I've always thought that DK-50 was a rather under rated developer.
If you use D-76 one shot you might try adding about 0.5 gram of
potassium bromide to each liter of full strength working solution (or
equivalent to the 1:1). This eliminates the slight fog characteristic of
fresh D-76 and actually increases film speed very slightly.
On 7/14/2017 1:57 PM, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
On 07/14/2017 02:48 PM, (Redacted sender msampson45 for DMARC) wrote:
I imagine that few of us these days process enough b/w film to make aSo, mostly, I'm in your camp on one shot, using HC-110 and PMK Pyro. But,
replenished system practical, since they thrive on volume. When I was at Kodak
I ran a 3-1/2 gallon replenished sink line that used first D-76 and, later,
HC-110. But in those days (late 1980s on) we shot a great deal of 4x5 b/w. For
a number of reasons that system was replaced with a Wing-Lynch 4E, but that's
another story.
XTOL is the only developer I know of that replenishes with itself (an oddity
when it was introduced in the '90s.) Edgar Praus in Rochester does a great job
in his lab using replenished straight XTOL. As far as manufacturers offering
replenishers to go along with their developers, it's for a reason. Many, many
tests in the research lab proved that it works.
In my personal photography, I've long used one-shot developers, as much for
convenience as anything else.
of late, I've been doing a lot of stuff in DK-50 because I really like the
lower fog levels it seems to yield.
But, you're right, there just isn't the volume to justify fiddling with
this, so I'll use the DK-50 1:1 until time or capacity are exceeded, and call
it day :)
