Included with some darkroom equipment I bought were 20 glass vials of “Tetenal Neofin blau” and 5 glass vials “Neofin rot”. I assume it would still be good stored in the glass vials and inside the card board box. It appears to be discontinued. Is it the “magic” bullet?
What is the characteristics of this developer? How does it work with FP-4+?
Thanks
Bill Kumpf
Neofin blau is still in the Tetenal catalogue. YMMV whether your local distributor carries it. Neofin rot and Neofin doku are history - the films they were formulated for aren't being made any more, and in any case they had little in common with Neofin blau (a.k.a. "Beutler") apart from being one shot and sharing the branding.
Neofin blau was my preferred developer with very old-school (formerly "fast") films like Pan F or Agfapan 25, which very much needed taming their contrast - these days, Efke KB15/KB17 might be the only remaining sheet films with matching characteristics.
As Sevo said, Neofin blue is still made, but has not been sold in the US for a while. I seem to remember there was some problem with the need for relabeling products due to some changes in the laws that lead Tetenal to stop exporting it (too expensive for a few items). The glass bottles are good, much better for storage than the plastic ones that Tetenal had previously, but Neofin is not Rodinal in terms of longevity, so you have to test it. I recently found some 14 year old bottles of Neofin blue that I had, and the color when diluted with water was more brownish than normal. I proceeded to do a 1:1 mix with a new bottle (I had several films to develop) and everything looked fine.
In addition to the Efke films, the Adox Pan 25 (different from the Adox CHS25 Art which is Efke) and the similar Rolleipan 25 work great in Neofin blau.
I'm not sure I'd use anything with "rot" in it's name
The only trouble with doin' nothing is you can't tell when you get caught up
In the USA they were originally known as Neodyn blue and Neodyn red. Blau or Blue was always the lower contrast developer while Rot or Red was the higher contrast developer. These were originally made for the Adox films from the Dr. C. Schleussner Co, later bought out by E. I. du Pont to make graphic arts films. (for me these were in the mid to late 1950's). Later a Croatian company made these films under an agreement with du Pont.
Lynn
Consider it a Gift...Originally Posted by Paul Metcalf
I'm not sure I'd use anything with "rot" in it's name
I think I will dispose of it at the next chemical pick up.
Thanks for the information.
Bill Kumpf
Funny thing is I have access to a lot of Ultrafin Plus, designed for Fine grain t emulsions.
"Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will
accomplish them."
Warren G. Bennis
www.gbphotoworks.com
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