D23 - Sodium Sulfite or Sulfate ??

[yossi]

The sodium sulfite that I ordered has a purity >=97%. Good enough for developer use?

 

[M-88]

The sodium sulfite that I ordered has a purity >=97%. Good enough for developer use?

All the chemicals I use to make D-76 at home are impure. Metol is grossly oxidized (it's brown already), whatever I should be using "anhydrous", is not anhydrous anymore. My D-76 reeks and looks like a muddy water, but still works well. IIRC the purpose of Sulfite is to preserve other chemicals and slow down the process of oxidizing. You should be fine with 97% Sulfite.

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A little off-topic: what's the benefit of making D-23? It can be easier to mix when one doesn't have anything other than Metol and Sodium Sulfite, but what are the differences in negatives? Is it finer, is it with more contrast, is it something different? Can anyone enlighten me on the subject? I have more than enough Metol so sometimes I'm considering to make D-23, but I'm always reluctant to do so.

 

[Donald Qualls]

The sodium sulfite that I ordered has a purity >=97%. Good enough for developer use?

Yep, that's about what technical grade usually runs, and that's good enough for developers except in certain specific cases (like Xtol clones).

 

[yossi]

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A little off-topic: what's the benefit of making D-23? It can be easier to mix when one doesn't have anything other than Metol and Sodium Sulfite, but what are the differences in negatives? Is it finer, is it with more contrast, is it something different? Can anyone enlighten me on the subject? I have more than enough Metol so sometimes I'm considering to make D-23, but I'm always reluctant to do so.

This might help you understand why D-23.

 

[yossi]

Yep, that's about what technical grade usually runs, and that's good enough for developers except in certain specific cases (like Xtol clones).

Thanks Donald.

 

[M-88]

This might help you understand why D-23.

Thank you, I've read the article. It seems D-23 is just not for me.

 

[Saganich]

I've been using D23 with replenishment for nearly 20 years. A couple notes: 1) after about 700 ml of replenishment to a 1-liter mix it's time for a new batch. There is a sweet spot somewhere, probably 500 ml, but I'm too much a slacker to mix another batch until I get bad results. Usually, that looks like all the mid-tones are dropping out. 2) The shelf life is a minimum of 6 months, even if it looks like coffee. I have gone way past that without issues unless it is over-replenished. Tracking pH is probably a good idea. 3) A healthy pinch of sodium sulfite before adding Metol keeps the batch from turning brown. 4) Metol has a good shelf life as well and tends to darken over time. I've used 3 yr old metol without issues (I think). 5) I mix 1 liter and then top that bottle off with the old stock for two reasons; to remove the air gap, and so there is enough volume on a liter for two SS tanks without the risk of pouring silver sludge into the tank 4 months into the future. I've read that this also 'mellows' the batch for the first few rolls and I concur with that since prior to this practice the first few rolls developed noticeably hot (poor transition in tonal values). 6) D23 can seem like your pulling the development and I've found that testing for time/density is important, especially if diluting 1:1, for the sake of getting a nice tonal range. If you are getting low contrast results then increase dev time. D23 naturally compensates in the higher densities so pushing dev time isn't destructive to high tones. 7) To get some extra boost a sodium sulfite/borax solution can be used as an after bath to normal dev times, (5g borax to 50g sodium sulfite in 1 liter of water for 5 minutes yields a 25% boost in zone 5 - 9 density). It's like two bath development but I prefer to call it a boost. 8) For contraction development using split development (equal times per bath) works much better than reducing development time and is somewhat panthermic. 9) The replenisher seems to fail quicker than the D23, I speculated this is due to oxidation so I use marbles to keep the air gap close to zero. I have had chemical reactions occurring causing heavy oxidation at the fluid line in the bottles, which discolors the bottles, like outgassing and staining the bottle above the fluid line. Haven't figured out what's causing this as it was too intermittent, but has disappeared since removing air gaps. My suspicions lie with the balanced alkali or to contaminants in the bottles I find in closed Biolabs (even though they were autoclaved) 9) Be careful using photoflo in the tanks because it gets back into the developer making it foamy. I hang film first then rinse using a squirt bottle rather than putting anything other than dev or fix in the ss tanks. 10) D23 works well in a range of temperatures (I don't mean panthermic), but I routinely developed film above 30c adjusting for time without any obvious issues...so no need to be suspicious of short dev times.

 

[albada]

To get some extra boost a sodium sulfite/borax solution can be used as an after bath to normal dev times, (5g borax to 50g sodium sulfite in 1 liter of water for 5 minutes yields a 25% boost in zone 5 - 9 density). It's like two bath development but I prefer to call it a boost.

Have you considered adding borax to D23 in order to eliminate the separate boost? The resulting formula would be similar to D76H, so D76H would be a good place to start.

 

[yossi]

Thank you, I've read the article. It seems D-23 is just not for me.

Horses for courses.

 

[Donald Qualls]

1) after about 700 ml of replenishment to a 1-liter mix it's time for a new batch. There is a sweet spot somewhere, probably 500 ml, but I'm too much a slacker to mix another batch until I get bad results. Usually, that looks like all the mid-tones are dropping out.

