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The whole 'stand development is magic' thing is driving me nuts...
I keep seeing people post these super flat, muddy scans and then ask what went wrong, and every single time they say they did a 1 hour stand development in Rodinal. Look, I love Rodinal too, but it's not a fix for bad exposure. I shot a roll of HP5 at a concert, metered for the shadows like you should, and developed it normal. My friend shot the same show, underexposed by two stops because 'the lights were bright', did a stand dev, and wonders why his grain looks like clumpy oatmeal. The developer can't create detail that isn't on the film. It just gives you more contrast control, not a free pass. I've ruined maybe three rolls myself trying to salvage poorly exposed shots that way before I learned. Has anyone else had to unlearn this stand dev myth the hard way?
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patricia_rodriguez5mo ago
Remember my buddy who swore by stand dev for everything? He shot a roll of Portra in a dim bar, totally botched the exposure, and tried to save it with a two hour stand. The scans were just a flat, gray mess with the weirdest color shifts, like a sickly green tint in the shadows. He kept saying the developer was "working its magic" but there was literally nothing there to work with. It was the perfect example of trying to fix in the tank what you messed up in the camera.
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