-110 at 1:31 or 1:47 in standard tank types you shouldn't have a problem.

[jim_appleyard]

More info:http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/hc110/index.html

[yann1]

There's no problem usually using dilution B but a longer time will be better, 5 minutes is too short to be really accurate, I usually dilute 1/62 for 10 minutes with HP5, my standard film(like cooking, it's always better when you spend more time).

[abica]

In other words, Yann, stir-fry has no place in film developing?

[old school]

To work out the minimum volume of syrup. Look on the bottle for the label that tells you how many films you can develop per Litre at each dilution. I think from memory its 4 films in 1 Litre at dilution B(1+32). You can then just divide the volume of syrup required to make that litre at that dilution (31ml) by 4 to give you approx 8ml of syrup required per film. Of course you may get away with less (some sites say "Be sure to use at least 6 mL of syrup per 135-36 or 120 roll of film") but at least this gives you an approximate minimum.

 

I have problems when developing three films in a tank at dilution H, as the volume of developer at 1+64 with a minimum of 8mL per each of 3 films =24mL gives a total volume of 1.5Litres, which exceeeds the capacity of the tank. You can just about squeeze enough in a 3 reel tank to do two films at dilution H. Dilution H definitely seems to be a good compromise, as it gives more time and allows you to easily adjust development (reduce or increase) times to suit the application. You can also adjust the agitation in different ways as well with the longer time. But I may be tempted to try dilution E so I can squeeze that third film into the tank.