Semi-Stand test

this whole discussion has caused me to go to http://www.fotoimport.no/ which apug has pointed me to. I have now downloaded the H&D curves for HP5 in 4 different developers, hoping to correlate what i think those curves say with the characteristics and qualities that folks here point out in their developer decisions. Rodinal in the tests but not stand development. HC-110B has straight line at normal contrast pretty much through a normal contrast printable range after about 1 stop above fb+f. D76 has rising contrast throughout the lower values. It starts out lower slope than normal and then transitions to greater than normal at about 2 1/2 stops and becomes almost straight line until contrast drops again at high values (the famous S shaped curve) at what looks like about 13 total stops above fb+f. Looking at it this way, it seems to me HC-110 would give more faithful values to oriignal, and D76 would give more contrast. So, HiHo, not only are you bourgoise with your sharpness OCD, but also crave dramatic contrast! Mee tooo.

Another fantastic stand/semi-stand developer is very dilute Pyrocat-HD. HP5 is scary sharp in it, using semi-stand.

Andrew, Thank You so much. So far, I've only used D-76 & HC-110, though I got a small bottle of R09 one shot. I know nothing about pyrocat, but can look it up. Thank You again!

I've tried many developers for this purpose, and pyroca-hd blew them all away, in my opinion.