Adox MQ developer: where and when ?

Harold33 · Sep 28, 2012

With the years, I learned to appreciate a lot this developer which I discovered in a marginal mention by Crawley quoted (with a misprint) in Anchell & Troop's Cookbook.

However, I never saw its formula or history quoted in any printed source.
Since Adox (C. Schleussner Fotowerke) disapeared in 1963, I suppose it was formulated before, but when ?
Does anyone knows something about the place and date of conception and where the formula was first published ?

jim appleyard · Sep 29, 2012

What is the missprint?

ath · Sep 29, 2012

Over at RFF some people are using this developer and AFAIR there is also a recipe somewhere.

Ian Grant · Sep 29, 2012

I don't remember a misprint, it's not in the Darkroom Cookbook.

Adox Borax MQ is a developer we used commercially in the 1980's I used to supply it to a couple of other photographers along with replenisher. It's a slightly better developer than D76, finer grain, better sharpness and also better tonality along with no drop in box speed.

In the past it was in the articles section here on APUG but a lot of data was lost in a forum upgrade

Adox Borax MQ

Metol 2g
Sodium Sulphite (anhyd) 80g
Hdroquinone 4g
Borax 4g
Potassium Bromide 0.5g
Water to 1 litre

Ian

Ian Grant · Sep 29, 2012

ath said:
Over at RFF some people are using this developer and AFAIR there is also a recipe somewhere.

Interesting that the formula in that thread is a cut & paste of my posting the formula elsewhere

Ian

Alan Johnson · Sep 29, 2012

This is what Crawley said about Adox MQ Borax in BJP Dec 16 1960,the earliest reference to it I have found:
"The concentration of sodium sulphite is 20 grammes lower than in D.76,which reduces the amount of physical development and improves sharpness.The sheen referred to earlier in D.76 appears to be caused by the nature of borax alkalinity (in a sensitive carbonate chemical developer the introduction of borax in a concentration of 0.1 grammes per litre will produce a slight sheen).The addition of potassium bromide to a borax developer will remove this sheen virtually entirely,for it appears to prevent discontinuities usually caused by borax alkalinity.The buffering of Borax with added boric acid does not seem to improve definition,although the borax sheen is reduced and sharpness improved.Adox MQ Borax has times slightly longer than D.76,contrast rising more slowly."

ath · Sep 29, 2012

It's a small (analog) world, Ian...

Harold33 · Sep 29, 2012

Ian Grant said:
I don't remember a misprint, it's not in the Darkroom Cookbook.

Anchell & Troop, Cookbook, 1998, p. 44 (quoting Crawley): "... Adox (....) formula, which is as follow: metol 1 gram (...)"

In fact, the correct formula (you give it bellow) is metol: 2 grams.

Ian Grant said:
Metol 2g
Sodium Sulphite (anhyd) 80g
Hdroquinone 4g
Borax 4g
Potassium Bromide 0.5g
Water to 1 litre

Ian

Ian Grant · Sep 29, 2012

Alan Johnson said:
This is what Crawley said about Adox MQ Borax in BJP Dec 16 1960,the earliest reference to it I have found:
"The concentration of sodium sulphite is 20 grammes lower than in D.76,which reduces the amount of physical development and improves sharpness.The sheen referred to earlier in D.76 appears to be caused by the nature of borax alkalinity (in a sensitive carbonate chemical developer the introduction of borax in a concentration of 0.1 grammes per litre will produce a slight sheen).The addition of potassium bromide to a borax developer will remove this sheen virtually entirely,for it appears to prevent discontinuities usually caused by borax alkalinity.The buffering of Borax with added boric acid does not seem to improve definition,although the borax sheen is reduced and sharpness improved.Adox MQ Borax has times slightly longer than D.76, contrast rising more slowly."

Other companies used lower Sodium Sulphite concentrations with similar increases in sharpness, Agfa 44 (Agfa Ansco/Gaf 17) is one example. Ilford ID-68 (Microphen) another both having 80g/l Sulphite Dupont used 75g/l in T ND-2 another MQ Borax fine grain developer.

Fotokemia FR-2 is in fact Adox Borax MQ.

Ian

Gerald C Koch · Sep 29, 2012

The optimal concentration of sodium sulfite for halide solvency is around 70 g/l. Concentrations lower AND HIGHER than this value exhibit less solvency. So the Adox formula seems better in this respect than D-76.

Trask · Sep 29, 2012

Ian, what's the replenisher formula? I'm trying to gain an understanding of how one could take any particular formula, and derive a replenisher. I believe that bromides will build in a replenished developer, so presumably one would have less of one component in the replenisher than in the straight developer.

Ian Grant · Sep 29, 2012

Adox Borax MQ Replenisher

Metol 3g
Sodium Sulphite 80g
Hydroquinone 5g
Borax 18g
Water to 1 litre

Replenish at 15-20ml per 35mm/120 film, discard any excess developer.

Ilford chemists wrote a series of articles in the 1950's discussing formulating a PQ version of ID-11/D76 there was also a parallel artice on determining exhaustion rates and then replenishment.

