[Leica] D-23 developer

[dankhong at gmail.com (Dan Khong)]

I used this brew for a while and was impressed with the forgiving nature of
the developer. The highlights are amazingly preserved and, in my experience,
never ever get burnt out. Being in two components, it's quite easy to mix as
a one shot developer. The Sodium sulphite tends to harden and cake up if
kept for a while.

The Metol component can be allergenic, and many darkroom enthusiasts find
that they suffer from Metol allergy leading to a frustrating end to their
happy darkroom days. Then of course they could go digital, do inkjet
printing and live happily ever after.

Currently, I am using Kodak HC-110 to soup my films and it is a bit like
coming round one full circle. I personally like to just dilute concentrates
and get down to the serious business of developing film or printing
enlargements.

For B&W, I am still using Tri-X film and then scanned into .jpg files. They
print out in my inkjet printer as pure B&W with excellent midtones.
Desaturating colour digital images are just not the same.

For colour shots, I have almost given up on colour film and gone over to the
dark side of digital photography.  Somehow, I still miss the 3-D effect of
colour film photography.

Dan K.
Singapore