GSD 10

A couple of months ago I tried Jay DeFehr's GSD 10 Developer.  This is Glycin Stand Developer, and it is the technique that fascinates me.  Stand development calls for the film to "stand" in the developer solution for a long period of time, with minimal agitation.  What is supposed to happen is that the developer solution is supposed to exhaust relatively quickly in the parts of the film where there is the most silver to be converted.  These will be the highlight areas, which are black on the negative, yielding a white area on the final print.  In the shadows areas, where there is much less silver to be converted, the development is supposed to continue.  This compensating development is supposed to restrain highlight detail a little, but mostly support the shadows values and allow a little extra detail to fill in.

I made up the developer from scratch, according to Jay's formula.   750ml Distilled water, 100g sodium sulfite, 150g sodium carbonate, 20g glycin and distilled water to 1L.  

It is diluted between 1:20 and 1:40 for use in stand development.  I diluted 75ml of stock developer in 2000ml of water [approx. a 1:27 ratio].  I initially agitated the film for about 1 minute, and then briefly after 10 minutes, and again briefly after 20 minutes.  The film was in the developer for a total of 30 minutes.  This was followed by the usual stop bath, fix, hypo clear and washing steps.  

The resulting negatives are OK... but I'm not sure that the process supported the shadow values any better than a standard developer would have.

I shot eight sheets of Kodak 100 T-Max through the end of 2014 and into early 2015.  These were mostly building interiors, which had shadow areas that I felt needed to hold detail.  I shot duplicate shots on other films and for processing in other developers so that I can eventually compare to these GSD 10 negatives.  Here are scans of these eight negatives.  Later I will post some direct comparisons to other film and developer combinations and see if I can draw a conclusion.