The issue with an MQ developer is Bromide build up which is a limiting factor, bromide surpresses Metol so MQ developers need to be developed on a bleed system which means discarding developer before adding replenisher, this reduces the bromide build up/

Phenidone can tolertate much higher levels of Bromide so you can use a topping up system which is far more economic. One consequence of Ilford#s research was the release of Autophen a commercial PQ fine grain developer, the formula was published in a BJP article, it's in Jacobson, Developing as well called Axford-Kendall Fine Grain Developer with two different replenishers one for Topping up, the other for Bleed systems. Some books mistakenly claim the Autophen (PQ variant of ID-11/D76) formula is the same as Microphen, which is in fact ID-68.

I did list these formula in an article here on APUG- (there was a url link here which no longer exists) That may give you some ideas of the differences in replenishers.

Ian

JPD · Sep 29, 2012

The similar Agfa 17 is my standard developer. I use it 1+1.

Warm Water 750 ml
Metol 1.5 g
Sodium Sulfite (Anhydrous) 80 g
Hydroquinone 3 g
Borax 3 g
Potassium Bromide 0.5 g
Cold Water to make 1 ltr

Ian Grant · Sep 29, 2012

Agfa 44

Just to correct you this is Agfa 44 later called Orwo 44

It's also published as Agfa Ansco /GAF 17. Agfa is a German company and when they owned Ansco the US Agfa Ansco used different numbers to Germany, they also made miscalcutions in converting Anhydrous weights to monohyrate in some fomulae.

Ian

JPD said:
The similar Agfa 17 is my standard developer. I use it 1+1.

Warm Water 750 ml
Metol 1.5 g
Sodium Sulfite (Anhydrous) 80 g
Hydroquinone 3 g
Borax 3 g
Potassium Bromide 0.5 g
Cold Water to make 1 ltr

Keith Tapscott. · Sep 30, 2012

Alan Johnson said:
This is what Crawley said about Adox MQ Borax in BJP Dec 16 1960,the earliest reference to it I have found:
"The concentration of sodium sulphite is 20 grammes lower than in D.76,which reduces the amount of physical development and improves sharpness.The sheen referred to earlier in D.76 appears to be caused by the nature of borax alkalinity (in a sensitive carbonate chemical developer the introduction of borax in a concentration of 0.1 grammes per litre will produce a slight sheen).The addition of potassium bromide to a borax developer will remove this sheen virtually entirely,for it appears to prevent discontinuities usually caused by borax alkalinity.The buffering of Borax with added boric acid does not seem to improve definition,although the borax sheen is reduced and sharpness improved.Adox MQ Borax has times slightly longer than D.76,contrast rising more slowly."

I have never understood what Crawley meant about the so called "borate sheen" or seen any scientific evidence to back it up. Borax actually releases some boric acid when gets dissolved, so how can adding boric acid help except for increasing the buffering capacity?

JPD · Sep 30, 2012

Ian Grant said:
Just to correct you this is Agfa 44 later called Orwo 44

It's also published as Agfa Ansco /GAF 17. Agfa is a German company and when they owned Ansco the US Agfa Ansco used different numbers to Germany

It's both raining and snowing, but I had to walk to my darkroom to check it up in the book "Agfa Rezepte" (Agfa Wolfen, 1960) i keep there. Yes, it's Agfa 44. Thanks for correcting me.

The real Agfa 17 isn't published in this book.

Alan Johnson · Sep 30, 2012

Keith Tapscott. said:
Borax actually releases some boric acid when gets dissolved, so how can adding boric acid help except for increasing the buffering capacity?

Crawley,BJP Dec 30 1960:
"The significance of the borates is really not confined to their self-buffering action,they have in addition a restraining action on development.It is well known that borax readily forms complexes with organic substances,and it would seem likely that it does so with the developing agency,with a density depressing effect.............in an energetic carbonate developer with a fairly low concentration of developing agency to make it sensitive,a very small addition of borax-0.1 gm/litre-will give depression which could not originate from any effect on alkalinity.Sodium metaborates also show this effect but to a very much lower extent,and will not per se provoke a strong dichroic sheen.......... ."

I think he is saying the sheen he saw is related to the complexing of borax with the developing agents.

Gerald C Koch · Sep 30, 2012

It's long been known that borates in a hydroquinone containing developer lower the amount of developer fog. It is believed that the borate ion combines with certain oxidation products and prevents them from acting as developing agents. The effect is not seen with other developing agents such as metol.

JPD · Oct 1, 2012

Gerald C Koch said:
It's long been known that borates in a hydroquinone containing developer lower the amount of developer fog. It is believed that the borate ion combines with certain oxidation products and prevents them from acting as developing agents. The effect is not seen with other developing agents such as metol.

If that's the case, is the Potassium bromide still needed?

Gerald C Koch · Oct 1, 2012

JPD said:
If that's the case, is the Potassium bromide still needed?

Adox MQ is similar to D-76 which does not use KBr. Try mixing the Adox formula without the bromide and see if you like the results.

Ian Grant · Oct 2, 2012

D76 was designed to be replenished and gives it's best results when seasoned which happens when the level of Bromide in the working solution has built up. There is an ideal maximum level with MQ developers which was investigated by Axford & Kendal of Ilford as part of their research into PQ developers.

The Bromide is there in Adox Borax MQ, Agfa 44 (Agfa Ansco/GAF 17) etc as a starter, in the same way that RA-4 colour developers use a starter which adds Bromide/Iodide etc.

Agfa's version of D76 Agfa 19 is idenical except for the addition of 0.5-1g Potassium Bromide as a starter. Konica's version KD28 also uses 0.4g Bromide and Kodak themselves use it in one D76 variant.

Ian

Adox MQ developer: where and when ?

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