First Beutler Results

chuckroast · Jul 16, 2024

(Moving this discussion from here as it is a shift in topic: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/d-23-spiked-with-sodium-hydroxide.207894/post-2811988)

Shot and processed some 35mm Fomapan 200 on a Leica M2 with a 50mm f/2 Summicron V3
Metered at ASA 200 (box speed)
Processed in Beutler 50:50:400 open tank for 10 min @ nominal 20C with 10 sec/min agitation

Note that the following are negative scans have had their curves and sharpness fiddled digitally (but sparingly). I wanted to do this with 35mm to see how pronounced the grain and overall sharpess looked. At best, this is an approximation of a print, and until I get this into an enlarger will I know what the "real" look is.

My first order look at this suggests that:

It definitely seems to produce sharp results
It therefore also emphasizes grain, at least as compared to the same film in Pyrocat-HD
As suggested in the parent thread that launched this, Buetler feels a lot like D-23 spiked with sodium hydroxide

Next up will be some MF or LF developed in this stuff but for now ...
.

John Wiegerink · Jul 16, 2024

That looks pretty darn good to me. Was it a bright, overcast day? If so, it has good shadow detail and highlights held very good. Of course, like you say, this is a scan and not a wet print.

chuckroast · Jul 16, 2024

John Wiegerink said:
That looks pretty darn good to me. Was it a bright, overcast day? If so, it has good shadow detail and highlights held very good. Of course, like you say, this is a scan and not a wet print.

It was later in the afternoon on a slightly hazy/hot day with fairly bright highlights.

I metered for the shadows to be nominally on Zone III, trusting the developer to compensate the highlights.

This may be the first film/dev combo I have ever found that demonstrates a true ASA of box speed with conventional development. Most of them are 1 stop slower than box unless you semistand or EMA develop.

John Wiegerink · Jul 16, 2024

chuckroast said:
It was later in the afternoon on a slightly hazy/hot day with fairly bright highlights.

I metered for the shadows to be nominally on Zone III, trusting the developer to compensate the highlights.

This may be the first film/dev combo I have ever found that demonstrates a true ASA of box speed with conventional development. Most of them are 1 stop slower than box unless you semistand or EMA develop.

A little more speed is never a bad thing. The surprising thing is that you hit box speed with a Foma B&W film. I don't honestly think I ever have.

chuckroast · Jul 16, 2024

John Wiegerink said:
A little more speed is never a bad thing. The surprising thing is that you hit box speed with a Foma B&W film. I don't honestly think I ever have.

I have never hit box speed with ANY film/dev combo when agitating normally. The closest I ever got was Pyrocat-HD which shows about 1/3-1/2 slower than box effective speed.

I routinely get full box speed - or very nearly so - when doing high dilution, low agitation development like semistand. The long duration of the film sitting in developer lets the shadows develop fully - i.e., hit full shadow speed.

The problem with semistand (and trust me, I've spent hundreds of hours on it at this point is that it can very quickly build up contrast in not nice ways. You have to fiddle with developer dilution and standing time to get that under control.

Milpool · Jul 16, 2024

If I remember correctly the working solution was originally 50ml A + 50ml B + 500ml water. The working concentration was (rounded):

Metol 0.8g/l
NaSulf. 4g/l
NaCarb. (mono) 5g/l

chuckroast · Jul 16, 2024

One other thing: The picture of the rocks, especially, shows strong edge effects, something Buetler is known for. However, until I make a wet print, I have no way of knowing whether that was in the negative or an artifact of the digital sharpening process.

chuckroast · Jul 16, 2024

Milpool said:
If I remember correctly the working solution was originally 50ml A + 50ml B + 500ml water. The working concentration was (rounded):

Metol 0.8g/l
NaSulf. 4g/l
NaCarb. (mono) 5g/l

Some sources do have it as 1:1:10 ...

Efke and Beutler Formula Tests

www.imagebrooklyn.com

But, some have it as 1:1:8 ...

Beutler Formula

Beutler 105 divided developer

pictorialplanet.com

Beutler developer formulae

Occasionally questions have come up about Beutler developers. To simplify searches I'm posting two formulae from my copy of The Manual of Photography, 7th Edition. To limit thread drift please confine additions to this thread to: 1. Other recipes for Beutler d...

www.photo.net

I wonder what the "correct" one is. I would imagine that the higher dilution you suggest would lead to a lower CI and perhaps higher acutance and more prominent grain

EDIT: I would not that there isn't that much difference between the two. at 50:50:500 we get 16.67% developer in solution. At 50:50:400 we get 20% developer in solution. While slightly more concentrated, it's not night and day.

