Wow... I've read through this entire thread, and came to the conclusion that there must be as many developers, and variations of these, as there are photographers. The scope is endless.
I now feel like something left over from the Jurassic era. Throughout my decades in a darkroom I've tended to the more 'traditional' developers, initially by Kodak, then Ilford, then home-brewed. As I went along I modified my processing tactics (I especially dislike the term 'technique) to suit the lighting I photograph in. Nowadays mostly Australia or SE Asia. So harsh light.
In the '60s I used Kodak Dk60a, which was locally available and cheap (CDN $0.98 cents for a gallon can in 1965 IRRC) but gave me negs I can still print and scan well. Not a fine-grain developer but I was using 120 films then, so go figure.
Late '60s I went over to a Ron Spillman (UK) two bath developer which did more what I wanted in sharp, well-definite (grain) images for my growing art print sale business.
Fast track to Australia in the mid-'70s onwards. Ilford ID11/Kodak D76 became my preferred 'soups' and I stayed with these for almost two decades. Now and then I chopped and changed. In the mid-'80s I moved on to TXP and HP5 in Rodinal. I must have been doing something wrong, because nowadays when I try to scan or print (mostly 35mm) negs from this combo, I find grain of a size suitable to put in a table salt grinder. Silly me, in 1988 I photographed extensively in Bali and Java (Indonesia) with TXP in a Leica M2 with a '50 Summicron, a kit I loved (sadly, no longer own). Of course I processed it all in Rodinal. Today if I wang to work with any of those images I have to do a huge amount of post-processing - I gave up on enlarging them on FB paper long ago.
In the '90s I changed again, partly back to D76, mostly to two bath, this time the Barry Thornton 2B developer. I also experimented a bit with other brews. Kodak TMax was fine but I had to keep the bottle in a fridge or it would deteriorate. Ditto HC110 which didn't expire as quickly but I found working out the formulations and times too complex for my liking. So back to the old standards it was.
In around 2001 I helped an old friend, now deceased, who was archiving his lifetime of beautiful Australian landscape images. We made hundreds of art prints. I admired the tonality of his negatives and noticed how easily they printed/scanned. He told me he had used an old Agfa-Ansco MQ developer formula since the 1950s, and added the advice, "develop it all for 7 minutes."
IN 2004 I went to Jobo and experimented with various formulas. temperature-time consistency improved my results, but I then started getting bromide drag. Two devils down, one new devil to deal with. Such is life. The Jobos were ideal for C41 and E6 but I ceased doing color in the mid-'00s.
These days I use maybe 20 rolls of B&W film in any one year. Mostly 120. My late friend-mentor's Agfa-Ansco formula suits me well. I save up to ten exposed films (safely in my fridge) for one processing session and mix a liter batch of this stuff from basic chemistry.
Sadly, after many decades in the darkroom I no longer have the same passion as I did for doing it all in the dark. At my age life is just too short and there are too many other things I want to do before I get recycled to cloud land. Processing film is fine as I can do my tanks in a dark bag and do the rest in my kitchen. I have, at last count, two sealed bulk cans of Kodak Panatomic-X, one of Plus-X, one of TXP, and about 100 rolls of 'mixed bag' B&W films, mostly Kodak and Ilford. With luck I will be around long enough to use all this up, and process everything with the bulk chemicals I have safely stored in our temperature controlled garage. So life's good.
If asked for advice about all this (TBH I prefer not to be consulted on anything any more, that's just me) I fall back on my time-and-again tested dictum of 7 minutes. Which seems to work for me. The KISS principle does work on some things...
Jenny by Jim Fischer, on Flickr
Zuzu & Brian by Jim Fischer, on Flickr
Man on Ferry by Jim Fischer, on Flickr
