Stand development: one hour, no hands
Stand development is the method for the roll that went wrong in an interesting way: half of it shot in fog, half against the sun, some frames metered and some guessed. A very dilute developer left alone for an hour works on every frame until the developer next to the emulsion is spent, and the dense parts spend it first. Highlights stop early, shadows keep going. Contrast evens out on its own.
The recipe used here
| Step | What | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-soak | Water at 20 °C | 3 min |
| Developer | Rodinal type, 1+100, at least 5 ml of concentrate in the tank | 60 min |
| Agitation | Gentle inversions for the first 30 s; one slow inversion at 30 min | |
| Stop | Water, two changes | 1 min |
| Fix and wash | As usual |
The five millilitres are not optional. At 1+100 a small tank holds barely three, and a developer that runs out before the hour is over leaves the whole roll thin. Use a larger tank with a single reel at the bottom, or dilute a little less.
What it costs
- Bromide drag. By-products of development are heavier than water and sink, and with nothing stirring them they leave pale streaks below the sprocket holes and under any dense shape. A plain sky shows every one of them.
- Uneven edges. The top of the reel and the bottom do not get the same hour.
- Grain. An hour in a high-acutance developer makes a 400 film look like an 800 film.
The single inversion at half time, sometimes called semi-stand, removes most of the streaking and keeps most of the compensation. True stand, with no agitation at all after the first minute, is for rolls with no sky in them.
When it earns its place
A roll of rock pools at noon, where wet stone and the sky reflected in the pool are eight stops apart, comes out of stand development printable on a normal grade of paper. A roll of unknown age and speed found in a second-hand camera has one chance, and an hour in dilute developer is the best single guess for it. A roll of evening seascapes, half of every frame smooth sky, belongs in an ordinary developer with ordinary agitation.
Temperature and patience
The tank will drift towards room temperature over the hour, and it matters far less than with a ten-minute development: at this dilution exhaustion, not time, ends the process. Set a timer, leave the room, and resist the urge to give it one more turn in passing.