John Finch's advice is to make a half liter of replenisher for a liter of developer, develop 6 rolls without replenishment, then replenish until you've used up that half liter of DK-25R. At that point, keep just 250 ml of the replenished developer and top up with fresh (this may require making a 3/4 batch if it's important to you to avoid waste); this carries over the "seasoned" condition to the fresh developer. Then resume replenishing normally (from the first roll after mixing "seasoned" D-23) for another half liter of DK-25R. In his video on this, Finch claims to have carried the same batch of D-23 for years on end with this method. This is probably the cheapest possible way to develop film in the long term, with homebrew Parodinal based on a discounted source of acetaminophen in a close second.

From my own experience, if you mix small batches of replenisher and develop fairly frequently, you'll use up the replenisher before it darkens too much, and the developer will hardly darken at all. You can help this by either using marbles to minimize air space (and use glass or PET bottles, not accordion or brown plastic "photo" chemical bottles, which are too permeable) or blanketing the bottles with butane or argon after each use.

 

[BradS]

Have you considered adding borax to D23 in order to eliminate the separate boost? The resulting formula would be similar to D76H, so D76H would be a good place to start.

I've done both....regular D23 followed by an alkaline after bath and 5g Metol + 5g Borax + 100g S. Sulfite with water to make 1liter.
I mostly prefer the latter but the borax does change the character of the developer to the point that it's not really characteristic of D23 anymore.

 

[albada]

I've done both....regular D23 followed by an alkaline after bath and 5g Metol + 5g Borax + 100g S. Sulfite with water to make 1liter.
I mostly prefer the latter but the borax does change the character of the developer to the point that it's not really characteristic of D23 anymore.

Since you prefer the latter borax developer, others will prefer it too, so you could make your fortune selling it as "the Brad-55 miracle developer".
Seriously, for those interested, many D76-variants (including D23) are listed here. This is Ian Grant's site.

 

[BradS]

Since you prefer the latter borax developer, others will prefer it too, so you could make your fortune selling it as "the Brad-55 miracle developer".
Seriously, for those interested, many D76-variants (including D23) are listed here. This is Ian Grant's site.

Aw shucks, thanks. I really cannot claim any credit at all. I have been greatly inspired and guided by many extraordinary people like...
Ian Grant and Patrick Gainer and Ryuji Suzuki and Chris Patton....and others. Ian in particular has made an enormous and largely un-heralded contribution to our (photo chemistry) hobby. Thank you Ian!

 

[Donald Qualls]

Borax-accelerated variants of D-23 are all over the place. I found one on the net when I needed a developer (to which to add benzotriazole) to have the best chance of recovering images from "sixty-some years expired" ortho Verichrome I found in an Autographic Vest Pocket Kodak. They seem to vary in metol levels (anywhere from D-76 level up to D-23 original level) and amount of both borax and sodium sulfite. IMO it wouldn't be a bad thing to settle on a standardized version to allow publishing times for various films -- and 5 g metol, 5 g borax, and 100 g sulfite in a liter certainly doesn't seem likely to be the worst.

 

[Saganich]

Have you considered adding borax to D23 in order to eliminate the separate boost? The resulting formula would be similar to D76H, so D76H would be a good place to start.

Yea, sometimes you don't want the boost. I do that sometimes if I need a little push because the lighting was really flat, or I'm using HP5.

 

[Christiaan Phleger]

That was an old photographers trick I used to do at the newspaper, counting on the Ph rise to help in pushing. I had a nice little system for a small time when one of the paper's shooters had a strong preference for D-76 over all else. The shooter's film throughput was never enough to finish an entire Gallon of D-76 per week, and it would be wasted. Since I was the junior shooter the weekly chemical mixing was up to me, and I since I had a strong and building interest I was happy to mix a fresh batch of D-76 once a week. I would save the remainder of the week's gallon in another jug, marked 'Strong D-76 for Pushing' and I would keep it for the end of 2nd week (following the mixing week) for use in the weekend's pushed rolls from high school/college sports. The boosted D-76 would get the then new T-Max P3200 to just astronomic ISO/EI.

This arrangement/procedure worked pretty well until the shooter took a week break, and not needing to mix a batch of D-76 I did not, and another shooter used the jug marked "Strong D-76 for Pushing" and got Tmax 400 negs that were pure black. So no more "Strong D-76 for Pushing" in the shared processing space, but by that time I had switched the pushing chemistry to Tmax Developer, which worked more consistently for everyone and had an easier time handling pushing. The poorly lit gyms and fields that we were expected to get great sports photos all had major hot spots and dark corners and it was inevitable that shooters would have exposures that could be far off the intended density that the roll was processed to, and Tmax Developer could be a bit kinder for the printing of very dense negatives.

 

[pentaxuser]

Thank you, I've read the article. It seems D-23 is just not for me.

Did you decide this after reading the article and if so what was it that made you come to your conclusion?

