Anybody using WD2H+?

[Mark J]

Ah, I was thinking back to the way some of your discussions with DREW have developed, regarding staining developers.

[Mark J]

There's a lot that could be done with Beutler derivatives -

And do these developers also reduce the grain-scatter ( Callier effect ) in upper mid-tones and highlights ?

[Mark J]

Michael, that little table you did earlier is v. interesting and food for thought. It looks sensible to try a more significant increase in the amounts of A and B on my next try, given how much appears to be used in WD2D. I only tried about 10% more last time, plus later a small extension in the dev time.
One thing I spotted though, is that there is benzotriazole in WD2D as sold by Photographer's Formulary, but it's in the 'B' solution.

Let's see if I can get a couple of shots at the weekend.

[Michael R]

Ah, I was thinking back to the way some of your discussions with DREW have developed, regarding staining developers.

Oh ok I see now... yes my discussions with Drew might appear quite confrontational - however it's mostly us teasing eachother about long-standing disagreements about certain things so at this point it's exaggerated, friendly jabbing. We've got a history here and on the old APUG, but neither of us have ever taken it seriously or had hard feelings. There are even some things we agree on.

[Michael R]

Michael, that little table you did earlier is v. interesting and food for thought. It looks sensible to try a more significant increase in the amounts of A and B on my next try, given how much appears to be used in WD2D. I only tried about 10% more last time, plus later a small extension in the dev time.
One thing I spotted though, is that there is benzotriazole in WD2D as sold by Photographer's Formulary, but it's in the 'B' solution.

Let's see if I can get a couple of shots at the weekend.

You're probably right about the Benzotriazole in WD2D. There have been a few versions of WD2D over time. I recall John saying the original version contained Benzotriazole but that he later omitted it. Then there's the "WD2D+" Formulary sells, which I think excludes Benzotriazole but adds the EDTA. The formula for WD2D+ has never been disclosed though, so aside from omitting Benzotriazole, we can't be sure about whether or not it is otherwise the same as WD2D.

WD2H ends up being essentially the equivalent of using half the concentration of WD2D part A in the working solution. Since John's original motivation for WD2H was maximum contrast, I assume he arrived at the conclusion the more dilute solution would generate more imagewise stain.

I'm curious to know what you find out in your tests. Actually I wouldn't mind experimenting a little myself (for example to find out if the difference in alkali actually changes the colour of the stain), but I'm not sure when I'd get around to it.

[interneg]

And do these developers also reduce the grain-scatter ( Callier effect ) in upper mid-tones and highlights ?

There's very little good evidence of the pyrogallol actually having meaningful tanning effects on very well hardened emulsions. The observable effects on negatives people associate with tanning may have more to do with the dye formation (cf. Kodachrome which produced similar relief despite having no tanning steps in the process) than any real printing effect, other than the colour produced - developers intended for properly tanning unhardened matrix emulsions had much higher pyrogallol concentrations - and the level of oxygen scavengers within a given set of sensitised emulsions will have a significant effect on the amounts of dye something like Pyrogallol can form. Scattering effects have been very deeply researched by the manufacturers (e.g. microdensitometry of exposures done with X-rays etc) - if pyrogallol (or any other tanning developers) really worked like people wish they did, they would never have fallen out of use. What is based in measurable and observable fact is that very low metol concentrations (i.e. working solution contains 0.5g/l or lower) produce an array of potentially useful effects via exhaustion of the metol - higher edge sharpness and much more controlled highlight density (which has knock-on effects on perception of granularity, especially in relatively smaller enlargements) being the particularly apposite ones here. The same effects can be achieved in PQ (or PC, but no good reason to use it) and Phenidone Ascorbate developers in commercially applicable and even more controllable ways (if you have R&D backup for getting it truly zero'd in). Commercial applications have tended towards wanting to balance grain/ speed/ sharpness characteristics differently (needs to optimise reasonably equally perceptually across 1-40x) from where those making 3-4x enlargements off sheet film for 'fine-art' applications may wish to go - the latter category may have ended up somewhere useful enough for their usage from poorly controlled trial and error, but often seem to errantly attribute beneficial effects to other phenomena and/ or are making the developers far more complicated than they need to be.