Alan Johnson · Jul 16, 2024

Here Edward Zimmerman gives the original formula from the first edition of Beutler's book:

Beutler developer formulae

Occasionally questions have come up about Beutler developers. To simplify searches I'm posting two formulae from my copy of The Manual of Photography, 7th Edition. To limit thread drift please confine additions to this thread to: 1. Other recipes for Beutler d...

www.photo.net

This seems equivalent to 1+1+10 but is not entirely clear.
A later re-publication is here:

Film Developer: Beutler High Acutance

Beutler High Acutance Film Developer (Neofin Blue Formula)

web.archive.org

revdoc · Jul 16, 2024

Milpool said:
If I remember correctly the working solution was originally 50ml A + 50ml B + 500ml water. The working concentration was (rounded):

Metol 0.8g/l
NaSulf. 4g/l
NaCarb. (mono) 5g/l

In case anyone is interested, this is how I make 300ml of working strength Beutler's:

metol 1/4 tsp
sodium sulfite 1/4 tsp
sodium carbonate 1/2 tsp
water 300ml
stir until dissolved

It's a very quick mix, probably as fast as using premixed solutions.

chuckroast · Jul 16, 2024

revdoc said:
In case anyone is interested, this is how I make 300ml of working strength Beutler's:

metol 1/4 tsp
sodium sulfite 1/4 tsp
sodium carbonate 1/2; tsp
water 300ml
stir until dissolved

It's a very quick mix, probably as fast as using premixed solutions.

I do a fair amount of open tank processing and that involves 2 liters of working solution. For Beutler's, that would be 200ml each of A & B added to 1600ml of water. So, I premixed a liter each part so as to have plenty on hand.

My next excursion here will be to further dilute it perhaps 100:100:1800 and do semistand for an hour. That should be interesting...

Milpool · Jul 16, 2024

chuckroast said:
I do a fair amount of open tank processing and that involves 2 liters of working solution. For Beutler's, that would be 200ml each of A & B added to 1600ml of water. So, I premixed a liter each part so as to have plenty on hand.

My next excursion here will be to further dilute it perhaps 100:100:1800 and do semistand for an hour. That should be interesting...

You could also try a low alkalinity variation to see what differences there might be - Beutler published another acutance developer with a working solution of simply 2g/l metol and 10g/l sodium sulfite anhyd. (the stock solution is 10g/l metol and 50g/l sulfite).

GRHazelton · Jul 16, 2024

Way back in the day - the 1950s - my Father and I mixed up Beutler developer. We shot with Plus X, rated a bit higher than the box ASA of 125, if I recall correctly. The negatives were a little thin, but with good shadow detail. We printed primarily on Luminos fiber paper, grade 3. We could easily make good 8 x 10s, and with a little luck good 11 x 14s.
Kodak, if you're listening, please bring back Plus X!

chuckroast · Jul 16, 2024

GRHazelton said:
Way back in the day - the 1950s - my Father and I mixed up Beutler developer. We shot with Plus X, rated a bit higher than the box ASA of 125, if I recall correctly. The negatives were a little thin, but with good shadow detail. We printed primarily on Luminos fiber paper, grade 3. We could easily make good 8 x 10s, and with a little luck good 11 x 14s.
Kodak, if you're listening, please bring back Plus X!

I am fortunate to still have a good supply of frozen Plus-X in 35mm, 120, and 4x5. Back in the day I would buy it in a "Pro Pack" box of 20 rolls and 35mm came with purple logos .... ah the memories.

chuckroast · Jul 16, 2024

Milpool said:
You could also try a low alkalinity variation to see what differences there might be - Beutler published another acutance developer with a working solution of simply 2g/l metol and 10g/l sodium sulfite anhyd. (the stock solution is 10g/l metol and 50g/l sulfite).

That's in the direction of the highly dilute D-23 we've been discussing in the parent topic to this one.

D-23 is 7.5g metol and 100G/l sodium sulfite.

But at 1+9 dilution, that turns in 0.75g/l metol and 10g/l sodium sulfite.

I use that combo to do hour long standing development with only an initial agitation and a midpoint agitation.

If you do nothing else, that developer will give you very low contrast negatives albeit with high acutance.

If you ad 0.5 g/l of sodium hydroxide to restore some of the alkalinity to it and do stand, you get a high acutance developer of medium contrast and good compensation of the highlights.

This is not unlike Beuhler that adds sodium carbonate to the mix to kick up developer alkalinity.

So all of these metol/sulfite variants start with the idea of D-23, but then more or less do the same thing - they optimize for acutance at the expense of grain, and fiddle with the ratios of other components to regulate the degree of compensation.

D-23, and it's variations are the most versatile film developers I've ever used, among which include .... Dektol, HC-110, D-76, DK-50, Pyro 510, PMK, Pyrocat-HD, Microdol-X, and now, Beutler.

