A Rodinal problem

Today, I decided to roll up my sleeves and develop three rolls of black-and-white 120 film which I’ve recently shot. I had two rolls of Kodak Tri-X, and a single roll of expired Kodak Tmax 100 to process.

I have two developing tanks, a small one which will take two rolls of 135 film, or a single roll of 120, and a larger tank that will double the amount of film I can develop, so the Tmax went in the small tank, and the Tri-X in the larger one. My plan was to develop all three rolls using Ilfotec DD-X, but I realised when making up the solution for the two rolls of Tri-X that there would not be enough left for the other roll.

Not to worry, I thought, I’ll develop it in Rodinal instead. I’ve not developed Tmax 100 in Rodinal before, but expected it might look nice given it’s a fine grained 100asa film. So, after completing the Tri-X, I started to get myself prepared to develop the Tmax – the usual stuff: getting the water to the right temperature, making sure I had all the necessary bits and bobs required (including drying stuff I’d just used with the Tri-X). Then I encountered a problem…

I couldn’t get the top off my bottle of Rodinal. It has a safety cap which requires downward pressure while turning in order to remove it but, today, no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t come loose. It just rotated and clicked annoyingly. At one point I was using so much downward force that the bottle started to collapse in on itself! After five minutes of fruitless effort, I gave up on the enterprise, and decided that I would have to force open the bottle and store it in a different bottle. As I don’t have another suitable bottle (I’d assumed the bottle it came in would be fine) I ordered a brown glass medicine bottle from eBay, and I’ll re-home the developer when it arrives.

Later in the afternoon I searched online to see if anyone else had encountered similar problems and I found a recent Reddit thread describing the exact same issue. A few people had managed to remove the stuck cap with pliers or a wrench, so I’ll give that a try. The consensus seems to be that the developer crystalises in the safety mechanism of the cap, causing it to get stuck and no longer function properly.

Anyway, both rolls of Tri-X came out fine (although I did manage to drop one of them on the bathroom floor when taking it off the reel, coating it with bits of dust and a strand of hair, and necessitating me re-washing it).

No Rodinal was used in the development of the two pictures below. Perhaps that was for the best.

Nikon F80 & Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD. Ilford HP5+ (@800), Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°

Taken on 16 February 2025