I am a great fan of Rodinal but never used this stand method. Do you just stand the film in it for an hour with only light agitation at the start. Do the times vary between different films.
Stand and semi-stand development are methods that have basically been worked out by trial and error. One of the advantages of this type of development is the so-called "adjacency effect" which results in a halo-like edge seen between shadow and light, resulting in an increase in apparent sharpness.
Also, the increased dilution with decreased agitation will allow high values to build more slowly, while the shadow values seem to gain density at a more constant rate. The minimal amount of agitation holds down the grain.
At any rate, my method is to use a dilution of 1:200. AGFA has always recommended using at least 10ml of Rodinal in solution, but almost everyone I know of disregards this and uses 5ml per 1000ml of water. I have used 3ml per 600 ml of water without any problems so far. A syringe makes measuring a lot easier. I agitate pretty vigorously via inversion for the first minute to assure that the developer is well dispersed. Then I do nothing until the time is up. I have settled upon 1 hour, but I know of folks who have fallen asleep and not gotten to the soup for 5 hours with no ill affect. As you can imagine, at these very dilute levels the developer is going to exhaust itself before too much bad can happen. BTW, this method of development is very forgiving of temperature, which is another plus. Rodinal is not suited to high temps, but I believe that anything in the 66-70 degree area is OK.
That's it. So far I have used the same method with Tri-X, Plus-X, and now FP4+. Give it a try sometime, and I would be interested to hear of the results.
Cheers...
Rem
