[LargeFormat] Processing 4X5 recommandations.

[Wilkes, Don MSER:EX]

Dear Fred,

> I have processed 4x5 in trays, film hangers in daylight 
> tanks, and in a 
> Yankee adjustable film developing daylight tank.

[...snip...]

>I have just started playing with a paper drum processor to process 4x5
film.  
>It looks like it might save on chemicals and be easy to use.



Many years ago, I used to process negs on hangers, too.  Since I was going
through a fair bit of film at the time, it made reasonable sense to have
that much developer lying about with a floating lid between sessions.

These days, though, it's quite a while between bouts of LF neg developing,
and I generally only have a couple of sheets to do.  I do have both a Yankee
and an FR tank, but was somewhat appalled at how much developer they take,
especially if I was only souping two sheets.  So, my trusty old Unicolour
8x10 print drum to the rescue...

I find that something on the order of 350 ml of solutions works just fine.
I do a water pre-soak, which stabilises the drum's temperature and
(hopefully) prevents streaking.  It seems to, as I haven't had any problems
at all.  As to time & temperature, the normal recommendations for tank
development seem to get me pretty close; you'll probably want to run some
tests [which I keep *promising* myself I'll do Real Soon Now...] As for
agitation, I never did acquire one of the motor bases, so I just roll it
back and forth by hand, with an intentional bit of sloppiness in the
direction, to help avoid streaking problems.

My only irritation is that over the years (well, decades) I seem to have
misplaced that little plastic widget that keeps 4x5 sheets apart in the
drum.  Back in the days when I did some colour printing, I would sometimes
load four 4x5 sheets of paper, and never had a problem.  When I recklessly
tried this with four sheet of film, without the widget, I got the expected
disaster.  Argh.  I've thought about making myself one somehow, but can't
recall just what it looks like.  Oh well -- it's not that often these days I
need to soup many sheets at once, so it's not like it's a huge hassle, but
still...

All the best,
\don wilkes, victoria, b.c.