Ilford Cooltone FB

[Michael R]

where does one buy PMT (PhenylMercaptoTetrazole) ? I once got a blue tone with contaminated LPD + Selenium (or possibly Thiourea) in a second bath tray, but I never tried to replicate it. I have been wanting to try Moersch Blue Toner just to see what it does, especially with Foma papers which have a weird color to start with.

Currently the easiest way to obtain PMT is to buy Bellini from Freestyle:

https://www.freestylephoto.com/25100...g-Paper-5-Gram

Or buy a bottle of Moersch Finisher Blue developer additive which contains it.

Alternatively it might be worth contacting Artcraft. While it is not in their catalog they seem to be open to acquiring things. For example they recently started selling DTPA following a request, and at a reasonable price.

Formulary used to sell it in handy methanol solutions but they haven’t stocked it for several years now.

[Drew Wiley]

LOTS of people use glycin, Interneg. That is no coincidence. Fresh glycin is easy to get from Formulary. But any reserve of it should be kept frozen or it will shift. But going back a few decades when a lot of these reformulation things were going on, I just drove down the street to the local chemical supply house, and they always had high-quality glycin and amidol on hand. Yes, they catered to darkroom workers; but the bulk of their business was in relation to pharmaceutical manufacturers and medical research applications. So they even sold different quality grades of these chemicals. The photographic amidol and glycin they sold was actually the top grade! Most of it back then was actually manufactured by Spectrum. In other words, the whole 130 glycin thing isn't just a passing fad; it has a solid pedigree.

[interneg]

one of the ingredients was a proprietary compound made in house by Harman R&D.

That was my recollection too - I would not be surprised if something similar made its way into the emulsion for the FBCT - in fact it would make a lot of sense as it would make the emulsion colour much less developer sensitive. There's a fair few Ilford patents both for modified Phenidones & PMT going back a long way (and Ilford had a sufficiently large interest in mercaptans to have a research group working on them, who according to oral history accounts, were so memorably bad smelling that people who shared buses with them complained about it). The RC CT is somewhat different - it is quite possible that the costs of harmonising the ranges was greater than the sales of RC CT would support. There's also some really interesting hints in the patent literature about the desirable inhibition effects of PMT in film developers (and taken into a product in the form of Ilfosol 3).

LOTS of people use glycin, Interneg. That is no coincidence. Fresh glycin is easy to get from Formulary. But any reserve of it should be kept frozen or it will shift. But going back a few decades when a lot of these reformulation things were going on, I just drove down the street to the local chemical supply house, and they always had high-quality glycin and amidol on hand. Yes, they catered to darkroom workers; but the bulk of their business was in relation to pharmaceutical manufacturers and medical research applications. So they even sold different quality grades of these chemicals. The photographic amidol and glycin they sold was actually the top grade! Most of it back then was actually manufactured by Spectrum. In other words, the whole 130 glycin thing isn't just a passing fad; it has a solid pedigree.

Glycin and Amidol's continued existence has essentially nil to do with photography and everything to do with other uses in analytical and organic chemistry - at a scale sufficient for some fine chemicals supplier(s) to produce them & flog them off through the usual suspects as well as some retailers like the Photographers Formulary. If they had meaningful effects other that that could be achieved by fine tuning PQ, MQ, alkalinity, restrainers/ inhibitors etc (and large scale regression analysis seems to have been done on this by the 70s/80s across the industry) they would be turning up in the patent literature. What is clear is that Ilford etc will happily produce a specialist component (e.g. a modified phenidone) if it has a meaningful effect that cannot be achieved by other means. That they abandoned glycin (a substituted metol) is rather suggestive of a better understanding having been found of its mechanism of action- and that it could be achieved by less complex means. Ansco 130 owes much of its reputation to an influencer from California, not to double blind print sampling.

[Drew Wiley]

What a cynic! I found amidol quite useful in a manner not duly served by typical MQ and PQ developers back when Bromide graded papers were still around. Not much anymore during the current reign of VC papers. Formulary bought up a bunch of cheap Chinese amidol which is hell to work with due to its stubborn orange contamination stain (nickel??). I got more of the good Euro amidol from Artcraft in NYC instead.

Formulary makes their own glycin for sake of both freshness and constant demand. You aren't the only chemist of the planet. Nobody is flogging a surplus of it on them. But that idea does deserve to be flogged. You want it fresh to begin with.

