Dimezone-S film devloper formulae

alan greeley · Sep 1, 2008

I'm in the UK.
When Tech Pan was available I devised a dev which had Dimezone-S and metol as the agents. By changing the proportions of these one could obtain a full range of different contrast scale from pretty soft (even with Tech Pan!) to very punchy.
I now have some Adox CMS 20 and want to try out similar tests. One snag with my dev was that it didn't keep too well so i am thinking of separating the 2 agents and have a dev made up of 3 stock solutions - one with the Dimezone, one with the metol and one with the alkali, say sodium carbonate.
Can anyone suggest the very best way to preserve Dimezone-S in solution? The metol gives no problem, just preserved with sodium sulphite, it lasts for a long time.
I would be grateful for any suggestions - thanks.

Alan

Marc . · Sep 1, 2008

Alan,

Welcome to Apug !
I have no direct answer to your question, except that Sodium sulfite is a common developer preservative,
but I can suggest three links to Dimezone-S based film developers, on Ryuji Suzuki's web site :

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Marc

Tom Hoskinson · Sep 1, 2008

alan greeley said:
I'm in the UK.
When Tech Pan was available I devised a dev which had Dimezone-S and metol as the agents. By changing the proportions of these one could obtain a full range of different contrast scale from pretty soft (even with Tech Pan!) to very punchy.
I now have some Adox CMS 20 and want to try out similar tests. One snag with my dev was that it didn't keep too well so i am thinking of separating the 2 agents and have a dev made up of 3 stock solutions - one with the Dimezone, one with the metol and one with the alkali, say sodium carbonate.
Can anyone suggest the very best way to preserve Dimezone-S in solution? The metol gives no problem, just preserved with sodium sulphite, it lasts for a long time.
I would be grateful for any suggestions - thanks.

Alan

Try using Propylene Glycol as the Dimezone-S solvent and make up a Dimezone-S percentage stock solution - this procedure works ok with Phenidone (and should work ok here - as long as you don't saturate the Propylene Glycol with Dimezone-S).

If you want to make a long lived sulfite free single solution stock concentrate that includes Metol and Dimezone-S, look up Pat Gainer and Sandy King's recipe for Pyrocat-MC.

Alan Johnson · Sep 1, 2008

Monopropylene glycol and triethanolamine are sold at www.mistralni.co.uk
The method of reacting metol with TEA and water so it dissolves in propylene glycol follows after Pyrocat-MC here:
www.apug.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-41390.html

dancqu · Sep 1, 2008

alan greeley said:
...I devised a dev which had Dimezone-S and metol as the agents.
By changing the proportions of these one could obtain a full range
of different contrast scale from pretty soft (even with Tech Pan!)
to very punchy. Alan

I've had some encourageing results doing the same but with
testing as paper developer. Something I should be back at.
I believe quite a range of contrasts may come from one
grade of paper. Phenidone was used.

BTW, why the one over the other? Phenidone
or Dimezone-S? Dan

john_s · Sep 1, 2008

dancqu said:
.........BTW, why the one over the other? Phenidone
or Dimezone-S? Dan

Dimezone-S keeps better in aqueous solution.

Also, it has a higher molecular weight than phenidone and as a result, and perhaps for other reasons, weight-for-weight it's thought to be a bit weaker than phenidone, so a little more might be required. Someone on the pure-silver list several years ago did some tests and thought that 20% or 25% more was about right, if I remember correctly

srs5694 · Sep 2, 2008

Tom Hoskinson said:
Try using Propylene Glycol as the Dimezone-S solvent and make up a Dimezone-S percentage stock solution - this procedure works ok with Phenidone (and should work ok here - as long as you don't saturate the Propylene Glycol with Dimezone-S).

FWIW, I've done this -- or more precisely, I've made PC-Glycol using Dimezone S rather than phenidone. It worked fine for about two and a half or three years.

alan greeley · Sep 2, 2008

Thanks to all of you! In one day I've had enough suggestions to last me a week of research. I posted this on my second day with this organisation - - very impressive! Keep them coming in!

Alan

john_s · Sep 2, 2008

Does anyone know how much dimezone-s (or phenidone, for that matter) will dissolve in propylene glycol?

I tried phenidone in alcohol some years ago and it was very unsuccessful. The alcohol, though, was 90% food grade, so was 10% water which is presumably enough to spoil the phenidone.

Photo Engineer · Sep 2, 2008

Try Everclear or 95% - 99% alcohol if you do it again. That might help. IDK.

PE

alan greeley · Sep 3, 2008

Do you have a formula I can try please?

Alan

alan greeley · Sep 3, 2008

Do you have a formula I can try please?

Alan

alan greeley · Sep 3, 2008

srs5694 said:
FWIW, I've done this -- or more precisely, I've made PC-Glycol using Dimezone S rather than phenidone. It worked fine for about two and a half or three years.

Do you have a formula I can try please?

Alan

alan greeley · Sep 3, 2008

Tom Hoskinson said:
Try using Propylene Glycol as the Dimezone-S solvent and make up a Dimezone-S percentage stock solution - this procedure works ok with Phenidone (and should work ok here - as long as you don't saturate the Propylene Glycol with Dimezone-S).

If you want to make a long lived sulfite free single solution stock concentrate that includes Metol and Dimezone-S, look up Pat Gainer and Sandy King's recipe for Pyrocat-MC.

Do you have a formula i can try please?

Alan

srs5694 · Sep 3, 2008

Alan, check here for formulas for PC-Glycol, PC-TEA, Mytol, and Instant Mytol.

Dimezone-S film devloper formulae

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