Where were the Pyro wars?

[Sylvester Graham]

I'm wondering if anyone could link me to one or two of the most heated and important threads that made up the pyro wars.

A lot of threads on the subject, I'm having trouble sorting through.

[rdenney]

What pyro wars?

Rick "perplexed by the possible motivations for this question" Denney

[Jay DeFehr]

I think "Pyro Wars" is an overly dramatic term for a period of time when I dared to challenge some of the established thinking on staining developers, and those who helped to establish some of the thinking. "wars" implies something like equally opposing forces, when in actuality it was mostly me opposed by Sandy King and his supporters. I'm happy to forget most of what was said/ written during that time, and console myself with the fact that it was arguably the most productive and innovative period for staining developer education, research and development in history. It was during this time period that the original Hypercat formula (catechol, ascorbic acid and phenidone in glycol) and 510-Pyro were formulated, followed by all of the Pyrocat variants, and several Moersch formulas. These discussions, as rancorous as they often were, probably did more to raise awareness of staining developers, and the principles on which they are based, than anything that came before, including Hutchings' book, which pre dated internet fora like this one, or apug.

Those exchanges would never be tolerated by a hyper moderated forum like this one, which would probably throw the baby out with the bath water in the interest of civility and courtesy.

[Sylvester Graham]

This isn't about the drama. I could care less about the drama. And even less about rekindling any old sentiments. I'm just looking for information for my own use and, as you point out Jay, there is some fine information somewhere on here. I'd love a PM if the subject is too tender for the light of day.

Worst comes to worst I'll dig into the search function and pick the ones that seem to have the most responses.

[Jay DeFehr]

The substance of those discussions was my developers; Hypercat (and now Obsidian Aqua, too) and 510-Pyro, and Sandy King's developers; the Pyrocat series.

The original Hypercat formula was abandoned, because it was too similar in performance to, and more complex than 510-Pyro, so I went back to the drawing board to formulate a more elegant catechol developer, which is the current Hypercat, in glycol, and Obsidian Aqua in water. These developers perform identically at equivalent dilutions. The water-based version was formulated to address economy in shipping and availability of ingredients in remote locations. Water, carbonates, and metabisulfites are available locally in most places, leaving only catechol to ship, where it's not available locally. OA is highly concentrated, with 2X more metabisulfite relative to water than Pyrocat HD, and 2.5X less metabisulfite relative to catechol, for simultaneously better keeping, and better staining. I no longer recommend Hypercat or OA for rotary processing, though they perform as well as Pyrocat HD in this application, 510-Pyro is a better choice, and these single agent catechol developers really shine with intermittent agitation.

[rdenney]

This isn't about the drama. I could care less about the drama. And even less about rekindling any old sentiments. I'm just looking for information for my own use and, as you point out Jay, there is some fine information somewhere on here. I'd love a PM if the subject is too tender for the light of day.

Worst comes to worst I'll dig into the search function and pick the ones that seem to have the most responses.

If you search for relevant topics, even using Google with the "site:largeformatphotography.info" as an argument, you'll find mountains of information about pyro. Google is a more powerful search engine than what comes with vBulletin.

Why don't you just ask what you want to know about Pyro?

Rick "still perplexed" Denney

[sanking]

The Pyro Wars as I knew them actually began in 2004 between Steve Simmons of View Camera magazine and Jorge Gasteazoro, an alternative printer working in pt/pd living in Mexico. Jorge was at the time using a variant of Pyrocat-HD and Simmons proposed that he write an article for View Camera comparing PMK to Pyrocat. At the time PMK has been around since around 1990, Pyrocat-HD was introduced in 1998. Turns out that for one reason or another Jorge's original article was not published and instead Steve wrote his own comparison article on PMK versus Pyrocat-HD. Simmon's article came out in May or June of 2004, and the reaction to it started the Pyro Wars, which continued with a different cast of players until early 2007, with perhaps a few dying gasps since them. The major venues for the Pyro Wars were threads on APUG, on the AZO forum, and on the Large Format forum.

Sandy

[Drew Wiley]

There are so many really superb pyro tweaks out there at the moment that it's come down
to nuances and dev options (tray vs drum etc). One really just needs to experiment to
decide what is appropriate for their own methodology and chosen print media, with the
most significant bifurcation being between conventional silver papers and long-scale alt
printing. I did my share of testing and re-tweaking. It's fun to do that for awhile; but in the
long haul one just settles in to something versatile. The wars might be largely forgotten,
but the landscape has pretty much changed for good, and we're all benefitting from the
actual formulation efforts which have gone into it. Plainly, I'm a pyro addict myself.

[Dan Henderson]

oops, wrong wars.
Sorry!

[JBelthoff]

I thought Pyro wars were the result of all of those early 80's glimmer rock bands....?

Silly me...

Seriously, pyro is an interesting topic for B&W dev and I agree with "rdenney" that you can Google a lot adding the site keyword.

pyro site:www.largeformatphotography.info

Loads of great info abounds....!