Has anyone experimented seriously with stand development? Conclusions? TIA, njb

-- Nacio Brown (njb@limn.net), June 09, 2000

Answers

I tried it, following some recommendations I found on the web in an article by Patrick Dignan. The developer he recommended was FX-2, a metol/glycin formula. I seem to recall diluting it 1:1 and developing for one hour with a one minute agitation up front. I don't remember what film I used, but the experiment was not a success. There was no gradation in the high values (which is what I was after), the middle values were weak, and the shadows were non- existent. I don't recall the EI, but I always test at 50% of the manufacturer's rated speed.

However, recently I developed some 8x10 sheet film, shot with a pinhole, in Sandy King's Pyrocat-HD formula using a semi-stand development (one minute at the beginning and one minute in the middle). Development time was 21 minutes. These negatives are perfectly printable, but next time I will dilute the developer even further and develop longer. I tried the same thing with PMK and it worked just fine--no uneven development

-- Ed Buffaloe (edbuffaloe@unblinkingeye.com), June 09, 2000.

I haven't tried it myself, but I read something about it in a book on the zone system. The author claimed that highly dilute developer (I think it was HC 110) was sucessfully used for compensating extreme contrasts in sheet film development. If you are interested, I will look up the details.

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), June 13, 2000.