It's not as bad as I guess it sounds the way I put it Smitty. At the Nationals I usually exposed 12 to 18 rolls of black & white film and processed them in a stainless steel tank that I could do 5 at a time. The real problem was that in South Texas the water was too hot to process at the ideal 68 degrees. Our water came out of the tap in the summertime at around 75 degrees. I would chill the developer down to 70, the have the stop bath around 71-72, then the fixer around 73-74, then the clearing agent and rinse at ambient temperature. For those not familiar with film processing, the hotter the developing bath, the faster the image develops. Their is a chart to figure out how long a particular film in a particular developer needs for complete development. The problem with going it too fast can result in overdevelopment as well as uneven development and too much contrast. But if you develop the film at one temperature and then a significant change in temperature for the rest of the process, it can cause the colloid in the film to expand or contract, thus ruining the images. So that was the real problem. And then I printed each roll on a contact sheet which is 8 X 10 photo paper on which the film strips are laid, then tiny photos of the frame size are printed. So when I say 300-500 frames Smitty, I only meant I developed them. I only printed and developed the prints in Dektol or Microdol X that I wanted. That's where digital is really handy. You can shoot a thousand frames and save only the ones you want to keep, and do it before you even leave the race course to come home. You skip the development and just go straight to the computer to do any editing, and that's instantaneous also.

I liked reading about your darkroom experiences Smitty. I really like doing B&W. Color's too much trouble. ten times more so than B&W. You are right about the static discharge. I used to open a cartridge, then touch a corner of the leader to a metal developing tank to discharge any electrical charge that might be built up before loading the film onto a spool.