D-23 at 1:7 - Proof at Last - It Works Well

[Murray Kelly]

I think the 400 Arista would be a poor choice of film to test FX-1 against the others. Crawley warns in his BJP article that fast films respond poorly to FX-1 and indeed sugests the results would be worse than 'ordinary' developers. He warns against using it for anything much above 100 ISO and not even all the 50 ISO films he had available.
Patrick's 3x3 gets pretty interesting and useful information about D23, minimum sulfite + borax and MCB on a fast film. My personal pick is the 1 stop under minimal + borax.

Murray

 

[gainer]

These developers respond to FP4+ (or the other way round) in much the same way as for the faster film. I don't know from personal experience about FX-1. When I have finished the FP4+ series, I will post results as another ring around.

 

[gainer]

So here they are. The ring around pictures were scanned directly from the negs. I used the Phot Shop Pro stretch function on each one so differences in contrast would not get in the way of the comparison. The detail was scanned from an 8x10 real photographic print from an MCB negative and is a sample of what one would see in a 16x20 print. I used the MCB neg because there is no sulfite in that developer. I don't know what kind of treatment would produce grain in an FP4+ negative, but sulfite pretty surely will not reduce it.

One can see detail in the shadows of the enlarged sample that are lost in the coarser resolution of the ring around.

 

[gainer]

It seems the shadow detail in the enlarged sample was lost as well, along with the rest of it.

 

[gainer]

I had to cut down the file size.

 

[Murray Kelly]

OK - I'm a bit slow, but Patrick has made a good point (as usual ). Metol can be rejuvenated by ascorbate but only protected from its degradation products by sulfite. Therefore one would expect to be able to use far less metol in a developer if one switched from sulfite to ascorbate or AA.

The thread was about a slow acting D23 derivative much like a Beutler high dilution developer. Pat's times are way less than the 16 mins. of the D23/7 proposed by Dan.

Could it be that by using AA or ascorbate the metol could be reduced even more? It would result in a stand type developer with, say, half or a quarter of the metol and allowed to work for the 16 mins of the original post? I am used to 20-30 mins. regularly, to enhance the edge effect. I use slow films mostly and they respond to stand development better than 400ISO films. I don't even have any 400 here.

Could it be that the iodide additive as in FX-1 would be beneficial if you wanted to take all the troubles of using tripod and fine lenses to achieve this end?

Questions, questions. I know - suck it and see.

Patrick has pointed out elsewhere that ascorbate doesn't develop in the pH range of borax so it is only a rejuvenator here. At what pH does the superaditivity cut in? This thread has posed more questions in my mind than usual and I thank one and all for the ideas expressed.

Pat has gone to a lot of trouble to make his point about substituting ascorbate for sulfite with his test strips but maybe we're wandering off the original theme of D23 at dilution acting like a Beutler developer. I would have thought that, perhaps, that was kinda obvious, if one looks at the composition of the final product.

I am encouraged to run the next EFKE 50 thru a way weaker metol brew with AA using a stand development process. I acknowledge Patrick doesn't subscribe stand development but I like to see things that maybe aren't there! Hicks's Law?

Food for thought.

Good night and thanks for the thread.

Murray

 

[gainer]

I try stand development from timt to time. It is handy to be able to start development and go off to do something else for 2o minutes or more. My latest experiments were with a developer like the MCB but using p-aminophenol instead of Metol. It's pretty good as I proposed it in the article about experiments with Metol and ascorbic acid. I began with 5.45 grams of p-aminophenol in a liter with 8.8 (call it 9) grams of ascorbic acid, enough sodium or potassium hydroxide to make the sodium salt of the p-aminophenol and the ascorbate from the acid, and enough borax to buffer the solution to pH of between 9 and 10 which is about as close as I can measure with my test strips. This solution was quite active. In order to dilute it, I used a solution of borax and ascorbic acid instaed of plain water. As it turned out, the 5.5 grams of p-aminophenol with 35 grams of ascorbic acid and 100 grams of borax make 4 liters (a gallon is close enough for government work) of a developer that is slow enough to consider use for stand development. Accordingly, I set a test strip to develop for 24 minutes and then went off and forgot about it. When I remembered, it had been in the soup for 30 minutes. The negatives were a little contrasty, but otherwise quite good, with no sign of streaking or uneven development. The film was Arista 400 EDU. Later I tried FP4+ with good result.

