My kitchen routine
Nothing here is original. It is simply what I do every time, in the same order, so that the result depends on the light I found and not on what I forgot.
HP5+ at 400, Rodinal 1+50, 20 °C
- Pre-soak, three minutes, water at the same temperature.
- Develop 13 minutes: agitate the first 30 seconds, then three inversions each minute.
- Stop bath 30 seconds, fixer 5 minutes, wash 10 minutes.
- One drop of wetting agent, hang in the bathroom, forget until morning.
The pre-soak is the part people argue about. I keep it because my tap water is cold in winter and the pre-soak brings the tank to temperature better than anything else I have tried.
Chemistry is cheap; film and time are not. I mix the developer fresh for every tank and write the date on the bottle with a pencil.