Cold tone print developers

Tom Kershaw · Jul 17, 2006

I have been using ILFORD MULTIGRADE and Fotospeed PD-5 print developers over the past 9 months or so of having a personal darkroom, and these seem to work well for my purposes. However, I'm now interested in using a cold tone developer but the packagings of ILFORD Harman Cooltone and Tetenal Eukobrom are rather small, and I like the idea of mixing from scratch.

Any suggestions?

Donald Miller · Jul 17, 2006

I like the MAS Amidol formula for my work. Formula found at www.michaelandpaula.com By varying the amount of KBR you can affect the tone.

Tom Hoskinson · Jul 17, 2006

Tom, My personal favorite Cold Tone Developer is Ilford Universal Concentrated Liquid Developer.

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Also, take a look at these Cold Tone developers:

Adrian Twiss post on Cold Tone Developers
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Tom Kershaw · Jul 17, 2006

Tom,

Thanks for pointing me towards the Ilford developer, it would certainly be cheaper than the Amidol formula for 16x20s. I have 'The Darkroom Cookbook' but was interested in what else was out there.

Tom.

Gerald Koch · Jul 17, 2006

The tone produced by any print developer can be cooled by the addition of benzotriazole to the working solution. Try using 5 to 10 ml of a 0.2% solution to 1 liter of working developer. This amount can be further increased for colder tones.

Ryuji · Jul 17, 2006

Tom Kershaw said:
I have been using ILFORD MULTIGRADE and Fotospeed PD-5 print developers over the past 9 months or so of having a personal darkroom, and these seem to work well for my purposes. However, I'm now interested in using a cold tone developer but the packagings of ILFORD Harman Cooltone and Tetenal Eukobrom are rather small, and I like the idea of mixing from scratch.

Since you prefer to mix yourself, if you care for low toxicity and environmental impact, I recommend DS-14 with addition of benzotriazole. Those who don't like mixing it can buy it from Digitaltruth (Tektol Neutral). Regarding the packaging, a rumor goes that Digitaltruth is considering 5 gallon cubes, as many of their customers requested them.

DS-14 can keep very long in bottles, so if you mix in large batch, it's a good choice.

reellis67 · Jul 17, 2006

I currently use the Ilford Cooltone developer, but I have some Clayton Ultra Cold that I haven't tried yet. The Ilford works very well with MGIV FB. I also have tried to get a kit from Artcraft to make the Burki and Jenny Cold tone dev, but I haven't been able to get them to email me back with ordering instructions for custom kits... I can say that I am very pleased with the Ilford Cooltone - I'm almost out of my first litre of it and have already made it my primary developer.

- Randy

Phillip P. Dimor · Jul 17, 2006

I like Ethol LPD 1:1 with a few drops of 1% benzotriazole. Plenty cold for me..

Cold tone print developers

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