comparison of Pyro and Pyro type developers

[Brian Ellis]

Hi Chris - When you say that "tonal gradation" is marvellous, do you mean you've made two identical photographs, developed one negative in pyro and the other in your previous developer, then printed the two and you see much better tonal gradation in the print made with ABC pyro? If that's what you've done then I'd like to know because I don't think you can properly isolate the effect of pyro on the final print until you spend some time making duplicate photographs and then developing one in pyro and the other in your previous developer and then making prints from the two negatives. Of course in order to do that properly you first have to do some testing to come up with a normal developing time for pyro (you presumably already know it for your other developer) and that takes a while because, contrary to what you sometimes read, in my experience a color densitometer with a blue filter just doesn't work very well with pyro. Despite use of the blue filter, the stain and the densitometer just don't get along very well, at least that's how it seemed to me. In any event, once you get a normal development time you then make the best prints you can from each negative and see if you can tell the pyro print from the other. I never could nor could my friend who was doing the same thing I was doing except that he was using Rollo Pyro in a Jobo system and I was using PMK in tanks and trays. The two prints were absolutely, 100% identical every time. I've read about edge effects, I've read about how the stain acts as a yellow filter with VC paper to reduce contrast, etc. etc. but when the print from the pyro negative looks absolutely identical to the print from the other negative, there doesn't seem to be any advantage to pyro and there are some disadvantages (longer exposure times under the enlarger, expense, toxicity). However, neither of us was using ABC pyro (or is that the same as Rollo pyro - I don't think so but I can't remember for sure) so if you've done some testing along the lines I'm talking about and can see marvellous tonal gradations in the prints made from ABC pyro negatives that you don't see in prints made from the other negatives, I'd really like to know so that I can go through this all again with ABC pryo.

[chris kargoris]

Brian, No I have not made an exact comparision, perhaps I should explain how I came to experiment with Pyro. I've been an architectural photographer for twenty years, the subject matter is inherently high contrast and the problem for me was always producing sharp negs along with a good tonal range so I have a sky as well as shadow detail, yes ID11 has good tonal range but no sharpness, where as Rodinal has the sharpness but blows out the sky. I needed something that would give me both not at the expense of one or the other. There is a cost with Pyro its grain but if your using 10x8 and contact printing it is not an issue.

If Pyro is not for you, then it's not for you, no point getting warmed up over it.

[chris kargoris]

Dan my use of ID11, D76 and Rodinal was with 6x7, 5x4 and enlargement printing. But all this gets away from my original question of comparision of Pyro and Pyro type developers. If people want to do specific tests and use densitometers go ahead, I like to use my eyes.