Joshua_G
Member
Coming back to developing B&W negative after many years, availability of developers in professional photography shops in my country (2 of them) is meager: -- Kodak D-76, Kodak HC-110 and Tetenal Ultrafin Liquid. However, chemicals for mixing developers are available at chemicals stores. So, reluctantly, I will mix my own developer(s) out of individual chemicals.
Though I shoot with various films, since I don't shoot very much and I intend to mix 1 liter of developer at a time, I should constrain myself to 2 or 3 developers to work with.
My first choice is Mytol (Xtol substitute), for general use. Second developer will probably be FX37, for better acutance, at the price of coarser grain (for slow and medium speed films).
Any recommendations for 1, 2 or at most 3 developers to mix?
Please mention benefits of each recommended developer over D-76 or Xtol.
Max Power
Well-known
Joshua,
You might not get the volume of responses here that you might hope for. Honestly, if you haven't tried APUG already, you might want to ask your question there.
www.apug.org
You might not get the volume of responses here that you might hope for. Honestly, if you haven't tried APUG already, you might want to ask your question there.
www.apug.org
markinlondon
Elmar user
How about one developer, Joshua? D76/ID-11 pretty much does it all. Xtol (or Mytol) will get you about the same results with maybe a little finer grain. Use higher dilutions for more acutance. D76/ID-11 1:3 gives pretty sharp results as does Xtol at the same dilution.
sepiareverb
genius and moron
I choose developers for particular films- ID-11 is my usual for Pan-F and FP4, Microphen for HP5 and Neopan 1600 (which I'm finally getting the hang of!). They seem to make for cleaner looking negatives- sparkly or something. HC-110 gets dragged out more in the winter when the extra energy helps with my flat winter lighting, or for buzzier grain with HP5 @800 than the Microphen gives.
I was a big XTOL user with sheet films- but when I came back to 35mm I found it gave me somewhat fuzzy negatives- especially with the Ilford Delta films.
I was a big XTOL user with sheet films- but when I came back to 35mm I found it gave me somewhat fuzzy negatives- especially with the Ilford Delta films.