Lost my thermometer - what to do?

[Stevenson Gawen]

This is a slightly pointless post to be honest - but I'm annoyed with myself for mislaying my developing thermometer!
How would you develop a roll of HP5+ when you only have ID-11 and no thermometer?

I might just 'borrow' a thermometer of the ordinary room temperature kind while I wait for a new real one to be delivered.

But any radical solutions?
I've read that stand development is not very temp sensitive, but seems that ID-11 is not suited to that....

 

[Tim Bradshaw]

Here's a fairly mad method. Don't do this with developer (you don't want to mix dev with boiling water), but make a water bath. First make lots of ice, and dump this in a bucket. Fill it with water and leave for long enough for a fair amount of the ice to melt (better to put a lid on the bucket). If all the ice melts add more until you get a bucket which has both ice and water in it. Keep adding ice every little while so there is always some in the bucket. This water is at 0 degrees. Now boil some water. Now take a mixture of 4/5 ice water from the bucket and 1/5 freshly boiled water: this is at 20 degrees. Use this as a water bath for the dev. If you are not using stock ID-11 then you can also use this mixture to dilute it.

You need to worry about ambient temperature, which may be higher than 20 currently in the UK. You can adjust the temperature of your water bath just by varying the proportions.

Alternatively, just get a cheapo thermometer, it probably is easier!

B/W dev is not that temperature sensitive typically: I try and keep it within +/- 2 degrees over the course of the development which seems to be fine based on several thousand rolls. OTOH I was using Rodinal until recently so I was always putting up with terrible negs (ID-11 is a much nicer developer).

 

[Stevenson Gawen]

Here's a fairly mad method

Now that is the kind of solution I was hoping for - radical, yet practical! Never thought of that...

ambient temperature,

Mmm, here on the Southern Tablelands on NSW temps in the house (an old and rambling one) are anywhere from 10-20 degrees C at the moment (early spring).
I usually stick the thermometer into the dev tank a couple of times, and use a warm water bath to keep temps up if needed.

cheapo thermometer, it probably is easier!

Maybe, yes...

Having said all that, I ended up just guesstimating - I knew the ambient where the bottles are stored would be around 10 - 13 degrees, so sat them behind the wood stove for a while, until they felt 'not chilly', then just did it.

I'm not sure how much was luck and how much was good judgement, (more the former probably!) but worked out OK. This roll was shot on my Oly Trip 35 and there's some significant exposure variations, but overall quite good.

I'll attach a few pics. Digitised with my usual Pentax slide copier, Sigma 70-300 and Sony NEX5r.

I still haven't really settled on an optimum solution for adding contrast to scanned negs. I use darktable, and am very happy with my normal workflow, but haven't quite got the hang of it when film is involved. I think I need to reread the darktable manual...
I usually get it to look ok, but the adjustments can vary quite a bit between images - which feels a bit like cheating.

On top of that, my HP5+ pics seem to have a tendency to look more 'muddy' than other people's - any thoughts, anyone?

 

[Ralph Turner]

Great pics, particularly the last one. Regarding the feeling of cheating, similar thoughts go through my mind.
I’m no expert on developing but I like the notion of the ‘optimal negative’ when developing, though I feel I haven’t got there yet - I’m still getting used to caffenol’s behaviour. For example my latest two rolls came out a bit contrasty and I suspect would might present a bit of a challenge to tame if I were still printing in the darkroom (though fortunately they scanned well).
Luckily I can usually compensate for any variations in development fairly well once digitised (I also usually have my scanning camera set to aperture priority for simplicity) so I try not too hung up on achieving the exact look of the neg (either through development or initial exposure variations) It might feel like cheating but if the end result is good, does it matter? As much as I love a good traditional darkroom print, the ease and flexibility offered by the hybrid workflow for me brings together the best of both worlds. Just my two pennies worth. Not sure if this helps and I apologise if I’ve missed the point .
Btw I'm intrigued by @Tim Bradshaw’s water temperature management technique.

 

[Stevenson Gawen]

Great pics, particularly the last one. Regarding the feeling of cheating, similar thoughts go through my mind. For example my latest two rolls came out quite contrasty with fairly dense highlight areas and I suspect would probably present a bit of a challenge to tame if I were printing in the darkroom - I’m still getting used to caffenol’s behaviour. Yet, they scan really well. There is variation in how the histogram looks out of camera as I usually leave the scanning cam on aperture priority auto, so exposures vary a little bit, for obvious reasons. Yet, once the black/white points are set all is good. It might feel like cheating but if the end result is good, does it matter? as much as I love a good traditional darkroom print, the ease and flexibility offered by the hybrid workflow brings together the best of both worlds. Just my two pennies worth. Not sure if this helps and I apologise if I’ve missed the point .
Btw I'm intrigued by @Tim Bradshaw’s water temperature management technique.

Thanks Ralph, I'm glad it's not just me with this kind of conundrum (is that right the right word?).

I suspect I should remember (sorry) from a previous post you made, but how do you light your negatives?

I use a basic manual speedlight, with it's built in diffuser down, pointing at the diffuser builtin to the slider copier, which works quite well, but exposure is all manual so usually run one exposure all the way through if possible. In this case some frames were pretty thin so I turned the flash down a notch for those. Apart from that I do any exposure adjustments in processing on the raw file which works out well usually.

 

[Ralph Turner]

@stevenson I reread and have edited my comment, hopefully for better clarity, so you may wish to re read

 

[Ralph Turner]

My light source is an old style light box lit by a couple of daylight balanced fluorescent tubes under a diffuser glass. I do occasionally get issues with slight striping on the scan due to the electronic shutter interacting with the flicker frequency of the tubes but most times the exposure time is such that it’s not an issue. I probably ought to upgrade to a better one with no risk of flicker and a potentially better CRI, but I haven’t got round to it yet . Negs and unmounted transparency strips get loaded into my Pixl-latr so have an extra layer of diffusion, but mounted transparencies rely solely on the light box’s diffuser.