Hi everyone, Azriel Knight here, and today's experiment involves agitation.
If you develop your own film, then, you probably know two things. One, you want to keep fresh
developer on the emulsion by moving either the liquid or the film in some way.
And two, depending on how vigorously you do it, it will affect your final image.
I am going to illustrate that by developing the same photo with 3 different agitation speeds.
You might be asking, how are you going to do that?
Earlier today, I went out with my camera and tripod, set up at a nice location, where I
could take a picture of the skyline, and the reason why I chose the skyline, is because
its got highlights and shadows. I metered with a hand held light meter, I set my camera
to autofocus on the buildings and then I flip it to manual, I set it on continuous shot
and of course manual settings and in this case it was 1/250 and f11 at ISO 400
It was an overcast days so, not as much contrast, as say a midsummer,
but enough where I think it will illustrate for these purposes.
So, basically I have thirty-six or so shots of the sky line, a sidebar here to the camera
was camera was giving me issues and there may be some overlapping photos, but as long as I have
got one shot from each strip, then I am good.
And if you have not figure it out already, I am going to split this roll into three sections,
and put them into three separate tanks.
My plan is, to use one single batch of developer, so, all three tanks kept the exact same ratio,
I do expect some drop in temperature but, those are the breaks, and I don’t think
it is going to be enough to really make a huge difference, but I will keep an eye on
the temperature and if it comes a problem perhaps, I will make a new batch, and just
be as accurate on those ratios as possible.
After each one develops I will put a stop bath in it and set it aside, and then, once
I have all three, I’ll start the fixing process.
You could see I have got three tanks set up here, and ready to go.
So, you might be asking yourself, what agitation speeds I am going to be using for each of
the tanks. Here is how I have broken it down.
The first tank, is going to be super minor, like barely, anything at all, I am just going
to move it back and forth really gently, just enough to have the spool in a different place
then it started out with.
The second tank, is going to be my normal agitation speed, and the third one, is going
to be a vigorous agitation.
We may even see a surge marks in the sprocket holes.
Next thing you do now is, to get this film into these tanks down here, okay all three
strips are in the tank now, and I think I split them up pretty evenly, but I would not
know for sure until I am done.
What I need to do now, is practice each agitation speed with the pre-wash.
I'll probably make the bath a few degrees warmer than it should be, because I am going to let each
one sit after it is done while I am preparing the developer.
So, just a recap, the next thing on the list is the pre-wash and then after I am going
to make a single batch of HC-110 developer and then split it for the three tanks.
Okay, here is the first batch of pre-wash,
[water pouring]
I'm going to agitate it for 1 minute to practice.
I do not know if you can see that.
and it is taking me like,
3 or 4 seconds
to twist each way
but, that's about to speed and I am going to go with the first one.
This is my normal agitation method,
you know, not too fast, not too slow
that kind of thing.
Okay, now for the vigorous one, water pouring]
Starting at the 30 second mark.
I gotta to make sure I can actually hold it up for a minute.
Maybe I should twist more at the wrist end of my fingers in this case.
Of course I realize this is completely unnatural but I wanted to show extreme examples....
[grown] That was a workout, Jesus!
Ok my water from my developer is about seventy three Fahrenheit, I figure by the time I add
the HC-110 and get the pre-wash out, the temperature would have dropped enough and be ready.
For Dilution B and 1 liter solution, I will need thirty two milliliters of HC-110.
Here’s a little tip, because it will be easier to just to measure up a liter of water,
rather than nine hundred seventy or nine hundred sixty eight milliliters and then remove thirty
two then milliliters with one of these
...that makes thirty...
and thirty two.
So, now there’s 968 milliliters water in there and I could do the exact same thing
to the HC-110 develops to back out.
[Music]
Developers still reading and about 73, 74 Fahrenheit
I thought it would drop more than that.
While we wait for that temperature to drop, I am going to make some stop bath.
I think we’re just about ready to go here, I got my timer ready.
That’s the reserved developer, this is the developer in going here, all I got to do is pour the pre-wash
out and right now we’re sitting at just under 72 Fahrenheit, I think we are going
to drop some two about 71, I am going to go ahead.
