With the demise of Liquidol, I’ve begun experimenting with Ethol LPD, and so far the results are unexpected.
I mixed from powder, gave the stock a day to cool and dissolve any leftovers, and mixed up a 1+1 working solution. Unfortunately my first test negative was one I haven’t printed before, so I have no baseline for comparison, but read on. (It’s got a somewhat long scale but doesn’t look outlandishly contrasty to the eye or anything.) Condenser enlarger with above-the-lens Ilford filters.
Paper was MGRC pearl, and I experimented with dev times between 1:00 and 2:30. The image came up really fast—significant visibility within 10-12 seconds—and I didn’t detect noticeable changes after the first 45 seconds or so, so I eventually converged on developing for a minute.
The results were incredibly contrasty. At grade 2, I got chalk and charcoal; by the time I worked down to grade 0, things were somewhat ok, and grade 00 was generally better but with some mud in the shadows. This strikes me as absurd for a reasonably normal negative; I can’t just print everything at grade 00.
(The tone does look somewhat cold, as expected from 1+1 dilution. The manufacturer’s claim is that changing the dilution does not appreciably change the contrast.)
This morning, having rinsed the trays the night before and left them out to air-dry, I noticed a lot of very dark, sooty staining in the developer tray. There’s always a little staining, but this was extreme. I don’t know if it’s normal behaviour for LPD or related to my contrast problems.
The only thing I can think of that I may have done wrong is mixing in water that was too hot; I didn’t measure the temperature but just used pretty hot tap water, figuring that with a recommended range of 80-90°F precision wasn’t too critical. I could understand if an error there had broken down one of the ingredients, but is there any reason it would turbocharge the developer?
I’m baffled, and any advice is welcome. I’d like this to work; LPD looks great in principle and people obviously get working results with it, so I’d like to resolve the problem.
Thanks in advance
-NT