Double blind? Yep. Ya gotta be blind in both eyes not to detect certain real differences. I'm very particular about final image tone. I don't know where you come up with the folklore of 130 being a California thing. Now it's made in Montana where they throw rocks at any of us with Calif. license plates. AA only elliptically referred to it as producing an interesting staining effect which some people find rewarding. And he was NOT a stickler for image tone - more a Dektol addict - but could at least he could detect something special when present. For one thing, glycin can be partially aged just like a fine wine for sake of the amount of the stain effect, at least up till a certain point.

Then you've got the whole matter of economics. There are bottled liquid formulas to mimic amidol like BW-65, and cold-toned PQ tweaks too, designed to mimic this or that. And they might make sense from a convenience point of view for sake of those unwilling to mix their own ingredients. But mix it yerself is way more affordable. Same reason I'm reluctant to spend top dollar on premixed Moersch products, although I'm glad they are available for sake of many other folks.

And I don't really care if it's chemistry or alchemy that gets the job done. I'm interested in the final visual result. (Yeah, I had 3 yrs of organic chem in college - but all that is worth forgetting in this case; and I'm an expert in forgetting). And if glycin is "substitute metol," how come the 130 formula requires both?

[esearing]

Not a double blind sample but a tested preference - I tested the same prints in LPD, Ilford Multigrade , PF Liquidol, and PF130 side by side on 3 different papers over a period of several weeks. Multigrade and Liquidol were blah comapred to the other two, mushy in middle tones. LPD dilute gives a warm-neutral not achieving max black, but seems to have greater detail in the highlights, which works for some images. Fresh PF 130 just popped compared to all the others for my typical waterfall shots. I even ripped a sheet in half and compared it to liquidol to make sure it wasn't anticipation bias. Today I tend to use 130 1:2 or even mix old with new to get less pop out of it especially with warmtone papers where I want a softer older appearance. LPD seems to be out of stock when I need it or the stock solution goes off after about a year. They changed from cans to plastic bags for packaging and it doesn't seem to keep as well.

[mihag]

Not a double blind sample but a tested preference - I tested the same prints in LPD, Ilford Multigrade , PF Liquidol, and PF130 side by side on 3 different papers over a period of several weeks. Multigrade and Liquidol were blah comapred to the other two, mushy in middle tones. LPD dilute gives a warm-neutral not achieving max black, but seems to have greater detail in the highlights, which works for some images. Fresh PF 130 just popped compared to all the others for my typical waterfall shots. I even ripped a sheet in half and compared it to liquidol to make sure it wasn't anticipation bias. Today I tend to use 130 1:2 or even mix old with new to get less pop out of it especially with warmtone papers where I want a softer older appearance. LPD seems to be out of stock when I need it or the stock solution goes off after about a year. They changed from cans to plastic bags for packaging and it doesn't seem to keep as well.

Can you name the papers?

[interneg]

Not a double blind sample but a tested preference - I tested the same prints in LPD, Ilford Multigrade , PF Liquidol, and PF130 side by side on 3 different papers over a period of several weeks. Multigrade and Liquidol were blah comapred to the other two, mushy in middle tones. LPD dilute gives a warm-neutral not achieving max black, but seems to have greater detail in the highlights, which works for some images. Fresh PF 130 just popped compared to all the others for my typical waterfall shots. I even ripped a sheet in half and compared it to liquidol to make sure it wasn't anticipation bias. Today I tend to use 130 1:2 or even mix old with new to get less pop out of it especially with warmtone papers where I want a softer older appearance. LPD seems to be out of stock when I need it or the stock solution goes off after about a year. They changed from cans to plastic bags for packaging and it doesn't seem to keep as well.

And did you try Multigrade or Liquidol at 1+6 or 1+4?

At 1+1, 130 has something like 50% more carbonate than Dektol/ D-72 at 1+2, nearly triple the amount of KBr, and more developing agents. A reasonable test would be to pull the bromide in D-72 up to level with 130, and then do a metol concentration series (of at least 2, 3, 4, 5g, preferably many more) and see if you can match 130. Better yet, do the same with Phenidone at 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5g etc - and while you're at it, take a look at Ilford's approaches with ID-78 (which firmly post-dates 130) and Kodak Ltd's D-163.

amidol which is hell to work with due to its stubborn orange contamination stain (nickel??).

For one thing, glycin can be partially aged just like a fine wine for sake of the amount of the stain effect, at least up till a certain point.

