Once upon a time there was daddy bear, mummy bear, oh sorry wrong audience! In my developing kit I have a small, medium and large developing tanks – I use the Paterson System 4 tanks, but I prefer the older “original” system 4 and not the newer “Super” ones. I find that they are un-necessarily large, and I don’t like the lid arrangement. It relies on three small, easily broken, little lugs, and I find them clumsy, or rather I am clumsy at clicking and un-clicking them closed. I prefer the older type with a simple twist screw top!
Anyway, at the age of approximately 9 years old I discovered that if you don’t pour in enough developer you end up with a half developed film with a strip of bubble marks across the top. When you are that age you have to make every drop of developer work, so using just enough stretched the pocket money. I soon discovered that one still needed enough. I made that mistake once, lesson learnt, move on.
The reason I now have three tanks and many reels is that I often have several films to develop and usually dev at least two at a time. What I’ve never done, until today, is actually measure the amount of solution needed, here’s what I found:
Paterson System 4 (Original 1968-1981 NOT the later “Super”) Tanks
Small Tank: (Single 35mm) 300ml just covers – 350ml much better covers the film by about 5 or 6 ml (Interestingly the tanks base suggests just 290ml!!)
Medium Tank: single 35mm reel same as above, 1X 120 film 550ml ideal, 2x 35mm 600ml needed.
Large Tank: 3x 35mm films 850ml needed, 900ml better covers the film by about 5 or 6 ml. I have discovered that is possible to squeeze in 2x35mm and a 120- this needs 1050ml. The recommendation is 2×120 films, I didn’t think to measure this combo!
Should you wish to know a little more about developing tanks and thier gradual development (pun inteneded) there is a great page here.
S.H.O.U.T. 