Opinions on stand development?

[Kramertron2000]

Here we go! I can already see some possibly heated debate here, but Ill ask anyway.

With the remains of a cyclone about to pass over Ill probably be stuck at home for a couple of days. I have a few shots left on a roll of my beloved rollei Ir 400 film I want to use up this afternoon on some drippy rainy weather pictures.

Iv developed the normal way in rodinal a few times now (probably about half a dozen rolls) and have honed my technique nicely I think, but now Im thinking of trying out stand development.

Has anyone used this technique with rodinal and rollei Ir? What are people's opinions and experiences in general?

Id probably do 1hr stand in as close as I can get to 19°c, with an initial 30s-1min gentle agitation, then maybe 5-10s gentle agitation at 30min. Then stop with plain water and fix with rapid-fix.

Now to get the umbrella out and hope I dont get blown away

 

[webestang64]

I've never tried stand development but there are a few here that have done it with good results. Good luck.

 

[Kramertron2000]

I ended up going with it. 1:100 rodinal, start temperature was about 12°c, probably ended up closer to 15°c, 1h agitating for about 10s initially, then 5 times at 30min. The test scan I did on a couple of strips looked good, but some came out a bit scratched because of the incredible difficulty I had getting the bloody stuff on the spool.

Im going to say it was a combination of all the extreme conditions this roll has been through, but it took about 45min to get it on, lots of swearing, a slightly broken spool and a near nervous breakdown. It simply refused to go on; twisting up the wrong way, curling in weird ways, popping out of the spool, not ratcheting on, unravelling Then when I hung it out to dry it curled in every possible direction - probably even into the 4th dimension, so after the test, I put it in a heavy book to flatten out overnight.

I know this film already has a reputation for curling, but this was worse than Iv ever had with it. Most of the shots were taken either in blazing heat, or hot, humid, rainy conditions, and last night we had 100% humidity, close to 30°c and continuous rain (still raining now - probably close to 200mm overnight), so Im blaming that. All the advertising material claims these films have anti-curl properties, but if it werent so frustrating Id find that hilariously inaccurate.

Anyway here are a few test scans - Im going to do the rest today at some point and hope not too many are scratched.



Second is infrared. Both are copied from Facebook uploads, so quality probably isnt the best.

 

[Kramertron2000]

So overall the results from the actual development were good, but I did scratch the **** out of about half the roll

Many were completely ruined, but there were some that were salvageable, and fortunately most of the best ones were perfectly fine. Its strange how one could be scratched beyond repair, while the frame next to it was almost blemish free. Most of them were evenly developed, but a couple showed some signs of bromide drag or uneven development, and likewise some were a little more grainy than Id like, but it wasn't bad on most of them.

I think if I were to try semi-stand again, I'd probably go for a lower temperature and agitate twice instead of once to hopefully get all of them evenly developed, while not increasing the grain (too much more). I struggled to keep the temperature as low as I did using a cold water bath and air-conditioning, but maybe using refrigerated water to start with, and an insulated container for the cold water bath would help.

Here are some of the highlights: