A Good Cool Tone Developer?

[martha33]

I now have produced 4 "proof of concept" prints in my tiny "Dark Room in the John!" I'm happy to report that I have no light leaks and have figured out how to navigate with Safe Lights!

I am using Ilford Harman Warmtone Developer with some film that I had not previously printed. These were satisfying prints as they were the first produced here in my tiny darkroom! However, in general, I would prefer a cool tone developer. I have been browsing the "Photographers Formulary Catalogue" and see that there are many choices for me to consider. So, I am wondering what other folks have used? I would really like some recommendations.

[Jim Noel]

Good old Kodak Dektol would be a good place for you to start with cool tone developers. There are many others,but they are rather similar.

[Jerry Bodine]

The degree of warmtone desired is subjective; you could also sample papers that are more neutral or cooler in tone (e.g., Classic or Cooltone types). While your looking at the Formulary chems, I'd suggest you consider their Liquidol developer as an option to Dektol, since it produces results much like Dektol but has both much longer shelf life and tray life. It was "developed" for the Formulary by Ron Mowrey (retired Kodak engineer) with that specific goal in mind. I find it very impressive stuff.

[Drew Wiley]

What creates a cold tone is relative not only to the specific paper you choose, but how you plan to tone that paper afterwards. Dektol generally produces a greenish brown-black rather than a neutral black cold tone. There are tweaks of MQ and PQ developers which yielded a cold blue-black tone on certain papers like the now extinct Polygrade V. Certain amidol formulas give the coldest tones on Bromide graded papers (now gone), and also on the current Ilford MG Cooltone paper. But ironically, if you want a cold tone on a warm paper like MGWT, use a warmish developer like 130 which finely divides the silver, FULLY develop it, then tone it with gold chloride toner. Lighter parts of the image will be a bit warm, but the shadows will go deep blue-black if toned long enough. Not exactly split toning (more subtle); but that's an option too.

[LabRat]

With a Dektol type developer, for cooler tones you would use less dilution, but you will see the image will be more contrasty, and harder to get shadow detail...

You can start at a stock dilution, and see what you get, then do a little math and you can add more water to dilute more and test that, and so on...

A hot tip is to measure liquid volumes with the metric scale, as that makes it simple... (An example is 1 liter = 1000ml, so 1:3 is a total of 4 parts, with 1 part developer is 250 ml + 750ml water = 1000ml or 1 liter... And these are not far off the US standard sizes... And it's easy to figure out complex dilution on a calculator...

Make sure your darkroom graduates have a ml scale, it makes life very easy for you!!!

Good luck with your printing!!!

Steve K

[Mark Sampson]

I'll second the use of Liquidol. It's worked well for me since I re-established my darkroom this year.

[koraks]

I'm quite pleased with Burki & Jennings cool tone developer, which can easily mixed yourself. It gives a nice punch to the midtones. You can increase the amount of benzotriazole for additional coolness.

[andreios]

I use moersch Se6 Blur developer when I want something really "cool", makes beautiful results especially on warmer papers...

[esearing]

PF 130 (Ansco 130 formula) with Bergger NB Variable contrast is a bit bluer/colder than Ilford MGFB classic.

[Drew Wiley]

That's nice to know, but Bergger NB seems to be a darn hard paper to get.