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I've encountered several references to the term "stand development" in some threads, but no descriptions of what that is exactly. Would someone who does this please explain it? Does it concern film and/or paper development? For what purpose is it used? Speculation is not helpful. Curiosity rules. Thanks.
It is a method of developing film without agitation. I use semi-stand often, which means the ratio of developer is high, the times long and the agitation every 3 minutes,
Its when you dont have a chair to sit on. I stand up and develope, and agitate normal for my method.
It is a film development method used primarily to heavily reduce contrast. It is all over these forums, and other ones. Make sure you click the check boxes when you do a search here, or else you get nothing.
The advantage is that if you're lazy it's a great way to develop film. It's an excellent technique for high contrast negs. Because you're agitating little or none, the developer in highlight areas exhaust faster so it develops less. Therefore, your highlights are less likely to block up. The down side is the possibility of streaks. You usually do it with highly diluted developer.
It is a method of developing film to completion. That is using up all the developer that is in contact with the film. I is a form of compensating development. It is a lazy man's way to develop film because you do not even need to be there after pouring in the developer. It does away with time and temperature worries.
To give you an idea, I normally pour in the developer (Rodinal 1+100 in my case), agitate with three slow inversions and go do something else for an hour. One time I forgot and left it in for 2.5 hours. Ruined? Nope, I could not tell any difference from the one hour time.
Some people, like me, love it. Some hate it. Some, can not leave the tank alone and wind up with very contrasty negatives. Agitating defeats the purpose, and it just becomes insanely long development.
Thanks for the responses. I suspected that's what it's about, but was curious to know for sure. I'm doing tests now for film speed, contractions and expansions with HC-110 / HP5 sheet film. Ansel describes in "The Negative" how there's compensating action with this combo that produces a very soft negative. He suggests highly diluted developer (i.e., 1+30 from stock solution), a minimum 30-sec water pre-soak, constant agitation for the first minute, then 15 seconds every 3-4 minutes, for a total development time approaching 20 minutes. Minimum total agitation must be experimented with to produce a negative without mottle or streaking. Since I'm using 4x5 sheet film in trays, I've put the film in a hanger to keep it submerged during the long stand and agitate by slowly raising/lowering the hanger keeping it submerged, whereas tray rocking produced unacceptable results. 20 minutes total dev time produced good results.
This is really an unfortunate choice of phrase because stand development results in film being only partially developed. The developer exhausts before the film is completly developed. This is why the image tones are distorted to achieve lower contrast.Quote:
Originally Posted by graywolf
The technique is useful for taming contrast but should not be used in other situations because of laziness.
This is really an unfortunate choice of phrase because stand development results in film being only partially developed. The developer exhausts before the film is completly developed. This is why the image tones are distorted to achieve lower contrast.
The real lazy ones send film out :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Gerald C Koch
As opposed to being a "lazy" person's development method of choice (I realize at least some of the posters made this statement with tongue in cheek), I submit that it is the "patient" person's method. As mentioned by others, it involves longer development times; much longer in the case of low luminance range negatives.
The various descriptions of infrequent agitation confused me, but it seems that "stand" development includes no agitation, "semi-stand" means agitating halfway through the total development time, and "reduced," "limited," or some other similar descriptor means agitate every 2 or 3 minutes, or maybe at the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 points.
I myself have adopted semi-stand in Pyrocat, and use it for all negatives, whether they need reduced, normal, or lengthened development. Simple is better for me, and I get beautiful negatives every time.