Acutol replacement

I have been developing Acros in Acutol and have been pleased with the results. Now I can't get hold of any acutol what would be a good replacement developer for Acros?
I am a bit of a beginner and like to keep things simple!

RIchardn said:

I have been developing Acros in Acutol and have been pleased with the results. Now I can't get hold of any acutol what would be a good replacement developer for Acros?
I am a bit of a beginner and like to keep things simple!

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Rate the film at box speed or overexpose the 1/3rd of a stop. Use Rodinal or ADOX R09 at 1+50 dilution. Take the manufacturer's recommended time for Acros and add 50% but agitate for first 10 seconds then 10 seconds every three minutes only. Stop, fix and wash normally. Prepare to be amazed

Acutol should be available again within the next few months - this is according to Geoffrey Crawley who formulated Acutol.

Hope this helps,

Lachlan

Thanks for the help. I will give it a try with Rodinal. This is probably a very silly question but what is the manufacturers recommended time for Acros? The data sheet I have found on the Agfa site does not mention Acros and the Fuji data sheet for Acros does not mention Rodinal.

Massive Development Chart @ www.digitaltruth.com

Hey! What happended to Acutol? I didn't know there was a problem, and now I see B&H has stopped listing it and also FX-39. What gives?

MMfoto said:

Hey! What happended to Acutol? I didn't know there was a problem, and now I see B&H has stopped listing it and also FX-39. What gives?

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There were supply problems after the manufacturer of Paterson's chemicals moved to Spain - should be resolved soon according to Geoffrey Crawley.

Hope this helps,

Lachlan

Lachlan: Do you get your Crawley news from the BJP??

MMfoto said:

Lachlan: Do you get your Crawley news from the BJP??

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Nope, I got the news from PhotoEngineer who heard from Bill Troop what Geoffrey Crawley had said! There is a thread somewhere on APUG about this.

Hope this helps,

Lachlan

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

accutol substitute

lachan,
I cannot find manufacturers time for Rodinal on the inside of the manufacturers box. Would you share your specific times?

Try www.digitaltruth.com

Lachlan

times for acros on digital truth

Digital truth does not show a time value for acros at ie 100 at 1:50 diluted Rodinal. They show 1:50 at ie 80 for 11.5 minutes. I suppose I could extrapolate developind time to be 12 or so at i.e. 100 and see how your tecnique works.

aligndont said:

Digital truth does not show a time value for acros at ie 100 at 1:50 diluted Rodinal. They show 1:50 at ie 80 for 11.5 minutes. I suppose I could extrapolate developind time to be 12 or so at i.e. 100 and see how your tecnique works.

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Whoops!!!!!!! Teach me to set tongue in gear with brain in neutral! I have not used this method with Rodinal and Acros but I have used this method with Rodinal and other films. I would suggest first trying to get a time for Rodinal and Acros at box speed - say add 20% to the times for EI 50 then add the 50% for reduced agitation. You should get good printable negs and will be able to refine them from there - indeed the system is sufficiently forgiving that a minute here or there is unlikely to be significant.

Hope this helps and good luck,

Lachlan

rodinal method

Thanks,
I'll give that a try.

The Rodinal 1+100 time listed on Digital Truth works well.

Acutol

Can I stop holding my breath now?

MMfoto said:

Can I stop holding my breath now?

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As it turns out Paterson didn't bring back Acutol, but they introduced Aculux 3 and reintroduced FX-39.

I like Aculux 3 a lot - it gives good full range negatives that are easy to print - reduced agitation methods work really well. However, in the interim I had tried out Rodinal with reduced agitation, and I must admit I somewhat prefer Rodinal, especially with Plus-X. (Plus-X in Diafine is incredible too!)

YMMV

Good luck with whatever you choose!

Lachlan

You could try Pyrocat HD instead.

I used Acutol, Acultol-S, and Aculux in the 70's, and went back to Adox Borax MQ. The various Paterson devs had major advantages, but all had disadvantages too.

Ian

don' cry over Acutol.

Three years ago I did a comparison of Acutol with PC-TEA as a result of an argument with Michael Scarpitti. I have no financial interest in which one wins. The $150 I got for the PT article is probably all I'll ever get. For anybody who is interested, I am attaching comparisons of characteristic curves and some extreme enlargements of negatives of the same subject on the same roll of film on the same day. The tree is a Mimosa. You will see that resolution is about the same, as was grain.

My point is more that there are several ways to skin a cat or develop film than anything else. I could also point out that the shelf life of PC-TEA concentrate is much longer than that of Acutol, but I won't. The moral of the story is don't cry if Acutol never makes it back. Learn something else.

Yes, in my experience ACROS works very well in Pyrocat-HD and in Pyrocat-MC

gainer said:

Three years ago I did a comparison of Acutol with PC-TEA as a result of an argument with Michael Scarpitti. I have no financial interest in which one wins. The $150 I got for the PT article is probably all I'll ever get. For anybody who is interested, I am attaching comparisons of characteristic curves and some extreme enlargements of negatives of the same subject on the same roll of film on the same day. The tree is a Mimosa. You will see that resolution is about the same, as was grain.

My point is more that there are several ways to skin a cat or develop film than anything else. I could also point out that the shelf life of PC-TEA concentrate is much longer than that of Acutol, but I won't. The moral of the story is don't cry if Acutol never makes it back. Learn something else.

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Interesting data Patrick and worth remembering PC-TEA.
I note however, that you diluted Acutol at 1+7 instead of the recommended 1+9 and that Michael Scarpitti recommends using Acutol (now deleted by Paterson`s) at 1+14 for use with a condenser light-source enlarger for printing on fixed grade #3 papers. Developing 35mm film to print onto grade 3 instead of grade 2 was the advice years ago for obtaining optimum sharpness and resolution from "miniature" negatives.

http://www.digitaltruth.com/chart/scarpitti-paterson.html

I thought I had posted a reply, but I guess I forgot to push the button.

Both gave practically the same CI under the conditions I used, which was about 0.55. There was little, if any, difference between them in grain, gradation and acutance. I would expect the same to be true if both were adjusted to give the CI required by grade 3. The comparison you see is between small portions of 15X photographic enlargements scanned on a flatbed at 600 dpi.

I don't remember why I used 1+7. I'm not absolutely sure I did. I may have labeled the file wrongly. Unfortunately, I have no more Acutol. Does 10 minutes at 70 F seem about right for normal CI at 1+7?

gainer said:

I thought I had posted a reply, but I guess I forgot to push the button.

Both gave practically the same CI under the conditions I used, which was about 0.55. There was little, if any, difference between them in grain, gradation and acutance. I would expect the same to be true if both were adjusted to give the CI required by grade 3. The comparison you see is between small portions of 15X photographic enlargements scanned on a flatbed at 600 dpi.

I don't remember why I used 1+7. I'm not absolutely sure I did. I may have labeled the file wrongly. Unfortunately, I have no more Acutol. Does 10 minutes at 70 F seem about right for normal CI at 1+7?

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The old dilution for Acutol was 1+10, although it could also be diluted 1+15 or 1+20 if greater control of development was required such as photographs taken in high contrast lighting conditions. The developer was later revamped and the standard dilution became 1+9 with 1+14 and 1+19 being suggested for a more compensating working solution.
The point I was making was that if you used Acutol diluted 1+7, then you used it considerably stronger than recommended by Paterson`s.

I looked up several things. I had saved my letter to Scarpitti describing the comparison photos, etc, that I sent him. I compared Acutol 1+14 with PC-TEA 1+50 for grain, gradation and sharpness. If I had developed FP4+ (Arista 100) for 10 minutes in Acutol 1+7, it would not have been printable on grade 2.5 as I stated in my letter. The characteristic curves I posted must have been mislabeled. At the time, I was still recovering from meningo-encephalitis. That takes a long time. It caused loss of memory connections, which can also be caused by aging, which is frustrating because there are things I know are in my memory, but I can't remember their names. Not that I'm getting old. I'm only 81. Here is the letter.
Mike,

I got my FP4+ and Acutol and have done a comparison of Acutol with my single solution
PC-TEA as I proposed a while ago. I shot 36 exposures of the same scene at the same exposure
with the camera on a tripod. The exposure was determined by incident reading with a Luna Pro
meter. I developed 2 short pieces, one in Acutol as per your tables that I found on the net by
Googling, and one in my PC-TEA developer composed of phenidone, ascorbic acid and
triethanolamine.
Acutol 1:14 at 7 minutes, 70 o F has a little less contrast than my developer at 7 minutes, 70 o
F. All the necessary detail is there in both, and the difference was made up in printing the Acutol
negative with a #2.5 Ilford MG filter on AGFA RC VC paper. The #3 filter was a little too
contrasty for my taste. I made these prints on my Beseler 23C condenser enlarger with APO
Rodagon 50 mm lens at 5.6. If you are going to see any difference in grain, it will be at the base
of the tree trunks in the Iris leaves. You will need at least a 5 X loupe.
You are right that Acutol is a very good developer. I think I am right also that my PC-TEA is
a very good developer. The major point I was trying to make with my mixtures cannot be shown
in a single test, as it involves the storage life of the stock, but the fact that sulfite is not needed to
make a fine grain high sharpness developer is shown. Nevertheless, if sulfite is required, it can be
added to the working solution through the B part, along with any other chemical that is not
soluble in glycol or TEA. In point of fact, a part A comprised of phenidone and hydroquinone
must have an amount of sulfite in the B solution in order for the superadditivity between
phenidone and hydroquinone to be activated. This amount need only be a gram or so per liter of
working solution. Without it, the hydroquinone-phenidone combination is a staining developer
akin to pyrogallol or catechol.
I am sending by UPS a package containing the unused part of the test roll and a small
amount of the PC-TEA developer along with some graphs for FP4+ in PC-TEA at 70 o F
prepared by Sandy King. These graphs are for 1 + 50 dilution. On the graph of H&D curves each
line has numbers that tell developing time, effective film speed, contrast index, and SBR in F-
stops that a paper with exposure scale of 1.55 could accommodate. This is a very wide range
paper because he is mostly interestd in so-called alternative processes such as platinum and
Kallitype. That would be about a No. 1 paper in graded silver. The curve for 10 minutes would
be about right for #2 paper and a SBR of about 5 stops, which is about the range of the scene I
used. It was an overcast day.
You will notice that the effective film speed does not drop below 100 even at the lowest
contrast indices

FX-15 is Acutol S

RIchardn said:

I have been developing Acros in Acutol and have been pleased with the results. Now I can't get hold of any acutol what would be a good replacement developer for Acros?
I am a bit of a beginner and like to keep things simple!

Click to expand...

Google that, you'll get some hits.

I don't know enough about Acutol to know what the S means.