I have an idea that dilution by cutting down the concentration of the developing agent will give better stand development results than dilution by adding water. So far, it seems to work at least as well, but I have yet to test stand with this developer diluted of by water alone.

 

[Murray Kelly]

Yes, I have been coming to that conclusion myself. I recently used Rodinal vey dilute and added extra NaOH. The bottle said KOH but I didn't have any.

Agfa have siad that one should use a minimum of 10ml per film but I got to wondering why. They never let on why they say that.

It occurred that the p-aminiophenol was dilute by intention of the user but the accellerator (alkali) could easily be so dilute at say 1:200 or higher that there was insufficient to maintain the high pH needed. So I add a 'bit'. Most scientific, I know.

The results were good but I clouded the experiment by adding a little ascorbate as Pat sugested. The speed increase on Bluefire was quite impressive.

So, to get back to the low concentration metol/AA/borax the only one you have to consider exactly in a 'deco' Beutler would be the metol and make sure there was enough AA and borax would look after themselves, so to speak. At the low pH the AA/ascorbate would only be rejuvenating the metol and the borax buffer could be any concentration to maintain the buffering. Almost too easy. All spoonful measurements.

This is one place where the metol in glycol (via triethanolamine) would be a godsend to measure the small amounts needed.

And, hey, Patrick stand development works! No comments from you about acutance or compensation? Well then, how about edge effects? I have seen some that distract from the image with old films and one more recently with APX100.

As an OT I have some FX-1 made up nearly 50 years ago and sealed in glass ampoules that work fine, still. All I have to do is make the accellerant.

Thanks for the thoughts and hard work showing us this stuff.
Murray

 

[gainer]

I am thinking that one way to minimize or eliminate the hazard of bromide drag in stand development is to make the specific gravity of the developer such that the bromide generated by development floats in place rather than flowing down the negative. Sounds crazy, but I do a lot of that kind of thinking and try to filter out the really crazy stuff by experimenting. I am considering an inert compound to increase S.G., one of which is sodium sulfate.

 

[dancqu]

[QUOTES=Murray Kelly;511187]
"The thread was about a slow acting D23 derivative
much like a Beutler high dilution developer. Pat's
times are way less than the 16 mins. of the
D23/7 proposed by Dan."

Actually an 8-80 gram D-23 is a concentrate of FX-1
minus the 48 grams of sodium carbonate. The reminder
I posted some posts back was intended to refix in the
mind of the readers of this thread that the working
strength was the above 8-80 formula at a 1:7. Mr.
Gainer mentioned only 80 or more.

"...the metol could be reduced even more? It would
result in a stand type developer with, say, half or a
quarter of the metol and allowed to work for the 16
mins of the original post?"

I'll make a correction to an earlier post. Were one to add
that 48 grams of sodium carbonate to that 8-80 D-23 one
would have 16 liters of FX-1, not the 8 liters mentioned.
A half a liter of that 1:15 dilution will develop any slow
speed film. That is a half liter of full strength FX-1.

"Patrick has pointed out elsewhere that ascorbate doesn't
develop in the pH range of borax ..."

Nor sodium carbonate. IMO, ascorbate is not a developing
agent. As for it's effect on the character of the image apart
from it's not being a sulfite, it has no effect. IIRC Mr. Gainer
has suggested as much as NaOH as an activator. Has any
one ever seen a print processed solely by an ascorbate?

