Large format film developed in trays

My first attempt at developing 4x5 film sheets was done using the 'taco method'. This method has 2 disadvantages:
- I damaged the negatives since my developing tank is not high enough (it only holds 2 reels)
- one can only develop 4 negatives at the time.

This weekend I tried to develop a few Ektar 100 sheets in development trays. The big challenge is to keep the chemicals at a constant temperature. I conducted a test for an 'au bain marie' setup. I filled a large 40x50 tray with 5 liters of water of 40 degrees Celsius. In that tray I placed a smalled 20x30 tray filled with 500ml of water, also at 40 degrees Celsius. My digital thermometer indicated that the water in the small tray cooled down to 39 degrees within 1 minute. 5 minutes later is was still 38 degrees. I figured this would be good enough for temperature control. I preferred to err on the 'too warm' side, since the shuffling of the negatives brings them in contact with the cold air, reducing the temperature more than in my test.

For the actual development I placed the bottles with developer, bleach, fix and stab in a bucket of water at 40 degrees. I filled 3 trays with water, added the smaller trays and poured the developer, bleach and fix in the smaller trays. I started a 4 minute 15 seconds timer on my mobile phone, started to count the seconds and switched off the lights. I took the negatives out of the box and when I had counted to 30 I dropped the negatives in the developer and started shuffling them around.

This was a big mistake: when you drop the negatives in the fluid, they will stick to each other. Unsticking them all took me more than a minute, causing uneven development on 2 negatives. I should have pre-soaked the negatives in the water in the larger tray, unstick them and shuffled them around once to make sure they can move freely.
When the timer on my mobile phone went off, I moved the negatives to the bleach, went into the corner of the room farthest from the negatives to switch on my mobile phone and reset the timer to 6 minutes. Then I went back to the trays to shuffle the negatives continuously and move them to the water after the timer went off. A last reset of the timer, negatives in the fixer for 6 minutes and then I switched the lights on. Whilst the negatives where being rinsed in the water I cleaned the small trays so I could reuse one of the trays for the stabiliser.

I am happy with this method. Temperature control was easy once tested, I can do a lot of negatives in 1 batch and the negatives are 100% clean without any damage.

Working with the Cambo Explorer is fun, but I still find it difficult to decide where to put the plane of focus. Sometimes I take the wrong decision and it doesn't look natural. Maybe it is best to learn by using fewer adjustments instead of trying all possible camera movements at once.

(pictures are taken at the c-mine archeological site in Genk, Belgium. All pictures in this Google+ album.)