[Leica] B&W Films/Developers

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 8:00 PM -0700 6/29/04, Mark Rabiner wrote:
>On 6/29/04 4:11 PM, "Wade Heninger" <lists@heninger.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>>  I've read that it is a very active developer. Thus developing times can 
>>> be
>>>  very short, making it easy to overdevelop negatives.
>>
>>  Not as short as acufine, and never had issues.  I tried all kinds of
>>  experimenting with dilutions and times.  All too contrasty.
>>
>>  So I didn't continue because Xtol, FG7, Acufine all work great.
>>
>HC100 is notorious among the local people I know here in Portland over the
>decades. A consensus on the darkroom newsgroups on the big wide internet I'm
>not sure of but I kind of get the vibe they agree for the most part.
>It doesn't look much at all like d76 and is a Phenidone developer and in a
>number of other ways not at all like it as a formula.
>
>I used it for a while because the word was out Ansel used it. He was still
>alive then. But how he got the results he (or his assistant got for him) got
>my pals and I never could figure out. He supposedly diluted it way beyond
>dilution B. I could never get that to work for me at all I always got uneven
>development. Mottled negs. Calico. Same as my pals. We were all Calicos
>then.
>
>We all went back to d76 and our work shot up in quality as a result. Way
>back then. Early 80's. Ansel died I think in 84.
>
>I agree that Fg7 and Acufine and of course Xtol are great developers. When
>used at the right dilution.
>
>But to use a different developer with every roll of film as it seems someone
>is doing is not going to make for any kind of results or knowledge.
>
>I'd use a certain developer for a few months playing around with different
>dilutions.

HC110 is great for large format negs. It is my primary developer with 
HP5 in 4x5. I've gotten very good results both with tray processing 
and with (homemade) drum processing, with quite accurate zone system 
pushing and pulling.

As others have said, there's a lot of better stuff for 35mm. I can 
get clean, easily printable negs in 35mm with HC110, but the grain is 
noticeably bigger than D76, FG7 or Xtol. So there's no point using it 
in 35mm.

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    *            Henning J. Wulff
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