what is the effect of greater developer dilution?

[michael.panoff]

I've been experimenting with Kodak XTOL recently, the recommended dilution is 1+1, but I achieved some really nice results by mixing it to 1+2. Aside from longer development time, what effect is great dilution supposed to have.. on grain, contrast, etc. I'm sort of new to this B&W development.

thanks,
mike

 

[markinlondon]

Longer development times thus

1. Bigger grain (except with rodinal for some reason)
2. More edge sharpness if using a solvent developer (e.g. D76/ID-11) as the sulphite concentration drops below the critical level for dissolving/redepositing silver.

Contrast can be adjusted by time and agitation.

That's all I can think of,

Mark

 

[SolaresLarrave]

I was wondering the same, because ever since I picked D-76 I've seen a lot of tables and charts that have times for stock solution and 1+1... and I wondered if there was a practical reason to dilute the stock.

Now I see... Thanks, Mark! 🙂

 

[Xmas]

i) Saves money.
ii) With any developer when the concentration is reduced sufficiently there is a micro & macro contract change when the developer is exhausted locally in highlight but still works in shadows, (softens) and some diffusion occurs at edges (hardens edges).

Noel

 

[kaiyen]

Hm. Noel's point 2 is very dead on.

However, the real first question is - what developer are you using? You say XTOL, which is technically a solvent developer though it's about as middle ground as you can get between sharpness and fine grain. Again, technically, as with all solvent developers, as you dilute more you are decreasing the amount of grain-dissolving sulfite in the working solution. This increases grain and apparent sharpness.

allan

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Hmmm... Increases grain and apparent sharpness... and does it have an effect à la Law-and-Order credits? I should try it one day.

Now... 1+1 means one part of water and one part of stock, right? And with this solution you can basically double the developing time, right?

Thanks! 🙂

 

[michael.panoff]

I used the development times off the massive dev chart:
http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.html

My water temperatures are always around 23 Celsius, so I adjusted times using the Ilford dev time/temp chart. The problem with my warmer water temps is that non-dilute times are pretty short. XTOL 1+2 at 23 C works out to be about 8.5 minutes... Ilford FP4+ at 125. I like the results. Actually, it's the best results I've gotten so far.

Thanks for the information. This explains the apparant bump in sharpness.

Any recommendations on a finer grained developer.. for say Tri-X pushed to 1600?

Here's a sample of how the FP4+ turned out: