Ilford Ilfosol 3

[paulbarden]

I had a similar experience as others described: Ilfosol goes bad VERY quickly once the bottle is opened. If you can use the bottle in a few weeks, you'll be fine, but don't expect it to be usable 3 months from opening.
Personally, of all the "concentrate" developers available, I like Pyrocat HD. I dislike Rodinal a lot: poor shadow retention and harsh contrast. For some, that's a plus, but not for me.

[richydicky]

In defence of Ilfosol 3, my understanding is that the older Ilfosol S formulation went off quickly and possibly people's past experience of that has tainted the newer Ilfosol 3. I came across it by accident using it for another process. I bought some last November and decanted into two 250ml bottles. I have been using the second of those bottles over the last 3 months with no issues and there is still some left which looks fine. I do add gas in between uses as I do with all developers as they will oxidise over time. I like the results very much especially with HP5+.

[paulbarden]

In defence of Ilfosol 3, my understanding is that the older Ilfosol S formulation went off quickly and possibly people's past experience of that has tainted the newer Ilfosol 3. I came across it by accident using it for another process. I bought some last November and decanted into two 250ml bottles. I have been using the second of those bottles over the last 3 months with no issues and there is still some left which looks fine. I do add gas in between uses as I do with all developers as they will oxidise over time. I like the results very much especially with HP5+.

Nope. My experience is with Ilfosol 3. If you are venting oxygen from the opened bottle, that is likely why you're not experiencing failure of the developer. Most of us don't make that much effort to protect developers from oxidation, nor should we be expected to have to.

[esearing]

Find some other darkroom practitioners in your area and try a few different developers. Or mix your own from raw chemicals. Once you go down the DIY path your tool box widens, but you end up doing a lot of testing to see subtle differences. I personally like cachetol based developers for their one shot use with minimal stock chemistry. The most popular pyrocat-HD is used 1A:1B:100 and will last about 6 months without any effort to remove air from the stock part A, maybe a year for the glycol version. Pyrocat-Metol lasts about a year, but I now rarely make more than 200ml stock at a time and use it up. Jay Defehr's Obsidian Aqua is just 3 chemicals for A and B works just like Pyrocat-HD and is sharper than Pyrocat-M.

And if you are really into experimentation - paper developer Ansco 130 diluted 1:10 works very well but you have to dial in your time to manage the contrast. I would imagine other paper developers would behave similarly. At higher dilution they exhaust quickly so beware of underdevelopment.
There are also the caffenol and red wine developers if trying to be more environmentally friendly or want to use standard household products. All you need are washing soda and vitamin C.

[wooserco]

Hello to all,

My Kodak HC-110 bottle is almost empty and I'm looking for a universal developer non-Kodak branded that could works well with the films I use the most: Fomapan 200, Ilford FP4, Ilford HP5.
Since I do few developing sessions in a month, I need something durable and convenient.
I know that Ilfotec HC is the direct countepart of Kodak HC110 but I would give Ilfosol 3 a try.

I like D76 (ID11) too but it is anything but convenient; could Ilfosol be comparable to D76 in terms or grain and contrast rendition? Does anyone have experience with this dev?

Thank you!

While I started out with Ilfosol 3 and really, really liked the results: It does go off quickly, less than 6 months in opened bottle. Went to using XTOL. Wife and I moved, haven't shot since November, 2019, so no developing since.

Since the SINO Promise issue with XTOL: after my last bag of the real KODAK XTOL, I'm probably going to switch to Rodinal or the Freestyle Legacy Pro XTOL equivalent.