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

[marcsmall at comcast.net (Marc James Small)]

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@aya.yale.edu
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!