Years ago, I bought a case of these 16oz amber bottles that hold about 450 mL, and it was a great investment for the darkroom. These wine vacuum stoppers work perfectly with the bottles. I keep all developers in these bottles, and stop and fix in gallon brown glass bottles. NO PLASTIC!
I use only Pyrocat-HDC now, and for at least the past five years.Originally Posted by ParkerSmithPhoto
In terms of results -HDC is for all practical purposes perfectly interchangeable with -HD. I spent several weeks running tests to make sure that the amount of ascorbic acid matched closely the results with metabisulfite and bromide that it replaces.
Sandy
For discussion and information about carbon transfer please visit the carbon group at groups.io
[url]https://groups.io/g/carbon
0909192111_HDR by Jason Philbrook, on Flickr
This is what I use to make HDC part A.
I microwave, stir, microwave the recommended amount of glycol to get it just over 150f, then
go outdoors, and use a paper cup and the digital scales to measure out the pyrocatechol and mix it in,
then use a cold meds cup and digital scale to measure the phenidone and mix it in.
take the ascorbic acid from the fridge, measure, mix the the same way.
Then dispense into small glass bottles (100ml shown) filled with no room for air and only use one bottle at a time till it's gone.
I think the glycol (not premixed with water like some antifreeze products) came from the plumbing section of a big box hardware store. It is tinted blue.
The pyrocatechol and phenidone are from photographers formulary a couple of years ago.
The ascorbic acid is from a food products vendor on ebay or amazon or something.
glass bottles, drug dealer scales are from ebay or amazon sources.
Sometime if I remember, I will get a picture of the oxidized part A. It turns from blue to green eventually as it gets used up and air gets in. Still works fine. Last splash is sometimes gray.
Sandy,
I was about to toss my early 2016 Pyrocat-HD in glycol but decided to run a test roll, thinking that I may have made a dilution error when I experienced "sudden death." My guess was correct. The test roll came out perfectly. I ran part of the same roll through some fresh Pyrocat-HDC in glycol as well. The HDC was a little denser and much browner.
I also ran a test with the old A and the new B which very closely matched the 2016 HD negative, which confirms that my B mix matches the Formulary standard.
One thing I did before making these tests was to create a dilution workflow checklist so that I marked off and confirmed volumes as I added each solution to the water. Sounds silly, but it's so easy to get working and kind of go on auto-pilot, and clearly I made that mistake last week (ruining four rolls), so this should help.
Good news is, this batch of Photo Formulary Pyrocat-HD in glycol has been in brown bottles with vacuum stoppers for coming up on four years, and seems to be working just fine. It was nice to discover that the "sudden death" was really just me making a mistake. I will post some pics of the negatives after they dry.
Thanks again for creating such a fantastic developer.
Last edited by ParkerSmithPhoto; 20-Sep-2019 at 15:16.
Very glad to hear that a second test returned good results. I have made many mistakes myself in mixing formulas, more than I would care to admit. But as they say, to err is human!
Sandy
For discussion and information about carbon transfer please visit the carbon group at groups.io
[url]https://groups.io/g/carbon
JP, what color are your negatives with the Pyrocat-HDC? My original Pyrocat-HD gave slightly warm negatives. The Pyrocat-HDC negatives are distinctly brown, even in the shadows, and have a slightly higher base density.
You can see some MF negatives in the background. There seems to be no visible change to base density from the staining. Overexposed like left negative are browner. Normal exposed have a modest sepia/brown proportional stain like the negative on the right. I don't redevelop; used developer goes down the drain before the water stop. If you have too much brown, you may also be overexposing as you gain some film speed with this compared to other popular developers.
That's funny, I didn't even notice those in the photo.Actually, the one on the left looks very similar to my FP4 in terms of color and density. I just need to get in the darkroom and start printing these to see how they perform.
Getting ready to order chemicals to mix HDC from scratch, and wondered about the shelf life of the raw chemicals. Sourcing the minimum quantities of everything but the glycol from Photo Formulary, and picking up the glycol locally gives me enough to make two liters each of A and B. Since one liter will last me over a year at the 1:1:100 dilution, the raw chemicals would need a shelf life of 2-3 years to make this economical vs. the cost of just buying HD pre-mixed in glycol from PF. Any of the components have shorter shelf lives?
It all lasts several years. Don't worry.
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