I keep kicking myself, all these years, and I never learned, sigh...
Now being an old guy, and hope to retire next year, I guess I am looking for easy solutions.
Desmolicious wrote:
It's nice and all, but all you need is a dev tank and a changing bag.
Super simple.
In 2018, I decided to start developing B&W film for the first time in a couple of decades. I bought a Rodinax 35 because, I figured that I probably wasn't going to develop a lot of film and the Plustek scanner was really slow. It leaked and the constant cranking was enough for me to move to a tank after half a doxen rolls. Our house is small with no light tight closets or bathrooms but I was able to find a Photoflex Pop Up Changing Room on another forum for a good price. It has served me well for the last seven years. The latest adventure was learning how to load 120 onto a stainless steel reel.
It's fun and a good opportunity to learn a lot. Come back for some scanning advice.
I don't use the LAB BOX. I did check them out just now and they have a super sleek setup. I personally use a Paterson tank, at night, in my laundry closet. It meets my needs so far.
It seems like the main thing this gizmo does for you is automate the agitations, which really isn't hard to do yourself. In fact if you do semi-stand development with a very dilute developer (I use Rodinal 1:100 semi-stand development for almost all films under ISO 400, and even a few ISO 400 films), you only have to do 30 seconds or a minute of gentle agitations at the beginning, three agitations at 30 minutes, and that's it. At 60 minutes you pour out the developer and proceed with stop bath and then fixer. And since the developer is so dilute, you can just do a stop with water instead of stop bath if you prefer.
