Darkroom Tips.

[kex]

hello,

just wanna share a way to prevent/minimize scratches for tray develop.

i always wrap the trays using those microwave oven plastic wraps b4 pouring the soup in it,i find dat doing it this way keeps my negs 99% scratch free.

Any other nice darkroom tips ?

 

[student]

I presume you are talking about sheet film development ( I am aware that in another thread someone talked about tray development for 120 film!)

I find it strange that you can avoid scratches by putting the plastic wraps on the trays. Most scratches are caused by the sharp corners of the films on the emulsion side. The emulsion side is not supposed to touch the tray. It is usually processed face up. The other side (?polyethylene or whatever) is usually quite tough and not likely to scratch on the tray.

I sometimes processed up to 8 4x5 or 6 8x10 sheets. The "trick" is to be extremely meticulous and "unhurried" when removing the sheet from the bottom of the stack, and then putting that sheet on top.

But you have to find what works for you.

 

[kex]

ohh..
i usually do it one sheet at a time,as i only shoot the most ard 4 shots a day.
i also develop 120 in trays too.

 

[student]

ohh..
i usually do it one sheet at a time,as i only shoot the most ard 4 shots a day.
i also develop 120 in trays too.

1 I see, can I ask if you put your 4x5 (I assume?) emulsion side up? With one sheet, I would imagine that it would be almost impossible for the trays to scratch the film. You will be hardly touching the film.

2 How do you process the 120 films in trays? I would imagine that it would be a nightmare! You ahve to do it in darkness, and getting the entire roll evenly develop would be very difficult! I did it once! Because I was not careful to make sure my reel was dry, and half way I could not advance the film. But I knew that at that stage, disentagling the film from the reel would destroy a few frames. So I took a "pot" and proceeded to develop the negative with some in the reel and some outside the reel. Thankfully it turned out alright. But that taught me a valuable lesson to keep my reels dry!

 

[kex]

i wrap my trays as they have gone thru more than 20yrs of intensive usage by my dad,so those lines in the tray are not dat smooth anymore,i find that wrapping them up reduce scratches almost totally.
i process 120 by holding one end each with my hands and submerged one end into the tray and start pulling up and down each end,something like a pulley system.
advantage of this method is i only use 260ml of soup in a small tray.

 

[ratboy]

i wrap my trays as they have gone thru more than 20yrs of intensive usage by my dad,so those lines in the tray are not dat smooth anymore,i find that wrapping them up reduce scratches almost totally.
i process 120 by holding one end each with my hands and submerged one end into the tray and start pulling up and down each end,something like a pulley system.
advantage of this method is i only use 260ml of soup in a small tray.

If i remember correctly, the Jobo system works with 260ml of dev
for rotary processing... also has the added advantage that once loaded into the drum, can work in daylight... think this is a
"safer" way than tray processing 120...

 

[student]

i wrap my trays as they have gone thru more than 20yrs of intensive usage by my dad,so those lines in the tray are not dat smooth anymore,i find that wrapping them up reduce scratches almost totally.
i process 120 by holding one end each with my hands and submerged one end into the tray and start pulling up and down each end,something like a pulley system.
advantage of this method is i only use 260ml of soup in a small tray.

I see your problems. Hmm, will keep that in mind! But having said that, should you not change the trays? The cost of a set of new trays must be quite small relative to the efforts you put in to get that 4x5 negative.

The pulley system is interesting. Innovations abound when a need arises!

 

[kex]

the "pulley system" is quite common among B&W studios in the 80's last time. sometime i do 2 rolls back to back in the same tray if i have alot of rolls to develop.
never really bother to change the trays since the plastic wrap works fine.
The Jobo system sounds good,but i'm used to developing the film the way my dad taught me..
anyone has the dilution formula for the sodiu hyposulphite ??

 

[student]

anyone has the dilution formula for the sodiu hyposulphite ??

I will let you know if I can get the answer