Hi Walker,
Thanks for posting your dev routine. I'm afraid I don't take as much care as you do - probably a case of familiarity breeding contempt. I don't bother with filtered water, I use it straight from the tap to make up the developer, stop bath and rapid fix even though the local water supply company probably chuck all sorts of stuff in it to 'purify' it, in other words make it fit to drink.
I usually develop at around 20 degrees C, but I'm happy with anything in the range of 18.5 to 21.5 with up to around 10 sec on or off the developing time to compensate. I start to pour off the dev at the end of the 9.5 mins, and by the time the stop bath is in the tank around 9 mins 40 sec have passed so the film actually gets about 10 mins with developer on it.
I also, as I said, use water straight from the tap to wash the film. If the tap water's much below 20 degrees C, as it usually is in the winter, I lower the temperature of the film to suit it by giving it successive baths (emptying and refilling the tank) each one four degrees or so lower than the previous one, but four degrees is a very plus or minus figure. To get the temperature I want I mix water from the hot and cold taps.
I've got a little gadget I made up from something I got at a DIY store. It's got rubber thingies which push on the taps and was intended to provide a small shower head for hair washing. I use only one, and in the other end of the hose I pushed the casing from an empty cheap plastic ball point pen. I take the lid off the tank and put this down through the middle of the reels so it directs water straight to the bottom of the tank. I adjust the tap till it's flowing nicely and leave the tank in the sink for about 15 minutes. After that I drop a few drops of wetting agent in the water, put the lid on and invert a couple of times and drain.
I let the reels drain for a few minutes and then hang the film with clips each end suspended from hooks screwed in the picture rail in my den.
I don't treat it very scientifically, but I've been doing it that way for years to develop hundreds of films. When Valerie and I were both freelancing in the 60s and 70s, when B&W was king with most magazines, we probably shot around ten rolls of 36 exposure between us each week. I developed them and Valerie printed them while I wrote the copy to go with them.
If a deadline was tight, as it often was covering weekend events for a weekly mag, I often dried the film in a hurry with a hair drier so Valerie could get the stuff printed Sunday evening. Then we'd drive up to the publisher and deliver the envelope with a selection of about 30 prints plus copy to the night security man so it was on the picture editor's desk first thing Monday morning, or drive up very early Monday morning. Fast delivery was why we kept getting assignments. Who said freelancing was an easy life??
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But missing a deadline was the kiss of death for a freelance, and editors paid well for service, and paid a generous mileage allowance for using the car as well.
By the time we got home after a Sunday event we were both tired, which is probably why I didn't take the trouble I maybe should have done over development. Valerie was also very fast at printing and batch developing, but speed or not we never had an editor complain about picture quality.
Nowadays of course, we'd probably take everything on digital and
email the written copy with pics as an attachment. Much easier
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There isn't the same pressure now of course. There's a world of difference between amateur and professional freelance work but old habits die hard, and I still use the same routine.
When magazines switched to colour and wanted colour transparencies it was all very different, but that's another story.
PeterW