Acufine - The something for nothing developer?

I was leafing through the "Darkroom Handbook" published in 1981 the other day and came across the very comprehensive list of developers there. Each was listed under Manufacturer, Qualities, Speed Rating, Suitable Film, Powder or Liquid and Remarks.

Some I knew of and some I didn't. When I came to Acufine which I hadn't heard of, I had to re-read it as it seemed to be the holy grail of developers, offering fine grain, 100 to 400% extra under speed rating with good keeping qualities, very high resolution and controllable contrast.

None of the others listed could come anywhere near this list of pluses. Microphen for instance was about 60% extra in speed and some others were 100% but were coarse grained as I would have expected.

I gave it no more thought until tonight when I googled it expecting it to have maybe disappeared. Not so.Still made by Acufine which is in Illinois? It was listed under several reputable dealers such as B&H and the same claims as in the book were being made for it.

So, is this the something (fine grain, great speed, high resolution, controllable contrast but not a push developer) for nothing developer?

Does it come anywhere near matching these qualities? Commonsense says No and several contributors have already said that we need to be suspicious about something for nothing developers and yes, it begs the question, if it's that good why hasn't it blown all the others away with the possible exception of maybe staining developers and those listed as ultra fine like Perceptol.

I don't think I have seen it talked about here on APUG but I'd be interested in anyone experiences of it?

Thanks

pentaxuser

I used Acufine many years ago. At that time, film ratings by ASA were at least one f-stop slower than the later ISO. Tri-x jumped from 200 to 400. The reason for the jump was that ASA ratings had a safety factor that many ignored as did ISO. As far as I know, the hype for Acufine that allowed double the box speed or more was mainly taking advantage of that safety factor. In addition, I think it was one of the first to use phenidone, which can give somewhat more speed than Metol. I doubt that the hyperbolic claims have changed, even though the film speed rating method has.

I have used a lot of Acufine and Dinafine, I would not say that Acufine is fine grain, but very sharp-with full speed while holding shadow details well, but it is very easy to blowout highlights. I liked Acufine with Plus X rated at 200. Dinafine does a much better job of increasing film speed with fine grain, open shadows, but is a little flat.

In the early 1980s, I was responsible for hundreds of cameras located in dozens of banks. These were all loaded with 100ft rolls of 35mm Tri-X. Most were set for a speed of 400, and developed in D76 as I recall. Where the light was too low, I would meter and set the camera for a speed of 1000, per Acufine's recommendations (at the time) for Tri-X. It worked fine for our purposes. What I do remember is that the negs were granier and contrastier, with less detail in the shadows.

At the time, I wasn't very savvy about things technical (as if I am now). However, it was always my impression that Acufine was basically compensating for underexposing the film by overdeveloping. I could be wrong, it's just my impression.

Anyway, it is what it is and does what it does. If I were still in the same business AND (bigger "and") film cameras were still used in banks, they would probably be loaded with Tmax or Delta 3200!

PS: I keep a can in my darkroom, because you never know ...

. What I do remember is that the negs were granier and contrastier, with less detail in the shadows.

At the time, I wasn't very savvy about things technical (as if I am now). However, it was always my impression that Acufine was basically compensating for underexposing the film by overdeveloping. I could be wrong, it's just my impression.

PS: I keep a can in my darkroom, because you never know ...[/QUOTE]

I agree, Acufine is a high engery developer, shooting at a 1000 is at least 1/2 push with resulting loss of shadow detail and why is so easy to blowout the highlights. I found that I could shoot Plus X at 200 and TriX at 600 without loss of shadow detail. I dont know the forluma for Acufine, but in use I found Acufine to very close to Microphin or DK 50 1:1. I still use DK 50 for 4X5, and I have a can or two of acunfine.

Remembering my use if it, Acufine is a lower contrast developer, so you then "push" the film to the next stop or two and get fairly normal contrast negs. The grain was fine but the acutance left a little to be desired. I can remember pushing Tri-X to ridiculous EIs and getting decent highlights and naturally the shadows were quite blank. It seemed to fit the image though and I had fun with it.

I used Acufine with Tri-X in the 1970s. It was good and sharp, and gave some speed increase.

The instructions warned that gentle agitation was necessary to minimize grain. Around that time, or a little later, they re-issued instructions with revised (downwards) speed recommendations. I will try to dig up a print taken in bad light and scan it.

ACU-1 is the one-shot version. Dan

I use it quite often and find it gives a reliable one stop boost using fresh film with slightly lower than normal contrast (prints well at grade 3 usually), good sharpness, and moderate grain for push processing. If you target your Acufine development time for grade 3, it keeps the grain under control. Keeping qualities are good, and it's replenishable, but it will go dead in high heat (an unpleasant surprise when it happens, so I always test a film leader, if I haven't used it for a while).