They're both effectively forming couplers via oxidation - for which properties Kodak seem to have investigated them thoroughly. And if they went that deep into them, they will have run many B&W developer test series too. The real magic comes from HQMS salts (whether formed in situ or added as a specific ingredient from the outset).

Formulary makes their own glycin for sake of both freshness and constant demand.

Whether they are supplying to or from TCI, glycin is (by organic synthesis standards) merely relatively nasty to make - which is a way of saying that it would be more widely made if there was real evidence that it was doing something that optimised M:Q or P:Q ratios couldn't. The fact that Ilford went down their own synthesis routes to something else rather than an established one to a long known ingredient should tell you what you need to know about what is actually effective with modern emulsions and what isn't.

Then you've got the whole matter of economics. There are bottled liquid formulas to mimic amidol like BW-65, and cold-toned PQ tweaks too, designed to mimic this or that. And they might make sense from a convenience point of view for sake of those unwilling to mix their own ingredients. But mix it yerself is way more affordable. Same reason I'm reluctant to spend top dollar on premixed Moersch products, although I'm glad they are available for sake of many other folks.

BW-65 is supposed to be a phenidone-130. And Moersch is effectively attempting to use the framework of E-6's first developer and some knowledge that can be traced to patents that have not really seen proper commercialisation (there's a fair bit out there that Ilford doesn't seem to have ever brought to market, for example - same witg Agfa). There's plenty out there that clearly shows the R&D labs worked out what glycin is doing, and how to get there better.

And if glycin is "substitute metol," how come the 130 formula requires both?

Because it probably was easier to adjust quantities of glycin rather than adjust the M:Q ratio - and/ or Ansco's researchers did not know how to exploit M:Q relationships. There are some documentary accounts of people working for Ansco in the 1930s and they were only slowly scientising (relative to Kodak for example), so a lot of these formulae need to be seen as driven by haphazard luck - i.e. someone was working on a developer, added some Glycin on a guess, got an improvement, added more until it got worse again, but did not have a more fundamental understanding of what glycin was doing, and how to get the same effect with fewer ingredients. Much of that knowledge would not be gained until the 1950s and does not seem to have percolated out beyond the silver curtains of the big manufacturers' R&D till the 1970s.

[John Layton]

Major PTSD taking hold here - fears about that dream coming back...the one where I show up for my organic chem final having done absolutely nothing to prepare - and I'm really late so that everyone looks up at me...just as I look down and...oh, no - my pants...I'm not wearing pants!

[Drew Wiley]

Interneg - you're mixing up marketing incentives and chemistry per se in your last glycin comments. The FACT is that the demand IS there, and specifically for sake of photo related purposes needing fresh powder. And effective recipes don't always necessarily need a hard chemistry pedigree. Alchemy is just fine, even if a toe of newt in the same cauldron happens to be redundant. What works, works. The endpoint isn't a textbook, but visually successful prints with something special about them. Do you think Michelangelo had access to a mass-spectrometer when choosing his pigments for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

The most disappointing thing about this tit for tat chemistry substitution discussion is that it rarely even recognizes what some of us consider very important in terms of subtle image tone control, and specifically in relation to current papers. What might seem inconsequential to a chemist might be a big deal indeed to a meticulous craftsmen.

And even some "accidents" might be happy ones. Even that toe of newt might have somehow factored in, whether you can explain the reason or not.

For example, specific formulas which seem to obtain identical results under standardized parameters, such as 20C, might diverge in terms of specific ingredient activity at nonstandard temperatures. Hydroquinone behaves like that; and its effect on final image tone can be altered by differences in developing temperatures - significantly enough to throw a curve ball at Ilford Cooltone paper itself, which I've seen to almost split-tone in an unpleasing sense due to that, or maybe in a pleasing sense instead. Not every image and composition is the same in terms of what paper developer regimen is ideal for it.

Likewise, some images work best only when the glycin is the freshest and gives the coolest result. In other images, you might want glycin powder which has age oxidized for a few month first. Such subtle differences can have a real impact turning merely acceptable prints into great ones or not.

[esearing]

Can you name the papers?

I even documented some of my early tests with Liquidol https://www.searing.photography/liqu...per-developer/ and Ilford Multigrade https://www.searing.photography/revi...ade-developer/
And this test between Warmtone developers https://www.searing.photography/testing-lpd-vs-pf106/ with a 2 bath test resulting in a blueish color.

Ilford MGFB Classic Glossy
Ilford MGFB WarmTone Glossy
Bergger VC NB