Thanks

pentaxuser

 

[pentaxuser]

That was an old photographers trick I used to do at the newspaper, counting on the Ph rise to help in pushing. I had a nice little system for a small time when one of the paper's shooters had a strong preference for D-76 over all else. The shooter's film throughput was never enough to finish an entire Gallon of D-76 per week, and it would be wasted. Since I was the junior shooter the weekly chemical mixing was up to me, and I since I had a strong and building interest I was happy to mix a fresh batch of D-76 once a week. I would save the remainder of the week's gallon in another jug, marked 'Strong D-76 for Pushing' and I would keep it for the end of 2nd week (following the mixing week) for use in the weekend's pushed rolls from high school/college sports. The boosted D-76 would get the then new T-Max P3200 to just astronomic ISO/EI.

This arrangement/procedure worked pretty well until the shooter took a week break, and not needing to mix a batch of D-76 I did not, and another shooter used the jug marked "Strong D-76 for Pushing" and got Tmax 400 negs that were pure black. So no more "Strong D-76 for Pushing" in the shared processing space, but by that time I had switched the pushing chemistry to Tmax Developer, which worked more consistently for everyone and had an easier time handling pushing. The poorly lit gyms and fields that we were expected to get great sports photos all had major hot spots and dark corners and it was inevitable that shooters would have exposures that could be far off the intended density that the roll was processed to, and Tmax Developer could be a bit kinder for the printing of very dense negatives.

An interesting post I may have misunderstood you meaning but it sounds as if the remainder of the D76 you mixed and kept became so strong D76 that it boosted P3200 to astronomic EI. What was that EI and why was it able to do this?

In fact it became so strong that it turned Tmax 400 negs pure black. Was it then so strong that it ruined all the Tmax 400 negs or simply rendered them what is referred to as "bullet proof" i.e. perfectly printable but requiring the paper to need much longer exposure?

Thanks

pentaxuser

 

[M-88]

Did you decide this after reading the article and if so what was it that made you come to your conclusion?

Thanks

pentaxuser

No, I was pretty skeptical about the usefulness of D-23 personally for me long before reading the article. But the author specifically mentions that curves are virtually identical for D-23 1+1, D-76 1+1. It is also heavily implied that D-23 is handy for large format. So, if it yields no significantly finer grain, no speed boost and the only clear advantage is ease of mixing (apart from rather vague to me "excellent tonal separation"), it isn't for me. I have a bucketful of Hydroquinone at home and I've been happily using homemade D-76 along with factory made Xtol.

 

[pentaxuser]

Thanks M-88 for your reply

pentaxuser

 

[BradS]

No, I was pretty skeptical about the usefulness of D-23 personally for me long before reading the article. But the author specifically mentions that curves are virtually identical for D-23 1+1, D-76 1+1. It is also heavily implied that D-23 is handy for large format. So, if it yields no significantly finer grain, no speed boost and the only clear advantage is ease of mixing (apart from rather vague to me "excellent tonal separation"), it isn't for me. I have a bucketful of Hydroquinone at home and I've been happily using homemade D-76 along with factory made Xtol.

There's a reason (maybe, several very good reasons) why commercially packaged D76 is widely available and D23 is not.
Kodak figured it out decades ago...

 

[Donald Qualls]

There's a reason (maybe, several very good reasons) why commercially packaged D76 is widely available and D23 is not.

Number one reason is it's easier to make a profit on a product that outperforms the home-mixed version like packaged D-76 does and is still the worldwide standard for black and white developers, than it is on one that was out of favor with most photographers long before digital started eating into film's market. D-23 is so easy to mix that it's literally barely more work to mix it from scratch than it would be to mix pre-packaged (just measuring the powders).

 

[BradS]

Number one reason is it's easier to make a profit on a product that outperforms the home-mixed version like packaged D-76 does and is still the worldwide standard for black and white developers, than it is on one that was out of favor with most photographers long before digital started eating into film's market. D-23 is so easy to mix that it's literally barely more work to mix it from scratch than it would be to mix pre-packaged (just measuring the powders).

Yup. D76 outperforms D23 and the ingredients cost less (becuase HQ is MUCH less expensive than Metol/Elon).
D76 makes D23 a historical curiosity.

 

[Donald Qualls]

More importantly, packaged D-76 outperforms home-mixed D-76 (due to the latter's pH change over a period of a week). Combine that with the discounts that come with buying chemicals by the train car load, and you find commercial D-76 costs hardly any more than home mixed, and it's more consistent and less prone to measurement errors and "Did I already mix in the metol?"

There is one significant advantage of D-23 over D-76: hydroquinone is a known or suspected carcinogen, and it's not present in D-23. Mind you, photographers don't have the kind of cancer rates organic chemists do, but it's there none the less.

 

[MattKing]

The commercial labs that were a major user of black and white developers may very well have chosen a developer that was packaged conveniently and pre-mixed to a high standard of consistency and quality over one they mixed themselves - even if it would have been slightly less expensive to mix their own.
Eastman Kodak seems to still sell to the motion picture labs constituent chemicals in large bulk sizes - so some labs do still mix their own.