Re: 8" B&W film development?

[Craig Woods <cwoods@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert J. Lang or Hope Conley Lang <bobhope@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: panorama-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <panorama-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 14 January 1999 04:03
Subject: Re: 8" B&W film development?


I used to work as an aerial photographer and we used to process 10" aerial
B&W film x 200' in a stainless steel oval dish about 12" deep. Film was
Super XX and developer was D76 from Kopdak or ID11 from Ilford. Technique
was to prewet the film in a water bath with wetting solution by rolling from
one end to the other on a special takeup reel. There was a motor but it was
so unreliable most of us preferred to do it manually. Dev times used to run
at about 22 to 25 mins. The thin film of dev taken up by the film would
exhaust faitrly quickly and would only be replenished by the next pass. A
pass used to take about 3 to 4 minutes. We would inspect the film using a
very deep green filter and inspect for highlight density through the back of
the film. You had to spend at least twenty minutes in the dark for eye
acclimatisation. Rest of the process was normal. In fact we used to switch
on the lights after one pass in the hypo and watch the film clearing. Fixing
time was twice the time film took to clear. I still have the tank BTW.
Craig