Ilford Galerie Fiber dev'd w/ Ansco 130, Neutol WA, or Dektol, thoughts?

[Bernard_L]

What effect does temperature have other than slower/faster dev time? I very rarely check temps on my paper developer. Right now in the basement it's probably mid 60s or lower due to the outside temps.

Paper developers are probably less critical in that respect, but... to go to the trouble and expense of Galerie and being so casual about development is not consistent.

and then separated out 1/3 of it into a different gallon bottle and filled it up for a 1:2 dilution

That practice is not recommended by the Kodak instructions.

Works for me

but actually last night I went to print some contact prints and it had died out of no where. That's usually how it goes - sudden death, no warning.

Sitting around as 1+2 working strength for weeks/months does not help.

I've kept stock strength for 1+ year in a wine pouch and (using a Stouffer step wedge) could not see any difference with Dektol that I had freshly mixed "just to be on the safe side".

[Corran]

I think you misunderstand - I decant 1/3 of the stock solution to use at working solution of 1:2, until at capacity and then move on to the next 1/3 of stock solution. Usually the last 1/3 gallon of stock solution mixed to 1:2 works fine for a bit but dies before reaching capacity. I assume it oxidizes while in stock solution and then has a short working life. 130 has a much longer working solution life which is nice. My basement darkroom for most of the year hovers around 70F so generally chemicals stay within a few degrees of normal working temperatures. Starting to get into the cooler period though.

Thanks for the suggestions Ritchie.

[Drew Wiley]

If temp gets significantly out of bounds, grain size and hence image color are affected, as well as contrast. With 130, the age of the stock is also a factor. Glycin distinctly ages and affects image color. This fact is more apparent with other papers than Galerie, but all these little details add up.

[interneg]

I understand the ways to lower contrast. How about increasing contrast though?

I notice that with Ilford MGIV in Dektol I can increase contrast easily by prolonging development. I tried that with Galerie with a negative that was a bit low contrast and it didn't seem to push the contrast even with very long development times. I could be wrong.

This has been a helpful and interesting discussion.

Interestingly, the aspect of Galerie I find most useful is the way that extended development lets me pull in awkward highlights. I also find it generally punchier than the equivalent grade of MGWT (obviously a different curve shape - & a good case for why seemingly equivalent ISO contrast numbers don't tell the whole story) - though the mids are not dissimilar - colourwise it sits somewhere between MG Classic & MGWT with Ilford developers I feel. Getting contrast up with Galerie is rarely a problem I find - unless your negs are really flat - indeed I often find myself trying to get the G2 contrast down... If all else fails, try the C grade of the fixed-grade Fomabrom.

Either way, Galerie's a great paper & with the right neg it can be absolutely stunning.

[Corran]

Might just be me or my methodology. When I say increase contrast, I mean that the darker tones continue to intensify. Just an application of the "develop for the highlights" mantra, except the "highlights" are the shadows in a positive image. The image in question was a foggy scene that I shot recently that I wanted to push up the contrast with - I ended up using a #5 filter on Warmtone. Clearly my negative was not optimal here!

I am confused how the development time affects highlights. Perhaps you can educate me here?

[interneg]

Might just be me or my methodology. When I say increase contrast, I mean that the darker tones continue to intensify. Just an application of the "develop for the highlights" mantra, except the "highlights" are the shadows in a positive image. The image in question was a foggy scene that I shot recently that I wanted to push up the contrast with - I ended up using a #5 filter on Warmtone. Clearly my negative was not optimal here!

I am confused how the development time affects highlights. Perhaps you can educate me here?

Essentially I've noticed that if you extend dev time out beyond 3m30s to 5-6 mins (in Multigrade or PQ Universal for example), highlights that were on the edge of burn-out can be brought back in somewhat more than you'd expect relative to burn-in exposure. It's quite obvious in the tray in my experience - & beware that if you also used a pre-flash aimed at a 2-3 minute dev time, extending the dev time will make the flash have visible density...

