Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/11/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> I'm pretty excited about PC-TEA. This is a developer invented by > Patrick Gainer. I think it was written up in Photo Techniques about a > year ago. > > To make the stock solution: > 90G Vitamin C powder > 2.5G Phenidone > 1L Triethanolamine (TEA) > > The tricky part is that you have to heat up the TEA to dissolve the rest > of the ingredients. TEA is not classified as hazardous and is available > from chemistrystore.com and Photographer's Formulary. > > In use you dilute it 1:50. It contains NO sulfite. There is also no > water in the stock solution so it is not supposed to deterioriate with age. > > I've only done a few tests to establish a development time, which looks > like 8 minutes @ 72F with HP5+ at 1:50. Grain looks extremely fine with > none of the clumping you get with D-76. > My tests with PC-TEA show it to be a good developer but, because the pH is high (8.6-9.0) it tends to grainy in my hands. More so than low pH developers (Xtol). It is handy though. Just add water and stir. How do you get past the terrible viscosity, it's like handling straight HC110 (which has diethanolamine in it)? JB