Processing 510 Pyro & 100TMX with Jobo CPP-2

[interneg]

1. PMK shows edge effects with some modern films - Tri-X and Agfapan APX 100 leap to mind. I believe both are hardened emulsions.

Metol only developers will produce adjacency effects via exhaustion byproducts of Metol. Adding HQ (or similar) in sufficient quantity will switch this off - it's likely that the level of Pyrogallol in PMK's working solution may be such that its impact on the Metol exhaustion process is low enough that it allows adjacency effects to form.

2. Pyrocat-HD similarly shows edge effects. These are more pronounced with some films (Tri-X, FP4) than others (Agfapan APX 100). It's more pronounced with EMA than semistand in all cases.

That's likely largely the Phenidone development inhibition effects rather than anything else. And EMA is nothing special - anything over absolute standstill has been shown repeatedly across long ranges of developer series and microdensitometric study to be merely affecting overall contrast (Litho dot formation is a different matter) - i.e. give your negs the least necessary exposure and least processing time needed to print on the highest grade that you dare & you'll end up at the same point. It just requires a little more in the way of (very basic) process control than the mystical handwaving of EMA. Or you could use a darkroom unsharp mask to produce stronger and more controllable sharpness enhancement effects.

3. There's no question that unhardened emulsion seem to love Pyro, though. Efke PL100M, for example, really shows the edge effects and improved acuity of using these developers. I am not sure how Adox CMS 100 II is made, but it seems to like it as well.

Phenidones (specifically Dimezone-S) may also produce some significant tanning effects too - certainly enough for Kodak to patent their useage in processing dye transfer emulsions - but the reactions causing crosslinking that Lee posits in the aforementioned patent will have no impact on modern well hardened emulsions. And unless you have tested using Kodak D-1 or other developers that do not contain developing agents proven to produce adjacency effects under some conditions (Metol) or potentially under all conditions if correctly used (Phenidones), how do you know that you aren't seeing those effects instead of assuming it must be the coupler forming component?

I have done seminstand with D-23

Too high a level of metol, even at 1+3. Henn evolved D-23 into Microdol, then Microdol-X (Perceptol is the same thing effectively) - which in dilute form is capable of delivering very good sharpness via Metol exhaustion. Beutler is the same idea but taken to a more extreme sharpness aim rather than granularity/ sharpness balance.

highly dilute HC-110 (1:128) and seen some, but not as pronounced such effects.

HC-110 wasn't designed for maximising adjacency effects. The P:Q ratio is important to this.

[bmikiten]

Possibly one of the best developer write-ups I've seen in years! Nice job.

[tundra]

It just requires a little more in the way of (very basic) process control than the mystical handwaving of EMA. Or you could use a darkroom unsharp mask to produce stronger and more controllable sharpness enhancement effects.

Getting unsharp masks to properly align, fiddling with mask exposure, etc. is a whole bunch more time consuming and error prone than EMA. Once EMA is dialed in, there is no real handwaving, just utterly repeatable darkroom practice. I'd suggest that - as a pragmatic matter - unsharp masking is the mystical sauce here.

how do you know that you aren't seeing those effects instead of assuming it must be the coupler forming component?

I don't, but I also don't care. I'm primarily interesting in making silver prints, not lab notes. I realise there is a legitimate place for photochemists and sensiometrists to pursue their disciplines, and I'm certainly not dismissing their work. But I want to make glorious prints. That means eliminating variables, finding *A* process that works (not exploring every possible alternative avenue) in the service of my desired outcomes.

[interneg]

Getting unsharp masks to properly align, fiddling with mask exposure, etc. is a whole bunch more time consuming and error prone than EMA. Once EMA is dialed in, there is no real handwaving, just utterly repeatable darkroom practice. I'd suggest that - as a pragmatic matter - unsharp masking is the mystical sauce here.

You can end up at the same point as EMA claims to do so by using a perfectly normal developer and developing to a low CI, such that you'll need a hard grade to print on - agitation doesn't come into it (other than not using vessels that promote uneven development). If EMA genuinely worked, the major manufacturers would have found out decades ago & marketed the hell out of it - as a matter of fact they studied agitation very deeply, at a level and quality way beyond what anyone has shown any evidence of understanding thereof in this thread.

Masks aren't difficult, just don't overcook them.

I'm primarily interesting in making silver prints, not lab notes.

It's considerably easier to get good prints once you understand that staining developers and EMA are a material and time wasting distraction.

[Michael Kadillak]

It's considerably easier to get good prints once you understand that staining developers and EMA are a material and time wasting distraction.

Sadly this discussion has evolved into a whole lot of unsubstantiated proselytizing that there is no sensible person that need consider pyro as a developer because you have "equivalent alternatives". For the life of me I cannot understand the incentive to take such a theoretical position in the face of a number of individuals (including me) that have 20-30 years of making LF prints and have personally migrated to pyro because of the visually measurable quality it adds to their prints. If you could take off your lab coat for just a short time and show us a legitimate photographic print that supports your conclusions along these lines that would go a long way to substantiating these assertions. Without that hard evidence I will let the future reader draw their own conclusion.

[tundra]

It's considerably easier to get good prints once you understand that staining developers and EMA are a material and time wasting distraction.

