After a fairly successful first attempt at home developing B&W film (by which I mean "successful for a total newbie" - i.e. I got some useable negatives
), I'll shortly be developing my second roll.
In my previous session, I developed some 120 Fomapan 200 - a T-grain film, apparently - using Rodinal at 1+50 dilution for 10 minutes, with constant inversions for the first minute followed by a couple of inversions each minute thereafter. Considering the Agfa Isola II camera I used had very limited shutter speed and aperture combinations, and I mostly guessed the exposure using "Sunny-11" (Sunny-16 for my locale), I was pretty happy with the results.
This time round, I'll be developing some 35mm Fomapan 400 - a traditional grain film - shot with an Olympus Trip 35 with automatic exposure, which is likely to be more-consistently accurate than my previous estimated efforts. I
was going to use the same development method as before, but since then I've been reading up a lot on stand development - or, more specifically, "semi-stand" development. There seems to be a lot of variation and latitude in this approach, but essentially what I've read suggests using a Rodinal dilution of 1+99 or 1+100, agitating for anything between a few seconds and a minute, then leaving to stand for between 30 - 40 minutes, performing a couple of slow inversions, and leaving to stand for another 30 - 40 minutes before emptying, stopping, fixing and washing. As I understand it, the advantage of this method over true stand development is that it negates (or at least reduces) the possibility of "bromide drag".
I've read up on the way this method works, and I understand why it can result in reduced contrast, whilst increasing (or should that be "compressing"?) the dynamic range. Since I'm employing a hybrid workflow - film photography followed by digitising and software post-processing of negatives - the reduced contrast doesn't seem like a significant issue, and may in fact be an advantage in some instances. I
am concerned that a loss of contrast might translate into loss of detail that can't be recovered in post-processing, but don't know if this is "a thing" or just my flawed thinking. On the other hand, I really like the fact that semi-stand development is so forgiving of exposure errors (given some of the equipment I'm using) and mixing of speeds (I've read of folks using this approach to simultaneously develop rolls of film shot at considerably different speeds, with good results out of each film). I've also heard that it can result in less-obvious grain - though I can't help but assume that's a perception thing due to reduced contrast (is it?).
Honestly, it all sounds too good to be true... minimal effort, reduced cost of chemistry, and maximum flexibility; but, when something sounds too good to be true, I'm very wary. So... what am I missing? What are the downsides? Are there any reasons why I
shouldn't use semi-stand development?
Any insight and advice would, as always, be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance