One-shot fine grain developer?

Leigh Youdale said:
Rodinal is not a fine grain developer, but it's quite a good general purpose one. There are those here who equate it with Holy Water from the River Jordan, but nothing will shake their belief so you can look elsewhere for the truth.
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LOL. Look out for small groups of grumpy (mostly) middle-aged (mostly) men who are carrying torches, pitchforks, and pre-ASPH Summiluxes! :0

Rodinal can produce lovely results but it is NOT a fine-grain developer. ACROS or TMAX100 in XTOL 1+1. That is a fine-grain setup.

Once I've shot through a couple of dozen rolls of Neopan 400, ACROS and TMAX400-2 or HP5+ are all I'll shoot, and XTOL 1+1 will be the main dev.
 
Don't want to hijack this thread but I have a relevant question. I too am looking for a one shot fine grain developer. I've only used D76 1:1 to develop my HP5 and have no problem with the negatives so far. However, I've been tempted to try Ilford's DD-X.
I typically shoot at box speed. What differences can I expect to see if I switch? (More grain? less grain? tonality? sharpness? etc). Thanks.
 
Fine grain or Ultra Fine Grain?

Ultra fine grain developers will generate the smallest grain but will have speed loss (one F stop) and less sharpness.

You can choose from the actual in production chemicals:
Ilford Perceptol, CG-512/RLS (Rollei), W665 (Windisch) or 777 Panthermic. Last two are based on OPD/PPD (Ortho / Para Phenylene Diamine) and theoretically will have the smallest grain.

Another option are the staining developers like PMK, FINOL, Pyro-HD etc. based on Pyrogallol or Pyrocatechine.

A film who is reacting very well on W665 (OPD) and pyro developers is the Fomapan Creative 200 film from Foma.

Best regards,

Robert
 
The German classic would be A49, used one-shot with the working solution dissolved 1+2 and the stock development time increased by 2.
 
The German classic would be A49
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A49 (Calbe) is also containing a color ingredient (CD) but is like Xtol a bit speed enhancing and gives not sharp negatives at all. Therefore a lot of people are diluting till 1+2.

Here an example of W665 (Windisch) with the Fomapan Creative 200 (T200) film which is reacting very good on this Ortho Phenylene Diamine developer.

T200 E.I. 100 W665 9:45 minutes at 20C :

3426183001_27cc69a22d_z.jpg
 
Beginner question here:
What does "stock" xtol development and one-shot mean? If i mix xtol according to the indication on the bags, i get say a gallon of the stuff. Using it as one-shot stock solution means the whole bag of xtol is gone after developing about 10 rolls... ??? is that not a very low yield solution?
 
Stock means 1+0, so the dilution made by the (5 ltr.) Xtol packing. BTW Foton/Foma has an equivalent Fomadon Excel W27 in a 1 ltr. packing, also based on an Ascorbic Acid derivate.
1+1 means one part stock + one part water, so 1+2 is one part stock + 2 parts water.

In general a higher dilution means more sharpness and with most developers a bit more grain.

One shot means: Use it one time and then dump it. It's the best way in small tank development.

Rodinal is a typical high acutance developer. It works in the surface and is based on Para-Amino Phenol.
More acutance you can get with Tetenal Neofin Blue/Blau, Beutler or FX-1. They are Metol based where FX-1 additional Potassium Iodide in a very small volume gives the highest acutance. Interesting developers for single layer films like Efke/Adox 25-50-100 films.
But they won't give very fine grain but when using on an Efke 25 film grain is not an issue anymore (like most slower speed films).

It also depends on your format. Therefore in 35mm Ultra Fine Grain developers can be still interesting.

These are your options:

CG-512/Rollei Low Speed, Xtol, Perceptol, Fomadon Excel W27, A49 (Calbe) and W665 (Windisch).
Xtol and Fomadon Excel are the lastest and most modern type developers. Also pretty environmental friendly but very short in lifetime of the stock solution, especially with a bad tap-water quality with much Iron in it. They combine sharpness and film speed where all other Ultra Fine Grain developers will give a speed loss of at least 1F stop.



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One shot, very fine grain, long shelf life... I'd pick Spur HRX-3 for conventional and Pyrocat HD in glycol for pyro. Both will last YEARS under reasonable storage conditions. Using these, Acros in medium format will rival large format in appearance (unless you print extremely large).

The drawbacks are about 1/3 stop speed loss (recommended exposure) and they're not ideal for pushing film. For 35mm and a mix of speeds, I find Xtol 1+1 to be the most versatile with no complaints about grain size.
 
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HRX-3 was not very good in shelf life hence SPUR made a new split version which is available now.
Yes, Xtol/Fomadon Excel in 1+1 is a good compromise between sharpness, speed and grain. Xtol is available in a large 5 ltr. packing only and when using destilled water you can go around the sensitive iron problem too. Further it's also pretty cheap.

