Can developer effect image sharpness?

Bruce Watson said:

I guess that depends on your definition of "a lot".

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If you'd tried Paterson Acutol-S, Ilford Hyfin, Johnsons Definol, Kodak HDD etc then you'd appreciate just how much. Acutol-S was overkill with 35mm negatives.

But yes you're right often it was at a cost of losing tonality and an increase in grain.

The current approach using Pyrocat or PMK is more akin to the Johnsons Meritol developers giving a better overall balance of sharpness, acutance and fine grain.

Ian

yes different developers can affect apparent shaprness as has been detailed by many above. But D-76 is capable of giving very sharp negatives.
Any problems with your technique and you can lose that sharpness. So was camera always focussed correctly at an optimum aperture (5.6 or 8). Then scanning will lose a fair amount of sharpness. Then pixel peeping on screen at roughly 96ppi will make things look even less sharp. Suggest you print your negs direct to photographic paper and my bet is you won't have a problem with sharpness assuming you have your enlarger aligned properly and use a decent enlarger lens at its optimum aperture. i.e. do you really have a problem? You may just have a dodgy scanner for all we know.

Ian Grant said:

The current approach using Pyrocat or PMK is more akin to the Johnsons Meritol developers giving a better overall balance of sharpness, acutance and fine grain.

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And that's the art I think -- getting the balance.

I was exclusively LF by the time I found out what PMK was, and Pyrocat too. They do look interesting. But with LF I'm typically working with fairly low enlargement levels. With film this size (5x4) I can resolve quite a bit of image detail and graininess is typically a moot point with LF. And with LF I'm already way up the curve of diminishing returns when it comes to sharpness.

In short, I've run enough experiments; I'm more interested in using what I've learned to make photographs. But I surely do hope that people keep experimenting and reporting their results.