Topic: My First Attempt at Stand Developing

[Bryan]

I've been wanting to try Stand Developing film for some time now so I went to a local Photo store in Seattle and picked up some Adonal and fixer to give it a try.  I didn't want to experiment on good film so I used some film in a recently purchased a Voigtlander roll film camera.  When I purchased the camera it still had a roll of Kodak Plus-X 116 film in it with two exposures remaining.  Not knowing the film speed or how old it was I had to make some wild guesses on exposure.  The first photo I took indoors with a flash on the Bulb setting with the aperture wide open (completely over exposed).  The second photo I took out in my garden in daylight at f-8 on the bulb setting for about 1 second.   Again, I was just making some wild guesses.

Please keep in mind I have not processed film in about 30 years.  After reading some tutorials online I decided to use a 1-100 dilution of Adonal.  In order to make sure I had enough developer to cover the 70mm wide film I used a mix of 4ml Adonal and 400ml of tap water.  I agitated it about 10 times and then let it stand for about 30 minutes.  I then agitated it 3 times and let it stand for another 30 minutes.  After a rinse with water I then used Photographers Formulary TP-5 Archival Rapid Fixer for 4 minutes with 30 seconds of agitation and 30 seconds of stand for each minute. 

I was surprised to see that the photo I took outside actually turned out better than any of the older photos on the reel.  I always thought that when developing old film you would get better results from pictures taken when the film was fresh than after it had been sitting around for decades. 

Keep in mind the camera has some issues with the lens, it looks like there may be some separation going on in it.  I wasn't even sure if the focus scale was in feet or meters.  I just wanted to go through the motions of the developing process before I ruin some good film.  The first photo is the one I took in my garden.  The second and third photos were already on the camera.  One is obviously some trees and the other looks like a black dog in a snowstorm.  I scanned the photos with a digital camera using a light table (I still need to work on perfecting this process).  I made a few adjustments to the photos in a free version of Photoshop on my iPad.


Bird Bath by bac1967, on Flickr


Trees by bac1967, on Flickr


Dog in Snow Storm? by bac1967, on Flickr

This is the camera:


Voigtlander 116 Roll Film Camera by bac1967, on Flickr

[jharr]

Your process is just right. You can skip the agitation at the half way mark, but if you have large blank highlight areas like big patches of sky, you probably want to keep it. Now go get some 70mm and load that thing up. It has been waiting for decades to be used!

[Francois]

I was surprised to see that the photo I took outside actually turned out better than any of the older photos on the reel.  I always thought that when developing old film you would get better results from pictures taken when the film was fresh than after it had been sitting around for decades. 

Actually, this is something very few people really know. As soon as light hits the silver in the emulsion the degradation process accelerates. The once stable silver becomes unstable and the film will fog much faster.

Thing is, the silver needs a minimum amount of exposure (threshold) in order to start doing anything. When we print negatives and we have to "flash" the paper, we're doing just that. We give the emulsion just enough light to make it sensitive without actually making the silver turn black.

On film, same thing happens. Only once it's exposed, the film becomes more sensitive to everything in the environment. Just the ambient radiation over decades is enough to fog the film. If you go on vacation and don't plan to process the rolls right away on your return, you're better off re-freezing the film and thawing it again a few hours before processing than letting it sit at room temperature for months.

[Bryan]

Thanks for the explanation Francois.  The reason I thought the older images would be better was based on a conversation I had with Film Rescue International when I had them process some old Kodachrome as Black and White.  Based on what came back from that roll they were right, the pictures I took didn't come out at all but the old ones in the camera came out pretty good.  I suppose comparing Kodachrome to Black and White Film is like comparing Apples to Oranges. 

[Francois]

Well, not really. Kodachrome was essentially a multi layer B&W film in a way. But I suspect that FilmRescue geared their process to salvage the parts of the film that have faded.

A bit like a film that has both properly exposed and underexposed pictures on the same roll. You have the choice of processing normally and get crap out of the underexposed parts or overdevelop and get crap out of the normally exposed images.

People who send film to them are mostly interested in the older images that might be on the film, not the new ones.

[imagesfrugales]

Hm.... I don't think that Film Rescue has a secret potion to get results nobody else can get. I guess they simply have a lot of experiance and know f.e. how much restrainer is to be used to prevent excessive fogging and how long to develop to get noticeable blackening etc. They probably know quite good what they are doing. And their statement confirms what also me and a friend experianced.

This friend of mine developed some old, sometimes half exposed films without any whitchcraft, using Rodinal and Promicrol iirc, and got usable results with exposures made 50 years ago or older, but never got a single usable pic from these old films he exposed himself. His darkroom work is very easygoing, more like a noob than a nerd, he's not at all the professor-type of a guy in the darkroom.

I did only one development with a color neg 120 film from the 70s last year. 5 frames were exposed, the rest was unexposed. I unloaded the film in my darkroom and reloaded it into a reliable camera to expose the remaining 7 frames with a guessed exposure index of ISO 25. Assuming that it makes no sense to do a color development I decided to develop for bw in Caffenol-C-L that had proven before to be useful for expired films. I used 1.5 g/l pot. bromide as antifogging agent and semi-stand developed for 70 mins , 20 °C, usually a push 1 - 2 development with fresh film.  All 5 old exposures were rather faint but scannable, all 7 recent exposures gave nothing, really nothing at all, completely blank besides the base fog and the brownish color mask. But the 5 old pics with family subjects were rescued.

Your mileage may vary.

[mcduff]

OK I understand what Francois is saying and see the logic. I am wondering if one advantage old photos on old film ( versus recent photos on old film) may have is in being correctly exposed. Such as the situation where the Film Rescue International film where the old shots were better looking than the new shots. Presumably the old shots were correctly exposed whereas the new shots may be underexposed (if one has not compensated enough for the reduced sensitivity). Hey BAC, when you shot the new shots on the Kodachrome did you shoot it with a reduced ISO?

I too doubt that film rescue international does not have any secret sauce - other than some experience with processing older films (which I will grant that some folks here certainly have as well). One thing they do have is an awesome name - they sound like a supermarionation series from Gerry Anderson ;-)

[Bryan]

Not knowing what film was in the camera until I unloaded it I just guessed that it was old and did an exposure for about 5 seconds indoors with sunlight coming through the window.  It came back looking worse than the photo of the dog above.  The camera was a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye so the aperture and shutter speed are fixed unless you do a long exposure in the bulb setting.  This is one of the old photos that came back from Film Rescue International:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60348236@N07/8873054127/#

[Bryan]

I just processed and scanned my second attempt at Stand Developing.  This time I used fresh T-Max 400 and shot it with my Mamiya C3 using an 80mm Mamiya-Sekor 1:2.8 lens.  I did the same recipe as my first attempt.  I scanned the negatives using my Olympus OM-D E-M5 with the 12-50mm kit lens on the macro setting.  I used my iPad Mini as a light table with a piece of translucent white plastic to diffuse the screens pixels.  I then placed a piece of glass over the negative to get it flat.  This seems to work pretty good, I just need to work on my Photoshop skills.


Spiral staircase by bac1967, on Flickr


Spiral Staircase in cabin by bac1967, on Flickr


November snow, Lake Wenatchee, WA by bac1967, on Flickr


Snow at cabin by bac1967, on Flickr


Sputnik Weather Station by bac1967, on Flickr