Foma 100 Stand Dev

In my carry on bag this time, I brought to Portugal, three more 5×4 film holders and two 5″x7″ contact printing frames.

On Saturday we visited the Museu Zer0 in Santa Catarina da Fonte do Bispo. Pics over on my Instagram.

I had with me my old Olympus mju zoom camera loaded with expired TX400. I finished off the roll and processed it when we got home.

Dev’d with Fomadon R09 the results were flat and under developed. There was considerable base fog, maybe from several airport scans and being out of date, but I didn’t expect it to be that bad.

The Fomadon dev is supposed to have a pretty good shelf life, its stored in the fridge in the dark. Its now about 12 month old. Now I’m questioning my math and maybe I diluted my dev solution too much and used it at 1:50, or a combination of all factors. Either way I wasn’t happy. The negs will be difficult to print.

So yesterday I bought a bottle of Adox Rodinal, another dev with supposed long shelf life capabilities, or at least the old recipe used to be. Reportably up to decades and still useable if stored wel. Luckily Niobo in Alhao had some in stock.

I loaded 6 sheets of Foma 100 5×4 and shot two scenes at home for three different dev tests. Same exposure settings and lighting.

1- Standard dilution Fomadon R09

1:25 strength at 4 minutes at 20C

Underexposed!

2- Standard Adox Rodinal

Rodinal is very similar to the Fomadon.

1:25 strength at 4 minutes at 20C

Again underexposed but this has a little more contrast.

3- Stand development with Adox Rodinal.

1:100 for 1 hour at 20C

I’ve never had the patience for Stand development. Given the choice between 4 minutes or 60 minutes to see your results, the quicker option always won. But as Im in Portugal and the pace of life is a little slower, I decided to give it a go.

Well I wasn’t expecting that. Much more tonal range, with details in shadows and highlights. Fluke maybe?

The underexposure issue…

Okay, Foma 100 really shouldn’t be rated at box speed. Its more like a 50 to 80, more like 50 with normal development. A quick Google would have told me that but I suppose we have to find out in our own way.

I was pleasantly surprised by the 1 hour stand development. I’ll have to give that a few more tries.

I’m going to try and pop back to Museu Zer0 and take the 5×4 camera along, hopefully they will allow me in with a tripod.