I do realize this 3 degrees over normal developing temperature, however I am going to this 3
times, and I would rather have one a little bit over, spot on, and a little under, rather
than have one spot on and two under.
Ok, the 1st strip is done and I set it right there, second strip is ready now.
The first one, I developed it to about 71 Fahrenheit and it looks likes the second one’s going to start 69 Fahrenheit
This is going to be the easiest one because it’s just going to be my normal agitation speed.
Ok let’s see what the last of the developer is measuring at.
67, not bad it’s dropped 2 degrees of about every 5 to 7 minutes.
So, this one might be a little funny because my goal here is not so much consistency but
to just crank on it to see what the extreme looks like.
[pouring]
May have flipped the film off the reel already.
I feel a change in the way it moves back and forth.
My wrist is already tired and I'm only at the 30 second mark.
All three are done now and I am going to fix them all at the same time, I'll Agitate
2 at the same time for the 1st minute and then the 3rd one I'll Agitate for the 2nd to 3rd minute.
To be 100% honest I can't remember if I'm using Kodak or Ilford Fixer
So, uh, I'm just going to do a 10 minute fix and then wash it a whole bunch.
I am not too concerned about washing but I will do decent wash job, I am more concerned
about the difference between Agitation rather than making gallery prints.
Ok I am all done fixing, I am all done washing, I am ready to pull the film out, I am incredibly
excited, I am not too sure what to expect either but I think, it’s going to be great.
First film strip I am pulling out is this super low Agitation.
I expected to see some indication that the agitation was really low...
but I don't
I am going to hang up this one and I am going to move on to the next one, maybe then I will see it
once I have two to compare it to.
Ok here’s the strip where I use normal agitation.
Excuse the expression but this might be a photo finish, I might literally
need to put this side by side.
Now the third one, I went nuts on it, if I don’t see anything on that one, I think
we have all been lied to.
Maybe my eyes are deceiving me, maybe I expected dramatic results...
...but not even surge marks on this and I agitated hard like I really agitated hard!
So far I'm confused.
Ok well the only thing to do now is to let these dry and see how it all turned out.
Ok, while I was waiting for the film to dry, I did a bunch of research and for the most
part that the people don’t seem to agree with other on what exactly agitation does
or how much it does it go figure.
There was one thing that stood out to me though and that was that contrast is not dictated
by the agitation vigorousness, it's agitation frequency that alters the contrast.
and that seems to make the most sense to me because when you take a look at these negatives in
a second, you are not going to see any difference.
Yeah we will take a closer look here in a second, I just wanted to say that it somehow it mix
this up, I am screwed, that’s how close they are together.
If there is a difference, it’s going to have to show up on the scan or there might
be slight differences if I take a look at the loop but that could be a shot per shot
difference to, again I am going to say, I am just really surprised, especially the third strip.
which I, just reefed on that.
here’s the one with minimal agitation
normal agitation
and ridiculous, super-duper agitation
and virtually no difference.
I am going to scan them in.
Ok take a look at these three pictures, can you even tell the difference between them
because there is very, very little difference between these photos.
One could say that the difference in this photos is the variation in the shutter speed,
because this is not going to be the exact same shutter speed every time.
I definitely learned something though and I confirmed that one post where it said that it’s not
the intensity which agitate but the frequency that will increase the contrast.
Even looking at them close up, like when you go back and look at the difference in my agitation
method, you think that you would have seen some crazy difference but you don’t.
So I will admit at first I felt like kind of an idiot for not knowing this but after
I read through the forums a bit, I have realized that people who have been developing film
for decades still did not quite understand, the difference agitation makes and I think
the average person probably would not bother going through the time or the film to answer
these questions.
If I wasn't making this for a video, I probably would not do it. I sort of have that, if
it ain't broke don't fix it mentality, I have always been fine with the contrast and
I attributed it to my technique but apparently that has very little to do with it.
So at some point I would like to try increasing the agitation frequency and instead of the vigorousness
and see if that increases the contrast through my readings, I also discovered that even that
might not make a huge difference.
Let me know in the comments below if that’s something that you would want to see, so I
hope you enjoyed this episode, if you did please remember to like share and subscribe
and until next time stay classic.