What film developer is your favorite and why ?

chuckroast said:
All art exists within the boundaries of a triangle: Vision, Technique, Spirit/Worldview

While we isolate these for purposes of discussion, as we have here, it's absolutely the case that final product must have components of all three to be really great.
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I'll admit that absolute statements usually get my dander up. Just for fun, and on principle, let me disagree with the premise above. Personally, I think it's more likely to be a time-travelling dodecahedron.
 
chuckroast said:
Spirit/Worldview is more about how your personal sense of life, values, religiosity (or not), and so on influence how you work. It is fundamental in deciding just what you want to say.

Vision is how you imagine a scene, how you make choices about composition, perspective, and image structure. It is about how you will express your worldview.

Technique is pretty much just about tooling and mechanics.

I find this triangle valuable because so many people work on technique and developing a vision, but they don't much ponder their own worldview. But that worldview has profound influence on how your vision will be realized.
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As is often the case, I think your initial statement required this explanation to come across more fully. English is just not a tight enough language in terms of meaning for me to get the drift of what you were saying without the elucidation.
 
Benjamin Marks said:
I'll admit that absolute statements usually get my dander up. Just for fun, and on principle, let me disagree with the premise above. Personally, I think it's more likely to be a time-travelling dodecahedron.
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You are clearly a noob and a Philistine. The more advanced among us know that the real answer is a triskaigecagon :p

All models are wrong. Some are useful.
 
agentlossing said:
As is often the case, I think your initial statement required this explanation to come across more fully. English is just not a tight enough language in terms of meaning for me to get the drift of what you were saying without the elucidation.
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I'm not sure it's just English. Abstraction is hard in all languages. My first written (but not my first spoken - don't ask) language was German. German is great for very precise communications. But - IMHO - it's actually not that great at expressing abstraction. That's why the German philosophers are so painful to read, both in translation and in the original. That could just be me. There may be someone out there who finds the German concatenationofwordstoavoidusingadjectives really beautiful ;)

(I no longer read or speak German at any meaningful level so this may all be very wrong...)
 
chuckroast said:
I'm not sure it's just English. Abstraction is hard in all languages. My first written (but not my first spoken - don't ask) language was German. German is great for very precise communications. But - IMHO - it's actually not that great at expressing abstraction. That's why the German philosophers are so painful to read, both in translation and in the original. That could just be me. There may be someone out there who finds the German concatenationofwordstoavoidusingadjectives really beautiful ;)

(I no longer read or speak German at any meaningful level so this may all be very wrong...)
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I like the compound words, though I don't have to deal with them on a daily basis! Maybe the difficulty of expressing abstraction explains why German philosophers are always so tetchy!
 
I have rodinol and HC110 from good old days.... Open bottles that still work like first day.
But..... but.....I find myself typically grabbing one of my pre mix baggies of caffenol lately. I can't seem to screw up the time or agitations with it. Since I'm not souping film nearly as much as I used to, this is working for me.
Caffenol didn't seem to like Adox CMS20...but it was an experiment with just one roll. I suspect it's just a matter of finding the right time and aggies.
 
mrtoml said:
I used to use Diafine a lot. Has anyone tried the Bellini liquid Diafine:

ntphotoworks.com

BelliniFoto DF2 Duo-Step B&W Film Developer a Liquid Version of Diafine

BelliniFoto DF2 Duo-Step, a liquid Diafine, is brought to you via the genius of BelliniFoto and the innovation of Nik & Trick
ntphotoworks.com ntphotoworks.com
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I use it, I find it similar to Diafine. But my experience is limited
Samples with Eastman XX

Ocean by João Avelar, on Flickr



Port by João Avelar, on Flickr



Solitude by João Avelar, on Flickr
mrtoml said:
I used to use Diafine a lot. Has anyone tried the Bellini liquid Diafine:

ntphotoworks.com

BelliniFoto DF2 Duo-Step B&W Film Developer a Liquid Version of Diafine

BelliniFoto DF2 Duo-Step, a liquid Diafine, is brought to you via the genius of BelliniFoto and the innovation of Nik & Trick
ntphotoworks.com ntphotoworks.com
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Those samples look good. Do you use the developing chart for Diafine to get the speed ratings for duostep?
 
I use Bellini Duo-step with 3 minutes Solution A + 3 minutes Solution B. No pre-wash. I always follow this method. The photos above were made with a Kiev-4AM & Helios 103 (“Menopta”) lens, yellow filter.