These are Efke PL100 4x5" at EI 200 in Acufine--

http://www.echonyc.com/~goldfarb/photo/halloween/index.htm

These are past date old TX 400 6x6 at EI 640 in Acufine--

http://www.echonyc.com/~goldfarb/photo/mta/index.htm

Here is fresh new TX400 35mm at EI 800 in Acufine--

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Try searching on "acufine" in the gallery, and you'll turn up more--mostly mine.

i once did a test for pushing trix (new) with acufine and hc110 (1+63).
the result was that i found hc110 as good as acufine, if not better. although the development times of acufine were a lot shorter (+/- 10min); hc110 around 30 minutes.
i got very good pictures up to 1600asa (detail from zone 3 upwards) and poor, but printable ones at 3200asa - with both developers.

Thanks all for the replies to date. Really I'd have been surprised if it had turned out to be the developer to end all developers.

I am sure a very good point was made about the safety margin built into the ASA rating and Acufine's sales literature taking advantage of this. I suspect that in the book referred to, the table of developers, remarks etc was probably drawn from that literature. The book's editor makes no mention of having tried all the developers to confirm that the sales literature was fully justified. Hence both Microphen is rightly claimed at 60% extra and maybe conservatively so and Acufine at up to 400% "quite truthfully". It's just that the measurement is made from a different base.

I know which of these two marketing philosophies I prefer but that's for another discussion. Anyway APUG provides the antidote to marketing hype. It's called the honest "user experience" where "cui bono" seldom needs to be the watchword.

pentaxuser

Like any developer, I know a few people that swear by it, and think it is all that.

The hype for almost any product works on the strong points, and ignores the weak, so I always look for what is compromised and what is the gain, as there is no free lunch.

I think developers, like cameras, paper, or heck, almost anything to to with traditional photography, is for may persons a bit like religion. You tend espouse what you know, what you are familiar with, what you were raised with, what works well for your idiom, and what you are comfortable with.



Pyro- there is no substitute.

I was introduced to Acufine, when I first worked on my high school yearbook in 1965. It was the first developer I ever used and our standard. It was that pervasive at the time. Non prime lenses (meaning the old definition of non 50mm lenses) were much slower than now and the use of flash wasn't nearly so prevasive. Acufine and Tri-x rated at 1200 was the norm. We shot a lot of beautiful, but gritty, negatives. I didn't realize it at the time, but we lost a lot of the gray scale. The negatives tended to print as black and white with little in the way of grays. Much like the look of Fuji 1600 - even when exposed at its true ei of 650, tends to lack gray scale.

After reading David Vestal's "Book of Craft" (I believe it was called) and experimenting, I came to see that Tri-x should be exposed at 200 or even 100 and that there is really no "something for nothing", in terms of EI.

That said, Acufine is great in available light situations where a full gray scale isn't expected. For example, stage lighting or low light home interiors or bars (or strip joints).

I think it's unique in that it gives you a real highlight EI of 1200, sacrificing shadow detail, while giving much finer grain and lower contrast than using D-76 and extending development.

Acufine has unique qualities well worth exploring for certain lighting conditions, but shadow detail requires full exposure, irrespective of developer.

Take care,
Tom

Hello Pentaxuser

Retro photographic stock this developer if you want to give it a try.

Charlie

Charlie-J said:

Hello Pentaxuser

Retro photographic stock this developer if you want to give it a try.

Charlie

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Thanks for this. I do look at the Retrographic website occasionally but hadn't noticed that it stocked Acufine. Nice to know there is a stockist here in the U.K. I might have given it a try and maybe still will but the responses here suggest to me that there may be other developers which are as good.

I have been spoiled to an extent by developing a friend's D3200 in stock Perceptol to see what kind of 5 x7 prints the negs would produce. I was pleasantly suprised at how grainless they were as well as having good shadow detail.

Overall, my conclusion is that not enough respondents have accorded it enough of the qualities listed in the book to make it a priority.

pentaxuser

Paul Howell said:

I have not developed Tmax 3200 in Acufine, but my guess that you will get a true 3200 speed with courser gain.

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No, you're never going to get a true ISO 3200 from an ISO 1000 film. The manufacturers themselves can't get much over ISO 1000 (TMZ) or 1250-1300 (Delta 3200) and I'd be surprised if Acufine gave even that much speed. Because they're long-toe films, designed for pushing, you can get amazingly good results even with silly pushes (even 3 stops) but these are assuredly not true ISO speeds.