Staining developers

[CharlesDAMorgan]

Tried some HP5+ too, it's not great photography weather and I am very uninspired and fed up with waiting for a house sale that doesn't happen. But I liked the results of the developer.

The last of the daisies in autumn gales. The grain is beautifully controlled in the PMK Pyro.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Looking good, Charles.

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

I think to date I'm happiest with Tmax2 (I'll try some FP4 too), and I can't ever remember getting such details in highlights like these skies.

 

[Barry Kirsten]

I love pyro and have been using it for very many years, starting with the Kodak D-7 formula, then ABC pyro, and finally Gordon Hutching's PMK-Pyro formula when his book was published. PMK has been my main developer ever since. Here is a scan of a 21/4x31/4 Efke 50 neg developed in PMK. 75mm f/8 Super Angulon lens. Image cropped. I don't think the small file size will do this justice. The beauty of the highlights, midtones and the overall edge sharpness are amazing. I love PMK and Efke, and am taking care with every last sheet.

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

Looks lovely, albeit a very small file!

So far the only downside I see is the lower film speed required, not an issue most of the year but starting to be one now as autumn moves apace.

 

[Nokton48]

Cleveland Lily Pond by Nokton48, on Flickr


4x5" Sinar Norma camera, 360mm Apo Kowa barrel lens, Efke PL100 film, PMK+ film developer, Aristo #2 RC paper, Multigrade dev

 

[Nokton48]

Return Old Mans Cave 1 by Nokton48, on Flickr

4x5" Sinar Norma, 180mm f5.6 Sinar Norma Symmar, Efke PL100 film, Pyro PMK+ film developer, Aristo #2 RC paper, Multigrade dev

 

[Nokton48]

Dawes Oriental Garden by Nokton48, on Flickr

4x5" Sinar Norma camera, 90mm F8 Sinar Norma Super Angulon lens, Efke PL100 film, PMK+ developer, Arista #2 RC paper, Multigrade developer

 

[Nokton48]

So far the only downside I see is the lower film speed required, not an issue most of the year but starting to be one now as autumn moves apace.

You can make Pyro+ by adding a pinch of Amidol right before souping.
It will add a legit 1/3 to 1/2 stop of actual shadow speed. Sometimes this helps!

A bit of Amidol lasts for years.

 

[stevierose]

The winter is coming and I will spend longer in my kitchen, I mean darkroom!

I'd be really grateful for thoughts, experiences and suggestions about which developers to try and what to look out for.

Hi Charles
Pyro is not a chemical I would use in an area in which you also prepare food like kitchen. It is quite toxic.

I like what your are doing with it photo-wise.

Steve

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

The closest food gets to Pyro is when I'm having a cup of coffee. Fortunately I have tons of top space so it goes nowhere near the food prep area.

Hopefully I'll have a roll of FP4+ to get in the tank. I'm also going to try some Orwo N74 which I think similar to TriX, but that's some way from being finished off.

I think it's a superb way of developing and I love the results.

 

[john_s]

The closest food gets to Pyro is when I'm having a cup of coffee......

If you eat smoked food you ingest a little pyrogallol. Best to eat it occasionally rather than frequently. There are some references to its use and prevalence at:



https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/htdocs/chem_background/exsumpdf/pyrogallol_508.pdf

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

Amazing, for the first time in a year I had not one but two kippers this week. The rest I find rather salty nowadays.

Interesting link, thanks!

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

The FP4+ at 80EI in Pmk Pyro is beautiful - probably my favourite so far. Shot on my Zorki 3M with Jupiter 8 50mm - at f2.8, the statue of Brunel in his mighty glass vaults at Paddington Station, London.

 

[Nokton48]

All the classic Ilford Films seem to work well in Pyro. You should try PanF+ about EI 25.

I agree FP4+ is superb. As is HP5+

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

Right, I did a shoot of a few things at Highgate Cemetery last week, all with Eastern bloc cameras and two with eastern bloc films. The last has just been developed in PMK Pyro, it being Orwo N74, made by the successor to the East German Agfa, and shot on my little Werra 3 rangefinder with a 35mm f2.8 Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon (which is really a much nicer lens than the Jupiter 8s I had used on my two Zorkis).

Orwo N74 is normally very grainy and it is closest in looks to Kentmere 400. Yet these scans show little grain, superb highlight and shadow detail, and to my mind the best results to date. I used Chris's times for the HP5+ shot at 250 and the negatives are really beautiful, Goldilocks quality. It was a really really bright day, with the sun in this photo coming low and straight behind Herr Marx. I think the result is magical (development anyway!)

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

Strange tidings. I went away for a few days and the agent trying to let my house managed somehow to trip the main fuse. So for three days no heating. Later, with a film to be developed, I mixed the PMK Pyro A + B + water but there was absolutely no change in the water colour - it normally goes brown. So rather than risk it with a film with pics, I did the developing with Perceptol. Checking the B bottle - it rattled, with large crystals. Warming it up seemed to make the precipitated crystals less.

So I shot some test shots using my expired FP4 and mixed the PMK normally. No colour change, and when I got it out of the tank, the film was horrendously under developed - virtually no image at all. When I poured away the PMK as now untrustworthy, loads of crystals came out of the B bottle.

My house was showing 15degC when I returned, so it seems enough to render the developer unusable. Strange! Or it's something else even less explicable!

 

[Larry Cloetta]

15degC doesn’t seem all that low to me, though perhaps your home got well below that. Outdoor temps here will often hit 20 F degrees below zero in the winter so the room where my developers are stored are frequently at 15degC or less, even in the summer. I have not had a similar problem with PMK going off suddenly due to low temps, and yours is quite a new batch. Nor has mine ever offered to precipitate out to any significant extent. On the other hand, I don’t know any more than my personal experience and can’t find any definitive information on PMK and temperature degradation.
Would be curious, Charles, to hear of any explanation if you come up with one. All I can offer is that I don’t think 15degC would cause any harm.

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

That's my thought too and the house might have gone a bit below but the thermostat showed 15C.

I'm genuinely at a loss as to why there would be so much precipitate and so little life in the developer. Lids were all on and it had been used only for 5 films in under 4 weeks. A mystery!

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

New batch of PMK Pyro arrived and this time I tried TriX and Kentmere 400. The latter is a cheaper film, slightly too grainy to my taste, but I thought I'd give it a whirl, so did it using the TriX time Chris has.

I like TriX but this was shot in a Voigtlander Bessa RF 6x9 which is out of alignment and the film jammed, so results of the first reel not really good enough.

The Kentmere 400 was better, in that it was shot with my M5, but it had the most spotting of any film I've developed, and that is despite a long pre-wash and using distilled water. For the sake of an extra quid per roll I think I'll stick to HP5+, or for the same price as the Kentmere, the OrwoN74 that is much nicer.