Why so many developers? Isn't D76 enough?

[csant]

Rodinal works amazing with table salt, esp as a colour neg first developer before colour processing.

Any more details on this, please?

[Athiril]

Rodinal 1+25, +5g of table salt (non-iodised!) per 300ml (16.7g per litre) of 1+25 working solution, 24c, 8-9min, plenty of agitation.

(NB: Do NOT use this as a first developer for colour reversal processing, Rodinal is a weak colour developer and you will get black or solarised slides 1+25 is too strong for reversal)

Then fix, followed by colour bleach, then re-expose to light, then colour develop, I use Kodak E6 Colour Developer, you can also use C41 developer, wash steps in between everything of course.

(NB: You can also use C41 developer as a colour developer in the reversal process, the colours seem good on E6 films, but a bit wacky or very blue on C41 as a slide, conversely E6 CD gives very nice colours on C41 film as either reversal or neg).


Best results from this are generally at Box ISO speed + 1/3 faster.

It gives very good box speed results, but if you shoot it slower than box speed, it gives very shitty results. And pretty good box speed +2 stops faster results, reasonable +3 results.

Ie: Some expired germam supermarket 200 ISO film was great 200, pretty good at 400 and 800, reasonable at 1600, and kinda dodgy at both 3200 and 100.

[Brian Ellis]

I'm like you, I used D76 almost exclusively for about 15 years. I tried PMK, did extensive testing comparing identical photographs developed in D76 and PMK and found no difference in the prints. I used Rodinal a few times, it was o.k. I think that's about the extent of my experimentation, good old D76 always seemed to work fine with HP5+ and TMax 100 film.

However, as I mentioned in another thread recently, the late Phil Davis did a true scientific demonstration at one of his workshops I attended showing the effect of different film developers on the final print. I don't remember the details of how he did it but basically he eliminated all the variables except the film developer and then made prints (possibly someone else saw this demo in another Phil Davis workshop and can supply the details of his methodology that I've forgotten). The differences among the prints was very surprising, much greater than anyone at the workshop expected. In fact as he said, the effect of using different film developers on the final print was greater than the effect of using different films.

So when I say I used D76 exclusively for a long time I'm not knocking those who use different developers for different films or subjects, I just didn't think it was necessary for what I do. Or maybe it was necessary but I didn't think the effect was sufficiently important to justify the difficulty of doing the serious testing along the lines of what Phil Davis did.

[ki6mf]

Second what GeM singer said at the end of his post "BTW, if D-76 is giving you pleasing results"

At New England School of Photography we tested many film developer combination's and came to the conclusion once you learn how to manipulate contrast by altering developing development times and using various combination's of dilution you will come out with a very similar image regardless of materials used.

I know other developers do great things. I think its more important to learn the craft than move to different combination's of film and chemistry. By all means change when it suits your vision.


As Gem said if your are pleased with the results......

[Drew Wiley]

Selective image stain allows you to control the way highlights versus shadows print in a manner in which no simple change in dilution or time variable will. There are some
people who work all their life with a single film/developer combination, or at least as long as it stays on the market, and get wonderful results. But there is no myth to the
hype of pyro. The results are definite, over and over again. If not, you're either doing
something wrong or printing a class of negatives which don't need this kind of help.
More likely, you just don't realize how much tricky fussing around during the printing
phase can in fact be controlled at the developing step. I am reminded of this every
time I reach for an old negative that was processed in a conventional developer -
it's just more work, or sometimes I even have to resort to an unsharp silver mask to
get all the detail where I want it. And don't go telling me PS is the answer. That's ten
times more work for conspicuously lower final print quality, unless you just want a
digital neg for an alternative process. I do keep D76 on hand, as well as HC-110, and
about half a dozen other developers. But for my general work, I haven't found any
worthy substitute for the popular pyro options. And there are a lot of highly experienced folks out there who share this opinion. Not a silver bullet, but damn close!

[Andre Noble]

Negatives developed in a pyro developer such as Wimberley's WD2D+ are much easier to print, and show beautiful, refined gradation in the highlights whereas the same negative developed in D76 is a bear to print, and has clipped highlights in the print.

However, traditional developers such as Rodinal work very well with negatives shot on oversast day or very low contrast such as indoor incandescent lighting (I would imagine).

So every photographer should make use of these two basic types of B&W developers:

D76/Xtol/Rodinal (overcast day, indoor high speed film) and PMK/Pyrocat/WD2D+ (outdoor in full sunlight, studio lighting)

[jnantz]

maybe there are so many developers because
as they say " variety is the spice of life" ?

[N Dhananjay]

Truth be told, I suspect many developers evolved out of the necessity to serve smaller formats. The tradeoffs between speed, grain, acutance, contrast, H-D curve shape etc can be fairly severe on small formats being enlarged considerably and so you have a huge range of developers walking that radeoff line at different points. Larger formats forgive quite a few sins and developer choice is perhaps less crucial. In other words, I think it is substantially true in large formats that you get 90% of the distance in the learning phase by sticking to one developer and learning how to get process under control and how to tweak various controls. However, even in larger formats, developer choice can make a visible difference, especially with curve shape and acutance effects. Cheers, DJ

[welly]

Does anyone have any experience with/thoughts about Foma Fomadon LQN? Just found out my local photography shop supplies this as well as LC29.

[sanking]

Anyone who seriously believes that there is no difference in developers (and how they are used) should have a look at the images and technical information posted by Alex Wei in another thread on this forum. http://www.largeformatphotography.in...=52913&page=14

Andrew used a relatively simple developer and method that resulted in capture of an extremely long subject brightness range. It is not that this result could not be repeated with another developer, but that doing so would normally require extensive pre-testing of the film, and careful notation of the subject brightness range of the film to determine development. Yet in this case Andrew used a remarkably simple method that only required accurate initial exposure and a simple two-bath method of development. I have seen 8-10 page articles describing procedures for dealing with very high contrast scenes that are very complicated to test and execute and don't work nearly so well as this simple two-bath method with Pyrocat. And another advantage with Pyrocat is that you get very high acutance with this method, as high if not higher than I have seen with minimal agitation methods of development.

Sandy King