Different samples bellow: they were made with a re-loaded plastic disposable camera Kodak FunSaver (supposedly set for a ISO 800 film); this crappy plastic camera was loaded with Eastman XX and the developer was also Bellini Duo-step.

I believe the diferences relates to the camera, the Bellini did its part…



FunSaver Fev24010 by João Avelar, on Flickr



FunSaver Fev24020 by João Avelar, on Flickr



FunSaver Fev24018 by João Avelar, on Flickr

Regards
Joao
 
My sister - who studied photography in NYC in the early 2000s - rants and raves about Diafine all the time. Maybe I should give it a go; am I understanding it correctly in that the key is finding your personal EI for the film you intend to use, as there's little to no control over the development step (as in you can't "push" or "pull" the film in the traditional way)?
 
chuckroast said:
Then you aren't doing it right. Let me help:

https://gitbucket.tundraware.com/tundra/Stand-Development

Now, some examples - you have theory, I have practice. Practice beats theory. As Elon Musk says, it doesn't matter how good your science is if the rocket blows up.

Tell me these are not "fully printable". Scans of silver prints (my scanner sucks, so sue me):


The only post scanning manipulation to these images was to - as best as possible - match the silver print to overcome the limitations of my awful scanner.

I am indifferent as to whether people use stand or not. But it's kind of annoying when people say "it doesn't work", "you cannot get printable negs" from it, etc. This is without exception voiced by people who've never mastered it. It IS really fiddly at first (which is why I share those notes), but it jolly well does work, and work well (and consistently) when done properly. It's also not the only way to do things.

P.S. I've never been able to play golf at any level. Does this mean that no one can ever be a good golfer? Asking for a friend.
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Please, I don’t need any explanation. I’ve printed like 30,000 darkroom prints during 2021-22, and I evaluate my darkroom work to somewhere around 50K prints overall, and that’s a conservative number. It kinda made me into an expert nitpicker.

Stand development? You go ahead. I have no idea what’s your pedigree, but anyone with a normal to serious pedigree is not going there.
 
Coldkennels said:
My sister - who studied photography in NYC in the early 2000s - rants and raves about Diafine all the time. Maybe I should give it a go; am I understanding it correctly in that the key is finding your personal EI for the film you intend to use, as there's little to no control over the development step (as in you can't "push" or "pull" the film in the traditional way)?
Click to expand...
I think it is practically impossible to buy it nowadays.

Usually as a rule of thumb you double box speed, but some films behave differently to others. For example I used to use it with Tri X at 1600 and it looked great.

It also had the advantage that you could put all your rolls in the tank at the same time no matter what films they were because the time was always 3+3.

It even was OK with Ilford XP2.
 
Coldkennels said:
My sister - who studied photography in NYC in the early 2000s - rants and raves about Diafine all the time. Maybe I should give it a go; am I understanding it correctly in that the key is finding your personal EI for the film you intend to use, as there's little to no control over the development step (as in you can't "push" or "pull" the film in the traditional way)?
Click to expand...


Yes, I’ve noticed that too. Generally Diafine users were crazy about it. It was always the case.
Never tried it so I can’t comment.
 
rfaspen said:
I have rodinol and HC110 from good old days.... Open bottles that still work like first day.
But..... but.....I find myself typically grabbing one of my pre mix baggies of caffenol lately. I can't seem to screw up the time or agitations with it. Since I'm not souping film nearly as much as I used to, this is working for me.
Caffenol didn't seem to like Adox CMS20...but it was an experiment with just one roll. I suspect it's just a matter of finding the right time and aggies.
Click to expand...
I am a confirmed D-23 user but I have been using Caffenol more and more often myself and am quite impressed with it. It does have a bit of an odor though but that is really a small downside.
 
mrtoml said:
I think it is practically impossible to buy it nowadays.

Usually as a rule of thumb you double box speed, but some films behave differently to others. For example I used to use it with Tri X at 1600 and it looked great.

It also had the advantage that you could put all your rolls in the tank at the same time no matter what films they were because the time was always 3+3.

It even was OK with Ilford XP2.
Click to expand...
Diafine was out of stock everywhere for a long time but Freestyle has had it in stock for a while:

Acufine Diafine Powder Film Developer - 1 Gallon
 
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