Bill Troop - is ID-68 similar to Microphen?

Ian Grant said:

Found the book.

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Wow! Thanks for all the info.

Mark

Christiaan Phleger said:

In addition to being relatively inexpensive, Xtol does seem to improve as it ages; that is, the quality of the results on any given emulsion is better with a replenished system. Grain, sharpness, highlight tonal separation, shadow detail, it is my personal opinion that all the solvent/replating action going on maximizes any emulsion. I ran a very stable Xtol replenished system for years, T-Max 100 at 32 with a slight pull was the cat's meow Panatomic-X replicant that was remarkable for the super bright wedding dresses at the beach.

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Developers like ID-11/D76, Agfa44 (Ansco17), Adox Borax MQ, etc, were all formulated for replenishment, and more recently so was Xtol. Once seasoned, either with use or the addition of older developer, there's a definite increase in negative quality.

In the late 1970s I shared a deep tank line using ID-11, none of liked processing in a fresh batch of developer, however there was enough film being processed to quickly season it within a couple of days.

Ian

Since ID-68 is mostly used to gain a little film speed at the expense of some aspects of quality, would replenishment reduce that speed, as it seems to do with other replenishment systems?

Microphen is a proprietary developer whose formula is undisclosed. ID-68 is a published formula. There is speculation that Microphen is closely related to ID-68. The best way to see if they provide similar results is to test them.

john_s said:

Since ID-68 is mostly used to gain a little film speed at the expense of some aspects of quality, would replenishment reduce that speed, as it seems to do with other replenishment systems?

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It doesn't lose quality, but it will only produce nominally fractionally better results in some ways if the end users respect its potential effect on shadow speed when they expose their film. Ilfotech DD/ DD-X is intended by Ilford to be a liquid version of Microphen - there's nothing mysterious about this.

PQ developers may produce higher sharpness than MQ not because of the sulphite level difference between 85 and 100g/l (no one is really going to be able to tell the difference between them in a PQ developer - the difference seems vanishingly small in proper R&D lab tests for anything over 75-ish g/l) but from development inhibition effects inherent to specific P:Q ratios.

Lachlan Young said:

It doesn't lose quality, but it will only produce nominally fractionally better results in some ways if the end users respect its potential effect on shadow speed when they expose their film. ....

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Does that mean "yes"?