"Pat has gone to a lot of trouble to make his point about
substituting ascorbate for sulfite ... maybe we're wandering
off the original theme of D23 at dilution ..."

Is not some alkali also needed, borax? Part of the appeal
of D-23, 8-80 or the official, at whatever dilution is it's
super simple formula. Dan

 

[gainer]

Borax is cheaper than sulfite. The amount of ascorbic acid used is cheaper than 80 or 100 grams of sulfite. The amount of Metol can be reduced while still giving the activity of D-23. The ascorbic acid acts as a rejuvenator of Metol thus extending the capacity of the developer. It is not that much more difficult to mix than D-23. It was an interesting experiment in which I encountered some non-traditional ideas about interactions between ascorbate and other developing agents. Finally, I thought you guys might like to hear about it.

 

[Murray Kelly]

Dan, FX-1 without the iodide is just another Beutler IMO. There seems to be a little confusion as to what he actually did use in his darkroom, so variation is the order of the day with 'Beutler' developers. My speadsheet tells me that 16L of FX-1 requires 2.5g x 16 = 40g carbonate. Just for the record, I am using the '61 BJP formulae here, but you may be using an update.

Yes ascorbate is so slow nobody volunteers to use it on its own. Its superaditivity with metol and phenidone with CO3 is well known but can anyone tell me if it's superaditive in a lower pH such as borax? Maybe it just rejuvenates the metol so that gets to work longer/better? Would that be a fair definition of superaditivity?

For me the sulfite is a bind. I can only access bisulfate which is used here (Australia) as a pool pH lowering agent. It's way too acid for developers. I wish I could find some cheap source of sulfite, like the pool shop. Therefore a sulfite free Beutler appeals to me.

Patrick, I believe ID-44 uses sugar to slow down Brownian movement (is that what bromide drag is caused by?) and methyl cellulose as little as 1% will slow things down too. I have tried with a wallpaper paste which is straight poly cellulose (Polycel) but didn't pursue that line because I got sidetracked looking for a homebrew Bluefire developer that didn't eat up my precious few grams of phenidone. Another line of investigation.

More questions - no answers. I know.

Cheers. Murray

 

[gainer]

You don't want the bisulfate, anyway. Perhaps you meant to say bisulfite.

It appears from the description in Mees & James of the relative effects on activity of ascorbic acid and sodium sulfite that the difference is in the way they do the job. That would seem to indicate that superadditivity is not involved in either case. However, one of the ideas about how superadditivity works is that the primary developer is kept from oxidizing by the secondary one. It could also be that what we consider to be the primary developer may act as a catalyst for true developing action by the secondary one. There are some things that are strange here. Hydroquinone acts much like ascorbate when there is sulfite present, but ascorbate doesn't need the sulfite to show what looks like superadditivity. Without any sulfite, hydroquinone in those experiments showed no increase in activity of Metol while either sulfite or ascorbate did. The requirements for either ascorbate or hydroquinone to act alone as developer are much the same if you want a litho developer. Hydroquinone does not act like either sulfite or ascorbate. Ascorbate is said to be a surface developer, which affects the grain shape and size while allowing full ISO rating.

It seems a shame that there are still mysteries to have fun with at a time when the majority of those buying cameras are not interested in anything but snapshots like the in first days of Kodak: "You press the button. We do the rest."

 

[Murray Kelly]

"You don't want the bisulfate, anyway. Perhaps you meant to say bisulfite. "

Unfortunately it 'is' sodium acid sulphate. pH around 1 or 2. I can get metabisulphite from the homebrew shop but that's more work to use than I need in this instance.

"Without any sulfite, hydroquinone in those experiments showed no increase in activity of Metol while either sulfite or ascorbate did."

So sulphite is a superadditivity agent too, if you take the broad definition of increasing activity of another agent beyond simple addition of the two agents? I always think of it as a preservative, pH setter or grain solvent.

Thanks

Murray