Without starting a war, I'm looking for experiences, comparisons, and or suggestions between PMK and Pyrocat HD for enlarging 4x5 negs on VC paper. I'm shooting mostly FP4 and some Tri-X and TMY. I develop my 4x5 negatives in a JOBO 3010, and have used rollo pyro so far, and the stain is VERY prominent. Not sure if I like bullet proof negs. Looking for suggestions.
What difference would I see between PMK's yellowish-green stain, and Pryocat's brown stain?
Thanks!
The color of the stain will vary somewhat depending on the film and the chemical content of the water. If you are using a JOBO the Rollo is a good choice so I would not try something new again..
Have you tried printing the negs you've already processed?
I would limit yourself to one film for awhile until you get more experience. Tri-X or Fp4+ would be my choices.
good luck
steve simmons
The stain for pyrocat is brownish, the one for PMK is green this is regardless of water source or film like it was erroneously posted by simmons and due to the developing agent. If you plan to enlarge my preference would be a pyrogallol developer like PMK, the best would rollo pyro since it was designed to be used on rotary machines like the Jobo.
I think the green stain is more beneficial to enlarging and VC papers than the brown stain given by Pyrocat HD.
I think the best staining developer for enlarging and for rotary processing is 510-Pyro, but Rollo Pyro should be good too. The color of pyro stain v catechol stain has no impact on printing with VC papers.
Jay
Brian,Originally Posted by brian steinberger
Do you mean that you are getting a lot of B+F or general stain? If it is a lot of B+F stain, something may be wrong with your materials since normally you should get fairly low B+F with Rollo Pyro in rotary processing. Also, water quality issues can sometimes result in higher general stain. Or, your film may be old and have developed some B+F, which becomes much higher with staining developers. However, Tri-X and TMY are subject to develop a fair degree of stain with rotary processing, even when the film is fresh. Then again, you may have just overexposed the negative by a stop or two.
For what it is worth I would suggest you consider Pyrocat-MC for rotary processing. It has very high acutance, good proportional stain and very low B+F, even with long development times. I have switched to it for rotary processing of all my films, though I continue to recommend Pyrocat-HD for tray processing and for the various forms of minimal agitation.
Sandy King
Last edited by sanking; 3-Jan-2007 at 20:59.
Let's keep the discussion to the technical issues and personal experience, without personal differences entering into the discussion.
If you want to know how a staining developer works there was an article in the Sept/Oct 06 issue of View Camera with Sandy King, Jay deFehr, and John Wimberly discussing just this topic. We have placed the artice in the Free Articles section of the View Camera web site. The other source I would suggest is The Book of Pyro by Gordon Hutchings which is available from Photographer's Formulary and Bostick and Sullivan.These are four of the best people around to get info about these developers.
According to Jay, Sandy and John the color of the stain is somewhat variable and depends on the staining chemical used, and the particular film, - see page 43 of the Sept/Oct 06 issue lower right hand column. In Gordon Hutchings experience, now going on 26+ years the other variables are the chemical content of the water and the agitation pattern which affects the aerial oxidation. This rings true with my experience as well which is over the same span of time.
The stain, regardless of the color has a lot of advantages, especially for printing with vc paper.
steve simmons
Sandy,
Yes, I got alot of base+fog stain, but I also overcooked them, as you might recall from a previous post a few days earlier. Will overdevelopment add alot of b+f stain?
I havent had time to run more tests. Not til this weekend. It's dark this time of year til I get off work.
I was wondering about the benefits of Pyrocat HD, because now I'm using PMK for tank development of medium format and Rollo Pyro for 4x5 in my JOBO. I'd be nice to use one developer for all films.
Steve,
No, I haven't tried printing my negs from my first test since they were way over developed, even though amazingly the proof sheet wasn't that bad. The highlights were brought back down quit a bit by the stain. It's amazing cause the dense areas in the negs are VERY dense!
It's hard to find times for rotary processing. I'll start, as recommended by Sandy to reduce the time recommended by Gordon in the book of Pyro by 40-50%. That means from 12min w/Tri-x in Rollo Pyro (70 degrees) to 8 minutes in the JOBO 3010.
Thanks for the help!
My strong suggestion to you is to pick one developer- here I would suggest Rollo since you have some experience with it, and one film, FP4+ if you want a film speed of approx 100 or Tri-X if you need something faster. Jumping from one staining developer to another is only going to keep you confused and wondering if the next one will be better. They are all good.
If your proof sheet looked pretty good then I would stop shooting and work with that group of negs for awhile and see how they actually print. Until you've had some working experience with these negs you don;t really have a basis for making any changes or evaluating what changes you are making.
steve simmons
A question, not wanting to start any arguments, about color of stain relating to scanning the film for digital darkroom. Any pro/cons on the different stain colors?
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