Alter id68 (microphen) to produce less contrast??

MingMingPhoto said:

hi all!
shout out koraks (I think it was him) who put me on to microphen.

I love the developer, but it's very contrasty. It's actually perfect contrast - but I'm interested in seeing if I can reduce contrast somehow.

Is there some sort of chemical I can add/reduce in the id68/microphen formula - or some sort of treatment I can do to produce less contrast with it?

ty!

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I don’t know if you got the correct information on what is causing your contrast issue.

There are 3 parts to developing b/w film - assuming you have properly mixed the chemistry (duh!): Time, temperature and agitation.

Generally speaking time and temperature control the DENSITY of the negative.

The amount of agitation you use will affect the CONTRAST.

More agitation (more vigorous or longer time) will affect the contrast.

With more agitation, fresh(er) chemistry washes over the surface of the film more often and provides more/better developing action.

Everybody seems to have their own magic bullet for this, but a reasonable rule of thumb, for ’normal results’ is 5 seconds of agitation every 30 seconds.

That involves about 2-3 full tank inversions, just swishing the tank around won't do it, inversions physically move fresh(er) chemistry THROUGH THE SPIRALS OF THE FILM, which swishing around won't do as well or as thoroughly.

To improve the contrast of the negative do 3 or 4 inversions instead of 2.

Of course if you did continuous agitation then the contrast would increase much more, but that isn't usually where you want to go.

FIRST, set up a standard development time and a consistent agitation procedure, THEN you can make changes as you gain experience.

My basic plan was 68F, 8 to 8-1/2 minutes as a starting point and meticulous exposure.

I’ve done everything from B/W to E-4 and E-6 slide film and color printing, so pretty much done it all.

60+ years in photo, owned/ran a camera store for 50 years.

Good luck.

Ian Grant said:

Yes, there are differences with developers, and they can be quite large, but with any developer negative contrast is a function of exposure and development time.

Ilford spent some years working on Autophen before marketing it. They realised the slight gain in speed with a PQ variant of ID-11/D76 and then exploited this further with ID-68/Microphen, one major step was reducing the Sodium Sulphite. Developers like Adox Borax MQ & Ahgfa 17/Agfa Ansco 47 give slightly better film speed compared to ID-11/D76.

The formula for Autophen was incorrectly claimed to be that of Microphen in the Photo Lab Index, and then many other US publications, just one of hundreds of errors il the Photo Lab Index.

My point is though that Autophen and ID-68/Microphen are quite similar, and you would need a more significant change in developer to make it worthwhile changing developer.

Ian

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ah ok i see, just contrast. do you feel that d76 is significantly different from microphen?

but going back to the constant thing, it makes total sense it’s more to do with time since the shadows are nothing more than the base of the film and you can continue build highlight and midtones on top of that base.

thank you for the clear break down

I have just stuck with D-76 1:1, 68F and the 8 to 8-1/2 minute times as I noted, for my own work, mostly because D-76 was available EVERYWHERE and a good, solid developer.

Control of temperature throughout the developing process is paramount, thermal shock can up the appearance of grain.

From developing temperature to the temperature of the wash water, it must be very stable.

Developers are developers, and as Ian Grant noted above different developers yield different results.

The other issue is that (back before B&H and EVERYTHING PHOTOGRAPHIC), you used whatever your local camera store carried, if you had one.

We carried D-76, D-11, Microdol-X, Diafine, Acufine, Ilford ID-11 and one other from Ilford which I cannot think of now, TMAX developer, Kodak, Ilford, Fuji and Agfa films.

24 running feet of Kodak, Ilford and Agfa papers, in 100 boxes and 25-sheet packs - essentially if they sold it, we had it.

And this was in a pretty small footprint store, plus a full array of cameras, lenses, and a VERY wide range of accessories.

A full lab processing setup (FUJI) color printing, up to 12x18, black & white, up to 16x20, E-6 slide processor and digital services.

Literally, the ONLY photo processes we did NOT offer were Kodachrome slide processing, and movie film processing - WAAAAY COMPLICATED.
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AND CONTRAST IS MAINLY CONTROLLED BY AGITATION, AS I NOTED, DENSITY IS TIME AND TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED.

IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME, DEVELOP A ROLL OF B/W FILM IN A TANK W/O AGITATION, AND SEE HOW THE CONTRAST LOOKS.

THE DENSITY WILL BE THERE, PROBABLY, BUT THE CONTRAST WILL BE VERY LOW.

The rule of thumb was/is that if your negatives printed OK on a #2 or #3 paper, you were pretty much on the money for agitation (contrast) during development.

MingMingPhoto said:

ah ok i see, just contrast. do you feel that d76 is significantly different from microphen?

but going back to the constant thing, it makes total sense it’s more to do with time since the shadows are nothing more than the base of the film and you can continue build highlight and midtones on top of that base.

thank you for the clear break down

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"since the shadows are nothing more than the base of the film"

This shows it's an exposure issue, there should be detail in the shadows. You need to increase exposure by maybe half a stop, The perhaps drop development by 10%.

Ian

IOWA CAMERA GUY said:

AND CONTRAST IS MAINLY CONTROLLED BY AGITATION, AS I NOTED, DENSITY IS TIME AND TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED.

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That's a very contentious remark. And no, I don't agree with it, also based on many, many experiments with stand and semi-stand development. I think it's also an oxymoron at a theoretical level: if no agitation means no contrast, then a stand-developed negative would come out with a perfectly equal tone and no differentiation in density whatsoever. It evidently does. So what this leaves is the old story of compensation through local exhaustion, which, as said, is a contentious topic mostly because there are so many factors that affect the degree to which this compensation occurs.

Agitation does influence contrast through the intermediate variable of supply of active developer to the film surface. Local developer activity is furthermore influenced by developer makeup, developer temperature and of course the compound effect is influenced by the time the developer can work on the emulsion.

I really can't get behind the (over-)simplification of one processing parameter affecting overall density and another affecting contrast. It's not a tenable position from a theoretical viewpoint, nor does empirical evidence support it particularly well.

koraks said:

That's a very contentious remark. And no, I don't agree with it, also based on many, many experiments with stand and semi-stand development. I think it's also an oxymoron at a theoretical level: if no agitation means no contrast, then a stand-developed negative would come out with a perfectly equal tone and no differentiation in density whatsoever. It evidently does. So what this leaves is the old story of compensation through local exhaustion, which, as said, is a contentious topic mostly because there are so many factors that affect the degree to which this compensation occurs.

Agitation does influence contrast through the intermediate variable of supply of active developer to the film surface. Local developer activity is furthermore influenced by developer makeup, developer temperature and of course the compound effect is influenced by the time the developer can work on the emulsion.

I really can't get behind the (over-)simplification of one processing parameter affecting overall density and another affecting contrast. It's not a tenable position from a theoretical viewpoint, nor does empirical evidence support it particularly well.

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Totally agree.

Ian

Ian Grant said:

"since the shadows are nothing more than the base of the film"

This shows it's an exposure issue, there should be detail in the shadows. You need to increase exposure by maybe half a stop, The perhaps drop development by 10%.

Ian

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I would agree, they seem to maybe have mixed up exposure density with contrast but who knows? Good to see people back at it with film again, they seem to be having some fun going through the process of getting it right.