You have to start from the position that Crawley at the time he formulated FX-1 seems to have only been partially aware of the growing body of knowledge about iodide placement within emulsions - and that FX-1 was created around the time when a lot of emulsions still had fairly 'buried' iodide. Today, it is known that higher solvency can produce higher sharpness because it can access iodide specifically placed for that purpose (and other development inhibition effects). Most of the assumptions about developers that have been repeated ad nauseam for the last 80 years seem to be based on emulsion technology that became steadily obsolete with technology changes between 1955-1965 - they'll still develop film today, but they aren't as optimal for wide ranging use. A modern high definition developer would be more likely to be based around Dimezone-S & any of HQ/ HQMS/ Ascorbate (in a specific ratio range with the Phenidone - and 'superadditivity' is much less clear-cut than people assume) with some degree of optimised solvency (not zero solvency) & with a carbonate buffer - in other words, it's not about special ingredients, but the use of the ingredients.
NaCl (20g/l?) is added to increase the silver solvency of Microdol/ Microdol-X (the '-X' is an anti-dichroic stain agent - specifically Chlororesorcinol)/ Perceptol beyond the 100g/l of sodium sulphite they contain. Any of these developers will do a better job at the metol exhaustion/ solvency access to development inhibiting iodide to improve sharpness effects than wasting effort with either Rodinal or FX-2. Beutler is sharp, but there has been extensive research done since then - and PQ developers can be made to better balance granularity: sharpness. Certain PQ developers (Ilfosol 3?) may be worth experimenting with NaCl addition - but I would reckon that Ilford already has experimented very extensively with various silver solvents when formulating both DD-X and Ilfosol-3 & with feedback from high precision MTF sharpness/ RMS granularity measurements, rather than guesstimates based off 1950s formulae (at best).
Which tends to suggest that (at the point in time he formulated FX-39) Crawley was not terribly aware of the effects on sharpness of adding HQ to Metol only developers - nor that PQ developers can be balanced to be sharper than Metol only.
Crawley had the curious habit of having 2 kind of sharpnesses... One closer to acutance the other closer to resolution.
Fx 1 keeps giving me the utmost sharpness effects acros to fomapan... Shity tonality though...
Negative tone can be important as seen with tanning devs... And although microdol, perceptol and fx5 tend to have a brownish cast (provinha the amount of physical development), its not the tone that matters the most...
Atomal, metolal and others also give a brownish cast but i do not see a benificial effect on its own...
When did he state this? The problem is that people pronounce 'Crawley states...' without realising that he was writing for the better part of 50 years & his views seem to have changed (though not always keeping pace with the science) quite a bit over that time. The 'Image Content' analysis method that the industry seems to have adopted from the 1970s aims to relate MTF sharpness to RMS Granularity to visual perceptions of prints made from emulsions developed in the candidate developers in a scientifically meaningful way - i.e. if your MTF goes up massively, does that impact on granularity (for various reasons) and does that make the resultant print both sharper but less tonally attractive to the viewer (under double blind test conditions)?
What may be happening is that FX-1 is essentially developing some of the emulsion a lot, rather than all of the emulsion a bit (i.e. it has issues accessing development centres) - this problem is known (& leads to some quite nasty tonality & extreme sharpness) with Phenidone only developers, but hasn't been noted with Metol only developers, though I'd need to check how low a metol concentration has been tested.
'Staining' developers seem to produce a dye from the oxidation of a dihydroxybenzene or trihydroxybenzene in the absence (or near absence) of sulphite, rather than what is observed from the effects of the more severely solvent developers. There seem to have been real questions in the 1940s/ 50s in the industry over the longevity of those dye images - which you'd think would give people pause for thought as to why staining developers weren't pursued further, but other dye imaging systems were (i.e. chromogenic B&W - which can really deliver meaningful compensation via specific coupler behaviours, rather than the marketing bluff of someone trying to poison people with pyrogallol).
My understanding comes from reading the bjp anuals, since 1960... Anchell and troop also refer this 2 kinds of sharpness, um MTF therms low frequency and high frequency.
Regarding fx1 i really do not care, when i use it, my aim is not tonality, i use for developing my canon Demi, Olympus ft and chaika negs, all half frame. Mostly for grain effects and non figurative work.
I have tryed most pyro or catechol developers and although i find some differences regarding highlight rendering, some grain softening on some tones, acutance effects and some added surprises in printing (some good), i really do not find any magic bullet, just different negatives... But they are different!!! And i have negatives from the 80's that still have the green pyro stain...
Regarding poisoning... You are right... But be careful with that hidroquinone and that paraphenilenediamine....
I usually develop most things in a divided mq or pq dev with a carbonate second Bath... Some times fx1 sometimes ds10x, sometimes id62 (the print developer), sometimes 510pyro or dixatol...
I want to use fx-16 but no pinacriptol and glycin went bad.. any alternatives? Anyone?
How can I post a photograph [negetive ] test from 9x12.5 worked in modified neofinblue ???
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