Regarding your negative, give the C (grade 4+) Fomabrom a shot - available from Freestyle, but be warned, it needs longer fixing times than Ilford etc. I've used a fair bit of Fomabrom/ Fomaspeed and it's pretty punchy stuff with excellent separation of tones.

[Roger Cole]

If you want a long lasting paper developer, try Ethol LPD. I once went back into the darkroom after a long hiatus, found a bottle of working strength (LPD lasts so long it's just a waste to discard it - just pour working strength back in a bottle and squeeze the air out - that I thought was six months old, so I decided to give it a try. It worked perfectly. Turns out I looked at the year wrong (I had been away from photography a LONG time) and it was eighteen months old. I was so startled I mixed some fresh and did a comparison. I really couldn't tell any difference.

I've not used it with Galerie but it's great with MGIV.

I don't recommend keeping working strength that long and I didn't do it on purpose, but it worked perfectly.

[Doremus Scudder]

Trying to squeeze a bit more contrast from graded papers by lengthening development used to be a common tool. Many older papers reacted well in this regard to longer development times. However, most modern papers don't really change much in contrast with extended development anymore. Some show a bit of contrast change (I'm thinking of Slavich 160 here), but it's not as much as I used to get from the old Ilfobrom, Seagul and even Kodak Elite papers that are now long gone.

What does happen is that longer development increases the effective paper speed, shifting the entire contrast curve faster, with not very much change in shape after "complete development" has been reached. I find this a good tool for making what would otherwise be difficult exposure tweaks, especially after having worked out tricky dodging and burning at a particular exposure. Sometimes even an additional 15 seconds can make a visible difference in a print. I suspect this is probably what is helping interneg's highlights with extended development.

Try it yourself. Make four identical prints and pull them from the developer at 2.5, 3, 4 and 6 minutes, then see if you can match the 6 minute print by simply increasing exposure and using a 2.5 minute developing time. I'll bet you'll find that you can and that the contrast of the two will be very, very close, if not exactly the same.

Still, extending development is a useful tool and, as alluded to above, does tweak curve shape a bit for some papers. The speed increase works for VC papers too.

When working with graded papers, which I like to do mostly, I prefer to work with fairly contrasty negs, and reduce contrast when printing by using split development or a softer-working print developer rather than vice-versa. All the tricks to eek out a bit more contrast than a print already developed Dektol or Bromophen yield very little more; on the other hand, a Selectol-Soft print can have a contrast difference of a grade or more compared to a Dektol print, all other things being equal. When I have a neg that needs grade 4, I switch to MC-110 or some other VC paper.

Best,

Doremus

[Drew Wiley]

No way you can build anywhere near the contrast overdeveloping Galerie compared todialing in deep contrast with MGWT. You can appreciably intensify either using selenium or gold chloride. The last two weeks I've been printing both. Wish Galerie gr4 still existed. But if you want sheer punch, I stumbled onto an old Brilliant bromide print I never toned, and treated it with gold. Wow!

[Tin Can]

If you want a long lasting paper developer, try Ethol LPD. I once went back into the darkroom after a long hiatus, found a bottle of working strength (LPD lasts so long it's just a waste to discard it - just pour working strength back in a bottle and squeeze the air out - that I thought was six months old, so I decided to give it a try. It worked perfectly. Turns out I looked at the year wrong (I had been away from photography a LONG time) and it was eighteen months old. I was so startled I mixed some fresh and did a comparison. I really couldn't tell any difference.

I've not used it with Galerie but it's great with MGIV.

I don't recommend keeping working strength that long and I didn't do it on purpose, but it worked perfectly.

Good to know Roger. I have 4 old cans of the stuff, never tried it. I found them this week.

As soon as I can find everything else, as I just moved and I failed to mark 100 boxes properly. LOL, I was in a hurry.

Today I found the big paper safes and paper. While looking for strobes.

For some reason, I packed my strobes without their receivers. Needle in a haystack...