[rollei_list] Idle Musings on Darkroom Chemistry, B&W

At 11:45 PM 7/23/2007, Phil Swango wrote:

>Hoppy, I scanned these with an Epson 3170 flatbed.  It's very smooth with
>BW, probably because it uses a cold light source.  Not so great with color
>because of limited Dmax.  The (small) print I made for the dog's owner
>looked great.  I've heard other people complain about the Nikon scanners
>with BW, for the same reason.
>
>Diafine is an interesting developer.  It's a two solution developer.  The
>first bath is hydroquinone, for 3 minutes, without concern for temperature,
>emulsion type or EI.  The second bath is the activator (sodium sulfite),
>also for 3 min.  This was my first try so I'm not ready to jump on the
>bandwagon yet but I was pretty happy with the results.
Good heavens! You guys are getting my thoughts astray with your application of older formulations. I am months away from getting my darkroom up and running again save in the most primitive of manners, but here are some thoughts:
a) The available literature is massive but I would suggest that the necessary books are:
-- The Gevaert Manual, published in multiple editions until Agfa bought out Gevaert in the 1960's. These were printed by the gazillion and are quite available used.
-- The Photo Lab Index, or PLI. This one was a volume with annual updates, produced until fairly recently (1985? 1990?) PLI contains a slew of technical information on various manufacturers and was intended to professional labs. It does leave out some of the smaller producers of photo chemistry. Go down to the next camera store in your neighborhood which is closing and score a copy for $5. (I was gifted two copies in this way, and that was ten or fifteen years back.)
-- CHAMPLIN ON FINE GRAIN. This is a Pre-War book but is really informative and helpful. It is a monograph and is readily available used.
-- There are two books whose name escapes me: 150 BLACK AND WHITE FORMULAS and 150 COLOR FORMULAS, perhaps? (Yes, I have copies and I saw them three weeks back when doing my final lock-and-load for my move to Richmond, but these are now within one of those nine boxes in my garage marked "Darkroom") These include the English Crawford recipes, one of which, #7, I especially recommend.
-- There used to be a firm in New England which sold photo chemistry and which advocated measuring these with teaspoons and the like. I believe that there name was Zone Seven (no, no, no: they were NOT Zone VI and had no connection to them to my knowledge). They went out of business about the time RA-4 came out. They published an EXCEEDINGLY helpful series of newsletters. I have a complete run, again in one of those nine boxes. They published both B&W and color formulae.
b) Diafine is a fascinating formula and can produce really great results but over the years many folks found it uneven and frustrating. Some never had a problem using it. Others found it unpredictable. My own experience is that Diafine is an interesting developer but I just do not like two-bath developers.
c) I personally love XTOL but it is frustratingly hard to obtain except by mail order save in larger cities. There is a generic formula which was discussed here on the LUG some years back -- I still have this, somewhere, I suspect. XTOL stores really well but only if properly mixed and only if stored in airtight bottles filled to the neck. I have had some last as much as two years when so prepared. But, again, it is cheap, and why run the risk? Dump and mix a new batch and I do not share Mark Rabiner's fear of the fumes. But, then, I drink orange juice, so who am I to say? <he grins> XTOL always works well with me with tap water but I respect Brian's experience: I am having a hell of a time taming the water in my 55-gallon aquarium at present due to oddities in the local water supply, though my Silver Dollars and Parrot Fish do not seem to mind the problems so long as they get fed. (My local water here is rather base and is laced with some ammonia and nitrites, no-no's for the fresh-water aquarium. Thus, the standard fix, a 25% water change, doesn't help much.) I had a hell of a time with TMX until I only developed it in developers with distilled water, after which heaven was assured.
d) Rodinal is a great developer. Grain like golfballs but, what the hey, it works well. Ctein used it with TMX back in his CAMERA AND DARKROOM days and I'd have to dig and dig to find the article, but this worked REALLY well for me. And the older bottles have REALLY long legs: I have a bottle from around 1962 which still performs perfectly. Rodinal dates from 1893 and is still a wonderful product today. See CHAMPLIN ON FINE GRAIN for discussion.
e) Kodak's D-76 is the standard. It is easily obtained and, even better, it is easily mixed up from scratch by folks like me who have buckets and buckets of raw photo chemistry about. (PHOTOGRAPHERS' FORMULARY is still about and happy to do business, and their version of Rodinal, by the way, is a most worthy purchase.) I use it at 1:2 as Mark Rabiner recommends. It is a really happy developer and is rather tolerant if you neglect to perfectly observe the recommended temperatures.
f) I never have liked HC-110 that much as my results with it have been very uneven. It was developed for use by small-volume labs which required consistency such as newspaper labs, and for them it worked quite well. In my experience, it is not really a happy developer for work in a home darkroom.
g) We have not discussed Acufine. I have had some really solid results with this but, again, your mileage may vary.
h) I have some boxes of the older EFKE powder developers. I do read Russian fairly well but I have never struggled through the writing on the boxes to figure this stuff out. Someday, when I have it on hand (those nine boxes, again!) and meet up with a Croat or a Serb, I might try it.
i) We will discuss color processing at another time. Two short notes: EP-2 I do from scratch chemistry but I cannot do this with RA-4. And I have printed a lot of Ilfochrome: I understand how masking works but I just have never felt it necessary to play around with this.
I have taken the liberty of cross-posting this to the Rollei List, where we have some photochemistry mavens. A bunch of those on the LUG are on the Rollei List but if we stir up the Old and the Dead on the Rollei List to provide interesting comment, I will repost these answers on the LUG.
Wow! Sorry to have rattled on so long. Darkroom experience is a bit like combat experience, in that everyone's own life history is different and that there are no straight answers. I have interviewed hundreds of veterans from dozens of wars and they all have just their own tale to tell. Well, the above is my own experience: after all, "there are a million stories in the Naked City, and this is mine". 

Marc


msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

---
Rollei List

- Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

- Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe'
in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org

- Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org

- Online, searchable archives are available at
http://www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list

Other related posts: