B&W Developers

[radchad]

I was wondering what film developers everyone uses. I have used only Kodak D-76. I was looking into Xtol. What does everyone use? I plan on shooting Efke IR820 Infrared and Ilford films.

[davidb]

I use Rodinal for FP4+ and anything under 125.

I use XTOL for HP5+ and anything 400 and faster.

[Peter Lewin]

PMK for HP5+ in 4x5 and 120, D-76 1:1 for HP5+ 35mm.

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Here is a link to a poll done on this topic last year:

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ite+Developers

This might give you some information (hope I did the link correctly)

[Ron Marshall]

About a year ago I experimented by using several different films and developers; not to find the magic bullet, just to have a better understanding of the differences between different films and developers.

I tried D76, HC-110, Rodinal, Pyrocat-HD and XTOL. All did an excellent job once I was used to the particular film-dev combination. Some are slightly sharper than others or give faster emulsion speed, or finer grain; but the overall image quality with LF and moderate enlargements was not very different. (This is for 100 ISO films; Rodinal negs are a bit grainy for my liking with faster films)

I finally settled on XTOL. It is cheap, easy to mix, good film speed, can process at high temps, good sharpness, no grain. It works very well with TMX and TMY, which is what I now use, and great with FP4 and HP5.

[Dave Brown]

About ten years ago, I switched to HC-110 from D-76. I get the same results I did before, but I appreciate the longer shelf life of HC-110. I've considered going to XTOL because it's easier on the environment, but if I'm going to switch developers, I'll go with someone like Ilford or Photographer's Formulary that has a commitment to silver based photography. I have a hard time beleiving that Kodak will be marketing any film developer five years down the road.

[mike kwiatkowski]

I usually use XTOL. Works well for me and I get good film speed with it.

[Bruce Watson]

I finally settled on XTOL. It is cheap, easy to mix, good film speed, can process at high temps, good sharpness, no grain. It works very well with TMX and TMY, which is what I now use, and great with FP4 and HP5.

XTOL also dilutes well, and gives excellent film speed. I've been using XTOL 1:3 to process 5x4 Tri-X for years with excellent results.

[Andrew O'Neill]

Why do you want to change developers? Are you happy with what D-76 gives you? Have you tried it at 1+1? I used to use D-76 but it became unavailable where I was living but xtol was. Xtol is a great developer and I still use it once in a while. Probably the easiest powder developer to mix up. I use it with HP5+, FP4+, Efke 25, and Efke infra-red. My main developer is pyrocat-HD. Pyrocat is way more economical for me than xtol as I mix it from scratch.

[Brian Schall]

I use HC-110 or Rodinal just because they last forever once opened. Also use DiXactol but I haven't figured out the shelf life of it yet.