Newbie question about Rodinal

[eric_d.]

For once and for all, let it be clear to everyone, Rodinal first and foremost, is an "accutant" developer. This is THE ONLY consensus regarding this developer, hands down. Now to avoid any further uncertainties associated with the use of this developer, or more importantly, the area in which it is most suited, let me begin by referrencing its original intended application: developing plates, not negatives. The following can be controversial, maybe downright offensive, but let us examine the history of this developer:

It was formulated, or directly descended from, a developer whose characteristics were, if not solely suited for, developing negatives from its inception that were not negatives, but the predescessing emultions applied to glass, hence "plates." Their exact history, emulsion formulas, to tell you the truth, belong to photo-chemists and PhD's. The only facts necessary to keep in mind with this developer, or any developer using p-aminophenol, wait, and let's throw in those old pyro sodas, too, (D-1, D-7, --that's not even in the double digits for the developer development timeline @ Kodak, so you do the math as far as how long ago these developers prevailed!) is simply that they were made in a time when (don't get mad) small negatives weren't around. Or negatives made of cellulose, for that matter. Or fast emulsions (100 ISO was considered ultrafast, like pushing 3200, --really). Or, (yeah, there's more,) here's the cruncher, negatives that were enlarged. If there is still confusion as to what all this means, let me provide an abridged technical history lesson:

Up until the 1920's, more or less, when negatives much like today were introduced, glass negatives were in use and had this in common, (what I mean by "in common" is the general technology ready at hand):

Plates were real slow, I don't know the exact ISO, but early technologies like Daguerreotypes were like 0.25, or 0.025 ISO, maybe. As time went by, and Fox-Talbot's negative printing technique became the norm (let's skip the wet plate discussion, and what types of papers were available), the size of a photograph was in relation to the size of the negative, as well as the actual papers were too slow to use enlargers, emulsions too grainy and printing with glass thickness was unsharp. You needed a thin, faster negative, and that was for later. Don't call this primitive- consistencies, or lack thereof, in development and printing affected everything about the image, from cost to the end product, but the core quality referring to scale and color, or more specifically, highlight seperation and shadow detail, was there from the start. To the trained eye, or to those whose ability to compare past technique to more modern printed photographs will notice, a "loss" in quality throughout the years. It is imperative that a Rodinal user look at properly processed photographs from a century ago to appreciate from what application it stemmed from. Rodinal was developed from the tail end of an era of contact printed images where sharpness and development speed determined exclusively, along side scale, (scale being the true universal opinion point since the advent of photography), the quality of a developer. It was much better than using developers with newer developing agents like metol, hydroquinone, etc. Metol was too soft and slow, hydroquinone, way too slow. Superaditivity wasn't figured out yet, so looking back at all of this, Rodinal type developers were the most user-friendly of the bunch (pyro had an oxidation problem until PMK and is still totally toxic). Its commercial survival might even be attributed to its difficulty in preperation from scratch, mostly the need to cool it when adding the alkali (if I'm not mistaken), along with it's popularity, keeping properties, and economy in manufacturing and using it.

Now about the universal truth about developing and printing... Scale achieved by Rodinal is actually better than, if used in combination with the right film, paper, so on, than many of the combinations popular today. This is the more opininated section of this discussion. Developing and printing techniques of the later nineteenth, and early twentieth century, with the exception of early 20th cent. pictorialism in photography, were designed with the intention to 2 dimensionally reproduce reality. It was so, that the Impresionist movement, and hence modernism in all art, was just about triggered by the invention of photography. It's a big claim, but a ligitimate one, and it is from this early "reality" obsessed period where photography developed its modern bearing and where Rodinal evolved from. What was lost is the interpretive technical quality aspect of representing reality, mostly the tools used to do so. As mentioned before, films were contact printed, slow, and scale was harsh if not exposed and printed correctly. But contact printing kept films out of the grainess game, sharpeness was the realm of lenses, film speed mostly affected action and low-lit/night photography, and until the Brownie, it was also available to a priveledged few. This is Rodinal's pedigree. If emulsions were thick enough like then, we'd quit using light meters and go back to printing by inspection (the real way). You want to know if you like grain or not with this developer, than pick up a view camera, use a 100 ISO film or slower, so the anti-halation backing in higher speed films won't bother your use with this developer, shoot at the rated speed on the box, or a tad more to boost the contrast, add a bit more on the development time to punch up density, dilute as you like, but stick to the lowest dilution to start with, buy an older, silver rich paper, preferably from eastern europe, GRADED, and make it grade 1, and print-- contact print. Do whatever it takes to have the desired contrast with grade 1 paper. That's what you do to get Rodinal magic. Unless you want grainess with smaller formats, which is like wearing torn Levi's all the time to look cool, use it for what it was meant to do. Or what it can do, like make TMAX pop! because TMAX's development curve is a bit like the ancient pre-negative curves, short toe and all, easier on the highlights. That's the next thing you always look in a B&W developer, scale, then what you get in the highlights.

This forum can go on forever, about all developers, but what would be the fun in that? Rodinal is the Noble Developer, the Cadillac of Latent Image Production, the Old Faithful. 16x20 camera, portable darkroom, and caravan of donkeys sold seperately;)

-Eric d.