What a combination??

[paulo2]

I'm about to jump back into film processing and have been given Rollei RLC developer to use on Ilford HP5+ (120)

film... great, except I can't find much info on developing times. The bottle's lable mentions a 'basic time

figure' of 6minutes, see: http://macodirect.de/images/RLC11.jpg ...but doesn't this depend on the film used?

 

I've googled and searched on 'The Massive Dev Chart' and Ilford sites but can't see any cross-references to

Rollei RLC. So any help/suggestions would be much appreciated ...before I resort to a tedious trial+error approach.

 

Thanks in advance

[frank.schifano]

Why use a low contrast developer on a pictorial contrast film? This stuff seems to be a replacement for Technidol, a developer designed to get picture quality contrast from an inherently high contrast medium like the old Tech Pan.

 

I think this is the wrong choice of developer. Get some ID-11, D-76, XTOL, or something similar for the job.

[christer_almqvist2]

Of course Frank is right.

 

Paulo: if you are going to start again from scratch, why don't you take advantage of the situation and go for the "new" films

like the new T-max 800 a.k.a. TMY-2 right away? Developers as Frank suggested.

 

Grain is much finer, sharpness is better, tonality is superb - and these films are not difficult to develop if you have got a

thermometer and a digital kitchen timer.

[big toys are better]

While using a tabular grained film is certainly acceptable and offers finer grain and higher inherent sharpness,

there is nothing wrong with HP-5 either, and it will be more tolerant of exposure and development errors. If you

are going to routinely use faster films, developers in the D-76 class (solvent) are a good choice, but I'd

recommend trying some HC-110 since it is a liquid, quite stable in stock solution and very flexible in use, more

so than D-76/ID-11, etc.. It is usable with just about any normal film, with the higher dilutions especially

appropriate for slower fine grained films which tend to be fairly contrasty. If you end up liking the slower

films, also try Rodinal.

 

If you use HC-110, learn abut its interesting characteristics including its wide range of dilutions. I always

recommend starting here and reading the Kodak literature as well:

 

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/hc110/

 

Rodinal has many fans and addicts on this forum, myself included, and checking out the old threads on it will

prove useful is you gravitate to the slower films.

[gf]

Paulo,

Agfa Rodinal is a great developer.