But when going to a real fine grain CG-512/RLS is very good: still sharp, very fine grain and in Summer a convenient 24C development. I am using a CPA-2 so any temperature plus room temperature is not an issue then. Further CG-512 has a good preformance in rotary development where Rodinal really sucks in rotary development due to a total loss of the edge effect.

Pyro is not my thing, very poisoning and when working with the Heiland Split Grade any Pyro developers is not working well with printing and this system.

I like an easy and fast use of developers so after CG-512, Rodinal and HC-110 together with AM74 (Amaloco) are my favorite developers. But for Rodinal I am using the TAS inverse film processor. It's a great and vertilize developer for inverse development. 18-20C is in practice the best temperature and I am using 1+50 or 1+100 in dilution. Further you can keep the Rodinal concentrate almost till infinity ..... :)

Para-Amino Phenol reacts very good for slow- and medium speed classical cubical type films.
For my slow speed film, Efke 25 I am using Beutler. It gives even more acutance then in Rodinal and is very easy to make yourself: Only Three ingredients, Metol, Sodiumsulfite and Soda (Sodiumcarbonate). Very cheap too, maybe the cheapest developer possible.

Greetz,

Robert

(And have a good Carnaval ..... :) :) )
 
I've always used Paterson Aculux for everything. Works brilliantly with Tri-X and (if you still have a roll in the freezer) HIE. From memory Tri-X was 9 minutes at 20 deg C, HIE 3 minutes longer. I also used it with Plus-X but to be honest the results weren't much better than Tri-X. I wonder why Kodak still make Plus-X, which has been mediocre for 30 years.

Aculux is a fine grain developer that increases speed by 1/3 stop. In practice you don't bother uprating the film by that amount!
 
their datasheet says 2+ years.
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While in practice less then one year. All reasons to change to a split version which seems to be working well.
Details you can read on the SPUR web site.

Aculux was a nice Geoffrey Crawley design. Aculux-2 was reformulated to FX-37 later FX-39. Like FX-1 for maximum sharpness but better with T grain type/tabular type films.
In fact FX-1 is an improved Beutler developer.


Beutler A+B:

You only need 3 components were the Sodiumcabonate Na2CO3 can be often replaced by household soda.
In Europe it's often decahydrate Soda which means 10. H2O. Na2CO3.

1 mol Na2CO3 = 106g
1 mol 10.H2O.Na2CO3 = 286g

Using decahydrate Soda you need: 286/106 * 5g= 13,49g Soda
Soda is cheap: €0,70 for a kilo (1000g).

Solution A:

1g Metol
5g Sodiumsulfite (sicc)*

Fill up in 100ml demi-water

Solution B:

13,49 g Soda

Fill up in 100ml demi-water

* means water free.

FX-1 will add a very small dose of Potassium Iodide (0,001%) to have maximum acutance.

BTW FX-37 is a published developer, FX-39 not.
Crawley was a very good photo chemist.

Here an example of Efke 25 , E.I. 25 in Beutler A+B.
1+1+10 for 7:00 minutes at 20C. M7 + Summarit 2,5/75mm.

3531595018_f19fb577aa_z.jpg
 
Ilford Perceptol is unbeaten, but you have to overexpose of 2/3 stops if you plan to use it.
The best ever combination is PAN F 50 + Perceptol, or FUJI NEOPAN 100 + Perceptol.
Scanning at 5400 dpi (Minolta, perso) or 6800dpi (Blad, pro lab), I could see no grain AT ALL.
 
Ilford Perceptol is unbeaten
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But not sharp. Better then A49 but not so good as CG-512 which is a reference developer of Uddo Raffay, a German chemist.
But you can improve sharpness in Perceptol by using it 1+2. Perceptol is almost identical like Microdol-X (from Kodak).

And when you do not want grain at all you can go to Micro film like Kodak Tech Pan or the Agfa equivalent Copex, also sold under (Adox) CMS 20 , (SPUR) Orthopan UR and (Rollei) ATP1.1 (the red extended version of Copex).

But then you need a low contrast document developer or POTA.

BTW Acros has very fine grain and a high resolution, due to the fact it's an Orthopan film, like Efke 25-50 and the Rollei Retro 100 TONAL.

Here an example of this last film (TONAL) in AM74/RHS 1+9.
High resolution, nice grey scale but the grain not so fine then Acros 100 due to the (Agfa) bi-cubic technology while Fuji is using the Sigma technology for Acros, the most modern film in reciprocity times too (= 2 minutes).

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Make up some D76 or Xtol, expose the film at 1/2 box speed and reduce the development time 20%.

Film speed is reduced 50 % for any real fine grain developer like Microdol or Perceptol and you still get way more grain than I do with D76. Strange but true.

Divided developers like the old Leica developer or split D76 also work, but leave rather flat highlights. Films have changed and they no longer work as they used to.

NOTHING works as well as what I first suggested plus you get detailed shadows and sharpness is retained unlike the other fine fine grain developers.

People also add Xtol to Rodinal. No experience there.
 
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