[pure-silver] Re: Buyer found for AGFA Photo


----- Original Message ----- From: "Charlie Thorsten" <charlie_thorsten@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 3:00 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Buyer found for AGFA Photo



--- Richard Knoppow <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
   One can hope only that the remaining market will
be large
enough to support Ilford and smaller companies like
Efke,
Berrger, Foma, etc.
   We are loosing a hell of a lot of technological
knowledge
with the loss of Kodak and Agfa.


I went to my local photo supply store yesterday to
buy some D76 and their paper section was all Ilford.
They used to have Kodak, Agfa and Forte on the
shelves as well, but no more.  Luckily, they said
they've had no problem ordering Ilford supplies
and hopefully they'll have enough of the small B&W
market that they can stay alive.

I know...I was in there buying D76 so I'm not really
helping.  But I like shooting Tmax 100 and Tri-X,
and I don't know of a good Ilford developer for these
films.  Ilfotec?  I guess I should try Delta 100 and
HP5+.

Ilford makes a fairly full line of developers but ID-11, their equivalent to D-76 is not buffered and they make nothing like Xtol. Fortunately, D-76 is easy to make from scratch and the formula for Xtol is in the patent. Ryuji Suzuki, who follows this list, has devised an Xtol type formula which has improved stability. Its on his web site at http://www.silvergrain.org Developers like Kodak T-Max are evidently very similar to Ilford Microphen or DDX, again, published formulas for this kind of developer exist. Mixing your own is something of a PITA but was done for decades and is certainly better than doing without.
Replacing some of the Agfa developers is not so simple because the formulas are unpublished and Agfa tended to use somewhat exotic developing agents in some of them. It is possible to make Rodinal but the exact formula and, especially, method is not publically known. The main difficulty in making Rodinal appears to be the safety considerations in making up a highly concentrated solution of Potassium hydroxide due to the very great amount of heat evolved and highly caustic nature of the solution. In any case, I consider Rodinal mostly a special effect developer, there are better ones for grain and speed.
I miss having a variety of printing papers available. Freestyle has tried to compensate the loss of Kodak and Agfa by stocking papers made by Foma, Efke, Kentmere, Oriental, and a couple of others. I have no proof but think the technology available to Kodak, Agfa, and Ilford, especially Kodak, was miles ahead of the small manufacturers. We may once again have to deal with coating problems, etc. Its all very frustrating.


---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

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