The exposure is made, the dark slide is replaced, and the film holder is removed from the camera.
This makes it simple to determine which side is the emulsion, when the film is hidden from sight (in the darkroom, or inside a changing bag).
Some more professionally oriented photographic labs will process color negative and positive sheet film, but the "corner drug store" photolab generally can not.
The equipment, one darkroom tray per processing solution, is easily available and inexpensive compared to most of the other methods.
Agitation is performed by "shuffling" the films; the sheet on the bottom of the stack is brought to the top and pushed down into the solution.
With careful counting and practiced hands, a photographer can process as many as 10 sheets of film at one time.
Many photographers will bang or tap the hangers on the tank's top after the second tilt, to dislodge any air bubbles that have stuck to the film.
Also, despite such large chemical volumes, some tanks do not allow very many films to be processed at a single time; generally six to ten or so.
The stainless steel Nikor tank accepts up to 12 sheets of film, 4x5" size maximum, and requires about 1 liter of chemistry.
Some people report uneven development and emulsion scratching with this device (a result of steel "spider" presence, separating the sheets in tank's "cage" ), but many users get excellent results with it - the right loading and infrequent agitation are perhaps the keys to success.
The current make plastic Combi-Plan tank accepts up to 6 sheets of film, and works nicely, though the overall quality of manufacture is not too high, and the tank has a number of small plastic details, easy to break or lose.
The solutions are poured or pumped into the tubes, which are turned on their sides and spun, sometimes by hand, and sometimes by a motorized base or machine.
The simplest form of rotary processing is to use one tube per film; no extra reel or complex film-holding device is needed.
Benefits of rotary systems are even development, and very low solution requirements in some cases.
Sheet film is, simply enough, big, and as such has a proportionately great ability to hold information.
It is far easier to do retouching directly on the surface of a sheet of film since the images are large, than on smaller formats.
Since each exposure is its own sheet, it's possible to alter development, based on the contrast of the photographed scene, to best fit the dynamic range of the subject.
Ilford and Foma manufacture black-and-white negative sheet films (Efke, in Croatia, ceased production in June, 2012).
In addition to eliminating dust problems, these daylight-loading systems reduced the amount of gear a photographer needed to carry to only a single film holder.