ChrisR
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As you may know, I use an Agfa Rondinax daylight tank for my 135 developing (for the simple reason that I can't load a spool due to functional issues with my right hand). I quite enjoy devving my own, but if the backlog builds up to much more than a couple of films, I find myself sending them off to the lab, which means delay, loss of control, and of course, added expense. Why is the breakpoint at a couple of films?
So my workflow looks something like this for one film:
a) Start some water getting to temperature (5 minutes)
b) Get the dev box from under the stairs (2 minutes)
c) Lay out the Rondinax, chems etc on the laundry sink draining board (5 minutes)
d) Mix the developer (and possibly other chems) (3-10 minutes)
e) Test the fixer, if not fresh, 2 minutes
f) Trim the film end, load into tank, 5 minutes
g) Dev (~7 minutes FP4), Stop and Fix (6 minutes, say) (All 3 of these processes require continuous attention to winding the Rondinax, or there will be uneven development.)
h) 4 washes, 5 minutes each, with the lid off (20 minutes)
i) Final rinse in de-ionised water and Photo-Flo, 5 minutes
j) Take tank upstairs, hang in the shower, 5 minutes
k) Rinse tank thoroughly, re-pack the Dev box, put back under the stairs (10 minutes)
l) Clean up the laundry area, put other water jugs etc away, 5 minutes.
So for one film that works out at around 80 minutes, give or take. For a second film, start again at (d) and omit (e), work through to (j), so an additional 50 minutes.
There is one other constraint: the films MUST be dried, cut and sleeved by 10 pm to allow free use of the shower, else Hell To Pay! This basically means finishing the last dev by 5 pm. Altogether this means I can't really do more than 2 films in one afternoon.
Now, to the real point of the post. It seems to me that the wash cycles are the real bottleneck. Is there a way of removing the film from the tank (well, obvs!) and washing it separately, in parallel with starting on the next film? It would need to be a continuous wash, I think; it would be too confusing to break off from the dev process to refill tanks. There's obviously no chance of loading another reel; I was thinking of putting the film into a jug and then under slowly running water. But I would be quite concerned about parts of the film getting inadequate wash due to lying adjacent in the jug.
If I could do this, I think I could do 3 films in about the time it currently takes to do 2. I suspect it would be quite a lot more stressful, however.
So my workflow looks something like this for one film:
a) Start some water getting to temperature (5 minutes)
b) Get the dev box from under the stairs (2 minutes)
c) Lay out the Rondinax, chems etc on the laundry sink draining board (5 minutes)
d) Mix the developer (and possibly other chems) (3-10 minutes)
e) Test the fixer, if not fresh, 2 minutes
f) Trim the film end, load into tank, 5 minutes
g) Dev (~7 minutes FP4), Stop and Fix (6 minutes, say) (All 3 of these processes require continuous attention to winding the Rondinax, or there will be uneven development.)
h) 4 washes, 5 minutes each, with the lid off (20 minutes)
i) Final rinse in de-ionised water and Photo-Flo, 5 minutes
j) Take tank upstairs, hang in the shower, 5 minutes
k) Rinse tank thoroughly, re-pack the Dev box, put back under the stairs (10 minutes)
l) Clean up the laundry area, put other water jugs etc away, 5 minutes.
So for one film that works out at around 80 minutes, give or take. For a second film, start again at (d) and omit (e), work through to (j), so an additional 50 minutes.
There is one other constraint: the films MUST be dried, cut and sleeved by 10 pm to allow free use of the shower, else Hell To Pay! This basically means finishing the last dev by 5 pm. Altogether this means I can't really do more than 2 films in one afternoon.
Now, to the real point of the post. It seems to me that the wash cycles are the real bottleneck. Is there a way of removing the film from the tank (well, obvs!) and washing it separately, in parallel with starting on the next film? It would need to be a continuous wash, I think; it would be too confusing to break off from the dev process to refill tanks. There's obviously no chance of loading another reel; I was thinking of putting the film into a jug and then under slowly running water. But I would be quite concerned about parts of the film getting inadequate wash due to lying adjacent in the jug.
If I could do this, I think I could do 3 films in about the time it currently takes to do 2. I suspect it would be quite a lot more stressful, however.