Well, staining pyro formulas have made a gigantic difference for me in terms of printing ease and quality, in all formats. Saying you quit because of something Brett Weston said way back when might not have any relevance with today's films and papers. But at that point in time he mainly shot medium format using Agfapan, and deliberately underexposed and overdeveloped to give him those famous blacked out graphic shadows. So if you want to eat your cake and have it too, with reference to detail in both the deep shadows and upper highlights, that approach won't work so well. There are all kinds of pyro formulas, some based on pyrogallol and some on pyrocat. Once LFF is back up, one can look up the "pyro war" threads of past years, which got pretty brutal between different potential formula tweaks. I eventually threw a few punches myself. I don't know how Bob does it in a Jobo unless he uses an awful lot of solution volume to keep the air out in the first place. I personally keep about a dozen different film developers in the lab, mostly for specialized purposes, but like I said earlier, still prefer
basic PMK for general usage.