I have been a silver printer - better- and worse - for over 50 years. This position on your part is hyperbolic nonsense. I have empirical and evidentiary proof (not supposition) that you're just utterly wrong about this. I have made very satisfying prints from pyro-based EMA negatives (and semistand, and normal development, and other developers and ...)

Note that I've never said there is NO other way to achieve good results - there are, and many other fine photographers use them to great effect. But you've utterly conflated the map and the territory here. You sound like you want argue from a position of science, but claims like this are feeble attempts to argue from authority:

If EMA genuinely worked, the major manufacturers would have found out decades ago & marketed the hell out of it - as a matter of fact they studied agitation very deeply, at a level and quality way beyond what anyone has shown any evidence of understanding thereof in this thread.

Appealing to authority isn't science, it's a logical fallacy.

What I always find is that people who argue as you do - complete certitude, condescension, dismissing any other person's view or actual work - pretty much manage to never show us their prints. So how about it. Let's see YOUR satisfying images. I don't mean your book full of H/D curves or test negatives, I mean actual prints expressing some aesthetic or another.

[tundra]

Sadly this discussion has evolved into a whole lot of unsubstantiated proselytizing that there is no sensible person that need consider pyro as a developer because you have "equivalent alternatives". For the life of me I cannot understand the incentive to take such a theoretical position in the face of a number of individuals (including me) that have 20-30 years of making LF prints and have personally migrated to pyro because of the visually measurable quality it adds to their prints. If you could take off your lab coat for just a short time and show us a legitimate photographic print that supports your conclusions along these lines that would go a long way to substantiating these assertions. Without that hard evidence I will let the future reader draw their own conclusion.

There is a long and painful tradition on the internet that self-anointed experts want to tell everyone else they are wrong because they - the expert - always know better. As you point out, the Internet Expert is always long on provocative and accusatory commentary, but never quite manages to provide any actual evidentiary refutation.

I fully stipulate that there are many ways to get to a compelling print. The idea that one of the ways - one which many of us have use to great effect - should therefore be dismissed, is on its face, and without reservation, absurd.

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

Hello Lachlan,

There is at least one published research work from 60's which says "a low pH formulation, consisting only of pyrogallol, Phenidone, and sodium sulphite (pH 8.30) yields a higher emulsion speed for the same development time than does a conventional fine grain developer like Eastman Kodak D-76". Further, it describes "a stable, high pH, Phenidone-pyrogallol developer that makes use of ascorbic acid rather than sodium sulphite as the preservative". So 510-Pyro like Phenidone-ascorbic acid-pyrogallol developers were studied and found to have some advantages over D-76. It's another matter that such developers didn't become widely popular back then. And the subsequent progress in emulsion technology might have also negated the advantages.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/....1966.11737326

[interneg]

Hello Lachlan,

There is at least one published research work from 60's which says "a low pH formulation, consisting only of pyrogallol, Phenidone, and sodium sulphite (pH 8.30) yields a higher emulsion speed for the same development time than does a conventional fine grain developer like Eastman Kodak D-76". Further, it describes "a stable, high pH, Phenidone-pyrogallol developer that makes use of ascorbic acid rather than sodium sulphite as the preservative". So 510-Pyro like Phenidone-ascorbic acid-pyrogallol developers were studied and found to have some advantages over D-76. It's another matter that such developers didn't become widely popular back then. And the subsequent progress in emulsion technology might have also negated the advantages.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/....1966.11737326

Sulphite = not a staining developer. Levy's work was not driven by pictorial/ aesthetic requirement, but primarily by military/ scientific research need. And if Levy was looking at those recipes, Kodak will have looked at them too. Everyone was trying to improve on D-76 (and understand its mechanisms) for various reasons, but kept falling at the point they had to do double blind print comparison tests. Methods of dealing with AA's Fenton reaction issues were being intensely researched throughout this period - had DTPA or similarly powerful sequestrant been readily available at the time, AA would have come into use industrially in photochemistry in the 1960s/70s if not earlier. It's clear (from later documentation) that Kodak resolved the mechanism of Levy's POTA without disclosing it at the time - and used that knowledge (as did their competitors who were no slouches in the basic science) together with what they seem to have learnt about HQMS' effects (similar behaviour happens with AA, hence it being attractive as an HQ replacement) being preferential to all the other alternatives. A research result does not necessarily equal a viable/ reliable product - but it can count as prior art, and it's worth noting that Levy's earlier work with thickened monobaths was likely patented defensively against Polaroid (and potentially Kodak). And as for TEA, it was used in Dye Transfer at the time (and other processes etc) so it will definitely have been gone over rather thoroughly by Henn etc in getting to HC-110 (along with lots of other permutations that likely failed the desired parameters) - don't assume you are discovering anything new, and rather than desperately trying to dredge up post-facto defences of not-very-well-thought-out staining developers, you could take a few minutes to consider the nature of large scale photographic research at that time of that article - had there been enough evidence that under rigorous visual test conditions pyrogallol really had advantages over HQ or AA, there would have been concerted efforts to make use of it. Instead, Kodak were patenting ways to eliminate it from the process that relied on it - via the use of Dimezone-S and AA. Contemplate why that might have been.

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

Can't argue against the obvious possibility of Kodak and other labs having investigated the potential of pyrogallol and catechol developers in the light of works such as Levy's. Even the new lab researched developer products like those of Spur also seem to have avoided pyro.