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Shen45
1-Mar-2007, 15:37
Recently I began playing around with some of the current crop of enlarging papers [for enlargements] but one of the problems I encountered was a general lack of anything special.

Experiment as we often do can produce some interesting results.

Initially I was after a warm tone print so mixed Agfa 120 [not Ansco] which has no Metol and uses a fairly high Hydroquinone content. To say the results were less than inspiring was an understatement.

I decided to add some Metol and some Pot Bromide to the formula and immediately the developer was very much more active and produced a very rich print. The big surprise was the production of a very deep black and clean white when selenium toned at 1:20 for about 4 minutes. Purely a guess but perhaps the high Hydroquinone content in the original formula plays some role later in the toning stage.

The paper i used was Arista Edu Ultra [Foma VC I believe.] A very cheap paper. How it reacts with other papers I'm not certain at this stage.

This paper has a to me has always had a "grey" feel in most developers but for the first time it has produced a clean rich bright print. All printing is done under a recommended red safelight.

I only mixed 250mls of the Agfa formula to which I added 1 gm Metol and 2 gms of Pot Bromide.

I used Pot Carbonate as called for in the Agfa formula but I have seen people substitute Sod Carb for the Pot Carb. You may need a fraction more Pot Bromide in that case in the modification I have tried -- or not :)

I diluted 1:3 to give a litre of working developer. Development time for me was around 2 minutes.