[Leica] B&W developers

Wed Jun 14 23:51:02 PDT 2017

I’d say Rodinal grain was augmented the word honest would not come to mind. If you wanted gain all over the place you used Rodinal at 1:100 but the grain kind of magically lined up with the detail. All out of focus areas look like a sand storm with fast films 400 or 1600 and Rodinal. If you wanted not such a grain statement use it at 1:50 a thing which nobody who was any good ever did.
There were or are lots of developers which did not superficially wear down your grain with solvents or were used at such high dilutions that any solvent in them didn’t do much so that I’d call “honest grain”.
I’d say Rodinal’s ISO was honest not its grain. Typically, the number on the box of film was its true iso with any developer you’d ever want to use. (exception below)
Developer formulas which did give you a real “honest” push as in real detail in the shadow areas were in most cases Ilfords Phenidone based PQ formulas, not Kodak’s Metal (Elon) MQ formulas. Kodak did get into Phenidone in the 90’s for their basic T-grain developers and Xtol used Phenidone though Xtol was not good for a much of a push. Possible a stop on a good day.
Phenidone based honest pushing developers for film were: 
Acufine, Diafine, ID-67, Formula #28 Single- Solution High Energy Developer, ID-11B (Ilfords D76), ID-68 and Kodak’s tmax liquid developer it came out with in the late 80’s.
The issue being of all the many developer options at any dilution and any ISO including normal these are the worst developer formula choices out there. The exception being Xtol and other ascorbic acid developers. I was keen to use a Metol based Xtol which id mix myself but it never happened. An easier route would be to augment your D76 1:1 with some ascorbic acid.
So, I’d advise not pushing film at all but simply using the fastest film you can find at its real base speed which should be the speed with your developer and as Neopan 1600 @ 1600 in Xtol 1:3 is gone I’d use Ilford Delta 3200 at ISO 1600.  1600 is well known to be its true base iso with all but very few push phenidone devlopers. Not 3200. Shooting it at 1600 is not “pulling” it which is a horible thing to do to any film as it really just over exposing it by far the worst thing you can do to film negitive or postive.

Mark William Rabiner

On 6/14/17, 6:02 PM, "LUG on behalf of Aram" <lug-bounces+mark=rabinergroup.com at leica-users.org on behalf of leica_r8 at hotmail.com> wrote:

    I was a Rodinal fan.  Gave me nice snappy negatives that were easy to 
    print.  I once saw an article that referred to it as producing "honest 
    grain" whatever that meant, but I did not mind the tight grain structure 
    it had.  If I were pushing I would us something else, however.  But 
    Rodinal always left me satisfied. My last few years with film,  I played 
    around with adding ascorbate to it to minimize the grain and i did like 
    that, too. Glad to see it is still available.

    Aram

    Aram Langhans
    (Semi) Retired Science Teacher
    & Unemployed photographer

    “The Human Genome Project has proved Darwin more right than Darwin himself would ever have dared dream.” James D. Watson

    On 6/14/2017 8:02 AM, Don Dory wrote:
    > For easy compensating developing that is not insanely sensitive to time and
    > temperature I would highly recommend Xtol dilute 1:3.  Development time is
    > a little long compared to others but that is why if you miss your temp by a
    > degree and are distracted for thirty seconds you will still have great
    > negatives.  Edge detail is good but not Pyro or even some of the lower
    > dilutions of Rodinal but much better than the high dilution Rodinal.
    >
    > All the best.
    >
    > On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 10:40 AM, Gerry Walden <gerry.walden at icloud.com>
    > wrote:
    >
    >> Thanks everyone. It is quite clear that nothing has changed since the last
    >> time I processed b&w film those many years ago.
    >>
    >> Gerry
    >>
    >> Gerry Walden LRPS
    >> www.gwpics.com
    >> +44 (0)23 8046 3076 or
    >> +44 (0)797 287 7932
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>> On 14 Jun 2017, at 15:00, George Lottermoser <george.imagist at icloud.com>
    >> wrote:
    >>>
    >>>> On Jun 14, 2017, at 5:05 AM, Gerry Walden <gwpics at me.com> wrote:
    >>>>
    >>>> I don’t want to start and wars here, and I know this is a minefield in
    >> which I will get a thousand and one answers, but is there any consensus of
    >> opinion these days on a one-shot b&w developer?
    >>>> Insanely I am thinking of doing my own processing of film again.
    >>> If you’ve never played with Pyro… you owe it to yourself to do so.
    >>> A true difference in "edge."
    >>>
    >>> fond regards,
    >>>
    >>> George
    >>>
    >>> http://www.imagist.com/blog
    >>> http://www.imagist.com
    >>> http://www.linkedin.com/imagist
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>> _______________________________________________
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    >
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