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Hello everyone. I'd appreciate some feedback with regards to pyrocat hd jobo cpp2 vs tray developing. Any pros and cons other than the obvious convenience of the jobo. Being that pyro is supposed to produce a nice sharp image, will I gain even more apparent sharpness with trays? Also, I'm going to do my testing with efke 100 and fp4 Plus. Any pros and cons there would be helpful as well as I start down those roads.
Thanks All
Bob Sandstrom
I used to tray develop 4X5's,5X7's, and 8X10's. However after moving to an apartment with a tiny darkroom, I found that I really didn't have enough room for the trays. Also because the temperature in the little darkroom tended to rise as I was working, it was difficult keeping the developer at the right temperature. Another reason was that I wanted to use a pyro developer and I wanted to keep my hands out of the soup. For those reasons I went with the JOBO CPP2 and have found it very usable. There is no way I could even begin to develop my 7X17's and 11X14's in a darkroom that small. I load the tanks in the darkroom and run the JOBO in the apartment's laundry room. When not in use I wheel it into my storage space on a cart which holds the JOBO and all the Chemicals I need for developing. My only complaint about the JOBO is that I can only develop one 11X14 or two 7X17's at one time. I use pyrocat with Efke PL100 and am delighted with the negatives which I print in platinum..........
Jerry
this is theory and not based on personal experience with pyrocat developers ...
I like using a jobo drum for its ease and consistency. but if there is a disadvantage to it's that it requires constant agitation to work properly. This will eliminate or greatly reduce some of the effects that you can get from intermittent agitation with certain developers--including mackie line edge effects that can result in unusually high accutance.
you may or may not like this kind of edge efffect. when it's subtle and matched to the right kind of image it can be very beautiful. in other cases it can reduce the smoothness of the tones, and give a kind of unnatural crunchiness ... much like oversharpening in photoshop.
I use Pyrocat and EFKE 100 in 11X14 format. Having developed in both the Jobo and in trays, I have to say, to be honest there was very little difference between the negatives. All of the discussion about edge effects and acccutance is attractive, but I have too look very closely to see any difference.
I would qualify my results with the admission that I keep a constant, steady, very slow agitation in the tray development and also use the JOBO at a very low rotational speed, so the results may be expected to be similar. I have not had consistent results in tray stand development, with no agitation, since the negatives can become uneven.
I use pyrocat hd with Efke PL100 in 45 57 and 810. I use the 2+2+100 @75F. I use it in a rotory Unicolor drum and a motor base. I thought the warnings about Efke being soft and hard to tray process were probably overstated. I have been processing in trays for over 25 years. I was wrong. I beat that film to pieces. That is when I went to a drum. I also have processed this film in BTZS tubes using stand and semi-development and in my opinion that is where you really start to see the sharpness with this combination. In my mind, I think I shoot too many negatives to use the tubes all the time. Takes about an hour for the development part of the process. My negatives are sharp as they need to be for enlarging now as it is. I think Sandy King did an excellent job formulating this developer.
leec