6 minutes seems a good starting time. I think that's where I ended up using trays and hand shuffling.
6 minutes seems a good starting time. I think that's where I ended up using trays and hand shuffling.
Some years ago I read what some of the proponents of an all alkaline work flow were saying and decided to switch to a water bath. One of the advantages I hoped to see was enhancement of adjacency effects as the developer exhausted in the water stop bath.
Frankly I never saw this, but what I did see from time to time was dichroic fog on my film, which I surmise was caused by the fact that the fixer exhausted faster when the film did not first pass through an acetic stop bath.
So I switched back to an acetic stop bath, but hedged my bets to protect the stain by using it normal strength.
Sandy King
For discussion and information about carbon transfer please visit the carbon group at groups.io
[url]https://groups.io/g/carbon
How much Sodium Sulfite please ? How does it work ?
There has been some discussion of the shelf-life of the stock solutions. Mine have lasted over 6 months, and would have probably lasted longer had I removed the air with either glass marbles or a squeezable container. But now I just make my own whenever I need it. Even then, a little goes a long way.
Ken,
It works because the stain with Pyrocat is very sensitive to sodium sulfite. Add too much it disappears and you have a tanning but non-staining developer.
How much? I used to have a record of this from tests but can not find the notes. However, I am pretty sure that the addition of 10 grams per liter of sulfite to a working solution would be enough to kill the stain. Addingl sulfite will also make the Pyrocat much more energetic, i.e. it will develop film to a given contrast much faster.
Sandy King
For discussion and information about carbon transfer please visit the carbon group at groups.io
[url]https://groups.io/g/carbon
Brilliant ! I will try this out. Sodium Sulfite is so useful, it's sort of the "Duck Tape" of photo chemistry
Meanwhile, here's a photo of a Tulip I made yesterday on 5x7 FP4+ and Pyrocat HD. (150mm APO-Nikkor)
Last edited by Ken Lee; 21-Jul-2018 at 04:23.
FWIW to anyone,
I've always used an acetic acid stop bath and acid fix (almost exclusively Kodak Rapid Fix) for the 15 plus years that I've been using pyro developers and I've never encountered staining problems (lack of stain). This includes Sandy King's pyro cat developer.
Don Bryant
Kevin,
Are you printing on silver gelatin papers? I tend to develop a bit longer than most, even for these papers. If you are developing in a tray with 5 sec agitation every minute, try around 8 minutes. Even if this time is wrong, you'll get your EI.
I should also add that this film does get decent stain, but not as much as HP5+. If you try other films, you will see that some films stain more readily than others. The colour Pyrocat-HD's stain works better for me than PMK and it's continuous agitation version, Rollo Pyro. The stain was more green than Pyrocat's yellow/brown stain.
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Thanks - I will give this a try.
Makes sense Sandy. The Dichroic fog occurs because of slight development causing the alkali fixer to deposit silver where the two interact.
The main use of alkali fixers is in Colour processing where all the silvers been bleached back to silver halide first anyway, so issues like this don't occur.
Ian
Last edited by IanG; 9-Feb-2010 at 12:14. Reason: typo
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