Chemistry Choices

[3 Olives]

I went to Freestyle to buy some Stop Bath and figured I'd buy some other chemistry to make it worth my while. They were out of the Kodak D-76 I wanted to buy. My son and I are new to developing so I was at a loss.
I'd appreciate hearing your choices of Developer for Film and Paper, Fixer, and Stop Bath. We are only doing B&W now but will doing some color eventually. Thanks.

 

[Christopher Walrath]

I am currently using the Arista brand chemicals and am happy with the results. My first combo was HC110 Kodak Developer, Kodak Indicator Stop Bath and Kodafix Fixing agent. The only thing to remove me from that was economics v. stop taking pictures. What's a guy ta do?

 

[fschifano]

If you like D-76, you'll like XTOL equally well if not more. For paper, Dektol is hard to beat. Stop and fixing baths don't really matter that much, so buy on price and availability. The only thing I'd recommend is to stick with rapid fixers.

 

[mts]

I like the TMax developer very much, sold in a concentrate for dilution 1+4 and used as 1-shot. Most often I use a scratch-mix clone that was published about twenty years ago when TMax developer was first introduced. There might be some differences between the clone and the official product, but they are not visible to my eye. It works very well with a wide variety of films and of course with TMax-100/400. For large format 4x5 general pictorial work I use D-76, or for wider tonal range D-23 divided development as described by Adams in his book "The Negative." These two developers and have served me well for many years. Most of the well-known popular developers are going to give you good results with today's emulsions.

 

[jim appleyard]

Ilford's ID-11 is the same as D-76. There are many choices to choose from, none are bad.

For film, Kodak also makes X-Tol, as mentioned before, Microdol-X (although you'll lose a stop in film speed), & HC-110

Ilford makes Ilfosol, DD-X, Ilfotec and Perceptol, which is like Microdol-X.

Edwal makes FG-7, a very underused dev, but a good one.

And Clayton makes developers which I don't know much about, but others do on here.

For paper, I generally use Dektol.

 

[removed account4]

go to the sprint systems of photography website
and you can order everything from there
film+print developer, stop bath, fix remover too.
the film developer is like d76 but metol free
and some tend to like it better ... the fix is a rapid fix
and the stop bath smells like vanilla.
it is a system, meaning, you can re-use the print dev/stop/fix until the
stop bath indicates, then all 3 are bad. the developer ( film ) is single shot ...

it is easy to mix, all 1:9 ( chem:water ) and they have a very good developer+film chart on their website.
a lot of schools like their chemistry because it is easy to mix, and very good.

they are a site sponsor and their help/tech advisor person is very good!

good luck!

john

 

[3 Olives]

go to the sprint systems of photography website
and you can order everything from there
film+print developer, stop bath, fix remover too.
the film developer is like d76 but metol free
and some tend to like it better ... the fix is a rapid fix
and the stop bath smells like vanilla.
it is a system, meaning, you can re-use the print dev/stop/fix until the
stop bath indicates, then all 3 are bad. the developer ( film ) is single shot ...

it is easy to mix, all 1:9 ( chem:water ) and they have a very good developer+film chart on their website.
a lot of schools like their chemistry because it is easy to mix, and very good.

they are a site sponsor and their help/tech advisor person is very good!

good luck!

john

Thanks for the tip. I ordered from them Sunday night and it was waiting for me when I got home today.