Last night I was developing some sheet film and had a very strange occurance. I have been developing all my sheet film (generally TMY, PL100 and FP4+) with Pyrocat-HD and Formulary TF4 Fix in Jobo Expert drums for the last couple years with excellent results. I had some old Tri-X in the freezer that I wanted to use up, so shot some of it on my last outing. I have had less than ideal success in the past with the Tri-X / Pyrocat-HD combination, so decided to develop the film in Formulary TD16 ("Improved D-76") diluted 1:1 in the Expert drums. After processing the film, I opened the drum to remove the film for additional washing and could tell immediatley that something was wrong - the emulsion of the film was super soft, the emulsion surface felt slimmy like a fish and the grain was HUGE - the negative looks "pebbled" to the naked eye. TF4 contains no hardener, which might partialliy explain things, but I have never experienced an emulsion this soft (the clothes pins used to hang the film for drying literally squished the emulsion out like an overfilled grill cheese sandwhich!), and I have no explaination for the massive grain (the degree of development itself looks fine - nice range of tones). I thought there may have been some type of interaction with some reminants of Pyrocat-HD that may have accumulated in the drum, so I gave everything a good cleaning. When I tested a few more sheets (in the same drum), I got the same results. This is the first time I have used the TD16 developer, but I have used actual D76 in the past with no problems. Any idea what could be causing the problems here?
I have still have a couple of batches of Tri-X to process - has anyone had good success with the Pyrocat / Tri-X combination in Expert Drums? If so, at what development specs?
Bookmarks