M6TTL, 50 Hex, Ilford XP2 @ 200, 5ml Rodinal + 600ml H20, Stand for 1 Hour

I had planned on developing these rolls in Diafine, but my Diafine has developed a case of the crud, and I couldn’t find anything around the house with which to filter it. I’d been wanting to try stand development with Rodinal, and since I didn’t expect much from these negs anyway, I didn’t figure I’d be out much if the whole lot was ruined. The process worked a lot better than I thought it would. I was fully prepared for these negs to turn into an unevenly developed, grainy, high contrast mess. Instead they’ve got good separation in the highlights, plenty of detail in the shadows and less grain than TriX in Xtol. They were also some of the easiest to scan negatives I’ve worked with in a long time, requiring very little photoshop work. Recipe below.

Ilford XP2 Stand Developed in Rodinal

• Shoot the XP2 at 200.
• Pre-soak the film in distilled water. I’m not sure if this is necessary, but the Delta films seem to develop bromide drag in minimal agitation regimes – see my post on diafine – so some insurance seemed advised.
• Develop in a solution of 5ml Rodinal and 600ml water (dilution chosen because it’s easy to measure with my current equipment). My solution measured 69F, but I suspect anything around there would work.
• Rotational agitation for the first minute followed by a couple of inversions for good measure.
• Set it aside for approximately an hour. Don’t touch!
• Fix and wash as normal.
• I can’t imagine that this a relevant part of the process, but just in case it is, I’ll note that I had to use some vodka in the final rinse. I usually use a solution of 100ml rubbing alcohol to 500ml of water and 3ml of photoflo. I was out of rubbing alcohol, so some vodka from the freezer had to stand in. The vodka doesn’t seem to have hurt it, but Smirnoff is a lot more expensive than rubbing alcohol.

The negs are an odd rust brown color. I’m not sure how well they would print in a wet darkroom, but the base color didn’t have any impact on scanning. I’m curious to know how well this process would work with other C41 films, and I’ll be trying it on a couple of rolls of Delta 400 that I shot at 200.