Re: Developing sheet film in open-ended PVC tubes

On Thu, 1 Apr 2004, Jack Fulton wrote:

> I'd say the seemingly (note emphasis on seemingly) most successful way
> yet is to purchase the Jobo tank that'll hold, gosh, 6 sheets of 4x5.
> Fill it up and agitate by hand. We swear by that. Gosh darnit.
> Jack Fulton

There is absolutely no point in open tube for 4x5 film... the jobo does
that very well, and with pouring spout, etc. very efficiently. (tho I
think even Jobo says it works better with only 4 sheets.)

The open tube was for big film -- I was doing 12 x 18 and 16 x 20 lith
film, which, with its short development would be too goosey for a jobo
even if you had one that size. Someone said you couldn't time the
rotation evenly -- but the protocol I was using took very slow rolling --
I put a white tape on the tube and clocked the rotations... I think
average was probably 20 seconds, or 3 per minute. It's a big tube (big
diameter) you'd have trouble doing it faster... But cover the tube in
developer? That would require a tub at least 7 inches deep.

> > Another way to use the tubes would be to develop the film with the
> > tubes in vertical orientation in a gallon paint bucket. You could do
> > up to eight sheet of 4X5 film at a time this way. And with agitation
> > at three minute intervals  you could keep the lid on the bucket and
> > work in the light for most of the time, and only turn the lights off
> > when you remove the lid to agitate.

I doubt that a plastic paint bucket is light proof... though you could
probably add a coat of opaque black... I also suspect that where there
are 8 separate tubes (which I take to be the idea here), handling and
timing could get complicated... even if you got them in the right order,
and did each tube in 15 seconds, it's 2 minutes from start to finish,
assuming no glitches.

Judy
Received on Thu Apr 1 20:32:12 2004