John Wiegerink · Jul 17, 2024

I have done the same thing with DK-50. Gerald Koch (miss him) recommended I try DK-50 diluted Beutler-style when I was playing with DK-50. I think DK-50 Buetler-style is mentioned in the Film DeveloperCcookbook also. It worked great for medium format, but 35mm might be different. I didn't really see any gain to using DK-50 diluted Buetler-style so I went back to using Xtol-R.

Milpool · Jul 17, 2024

chuckroast said:
That's in the direction of the highly dilute D-23 we've been discussing in the parent topic to this one.

D-23 is 7.5g metol and 100G/l sodium sulfite.

But at 1+9 dilution, that turns in 0.75g/l metol and 10g/l sodium sulfite.

I use that combo to do hour long standing development with only an initial agitation and a midpoint agitation.

If you do nothing else, that developer will give you very low contrast negatives albeit with high acutance.

If you ad 0.5 g/l of sodium hydroxide to restore some of the alkalinity to it and do stand, you get a high acutance developer of medium contrast and good compensation of the highlights.

This is not unlike Beuhler that adds sodium carbonate to the mix to kick up developer alkalinity.

So all of these metol/sulfite variants start with the idea of D-23, but then more or less do the same thing - they optimize for acutance at the expense of grain, and fiddle with the ratios of other components to regulate the degree of compensation.

D-23, and it's variations are the most versatile film developers I've ever used, among which include .... Dektol, HC-110, D-76, DK-50, Pyro 510, PMK, Pyrocat-HD, Microdol-X, and now, Buheler.

Understood. What I meant was to try and "bookend" the alkalinity for a given gradient and see if this has an impact on image structure. Given enough development time the 2g metol/10g sulfite developer without an additional alkali should be able to produce the desired density - although it would likely require some agitation.

Haist includes a few other potentially fun acutance developers to try (high emulsion speed-low gradient) along the spiked D-23 lines. One by Bogdanov is very similar except instead of 0.75g metol it uses 0.25g metol and 0.25g HQ.

One concern I haven't seen addressed in these threads, which would impact image structure, is fog. Have you measured this with your spiked D-23 variant (especially given the long development times)? It has a very high pH for a developer without any KBr. Based on most published formulas of this general type there is almost always a decent amount of restrainer. Just something to think about in terms of "optimization".

chuckroast · Jul 17, 2024

John Wiegerink said:
I have done the same thing with DK-50. Gerald Koch (miss him) recommended I try DK-50 diluted Beutler-style when I was playing with DK-50. I think DK-50 Buetler-style is mentioned in the Film DeveloperCcookbook also. It worked great for medium format, but 35mm might be different. I didn't really see any gain to using DK-50 diluted Buetler-style so I went back to using Xtol-R.

For ordinary development, I found DK-50 to be very low fog and develops cleanly, but it drove grain more than I like

I've done some higher dilution semistand development in DK-50 and gotten a mixed bag of results. For many subjects it drives local contrast in the mid tones into ugly places. I've found the MQ style developers and semistand are a dangerous combination, generally, for that exact reason. The MQ action is so aggressive that long development times will cause local contrast bumps that I find unpleasant.

OTOH, if the subject is already in a very short SBR, it can really make an image pop. Here is 4x5 Fomapan 200 in DK-50 1:3 semistand for an hour. Shot with a 127mm Ektar on a Crown Graphic in late afternoon shade with a very short overall SBR:

This still feels a little over the top to me. I would likely dilute further if I did this sort of thing again ... but boy do I love those leaf edges

chuckroast · Jul 17, 2024

Milpool said:
Understood. What I meant was to try and "bookend" the alkalinity for a given gradient and see if this has an impact on image structure. Given enough development time the 2g metol/10g sulfite developer without an additional alkali should be able to produce the desired density - although it would likely require some agitation.

Yeah, the whole "spike it with lye" thing came about because I wanted super dilute D-23 for the sharpness, but I wanted to do low agitation with long time for the full shadow speed and edge effects.

Milpool said:
Haist includes a few other potentially fun acutance developers to try (high emulsion speed-low gradient) along the spiked D-23 lines. One by Bogdanov is very similar except instead of 0.75g metol it uses 0.25g metol and 0.25g HQ.

One concern I haven't seen addressed in these threads, which would impact image structure, is fog. Have you measured this with your spiked D-23 variant (especially given the long development times)? It has a very high pH for a developer without any KBr. Based on most published formulas of this general type there is almost always a decent amount of restrainer. Just something to think about in terms of "optimization".

I have not done any densitometry with this stuff at all. I am fundamentally too lazy to bother and I'd rather make pictures I will say that, informally, I see no evidence of significant fog, but that's not science, just a casual look.

The only exception is that I do use semistand for processing very old films of unknown provenance. I have processed films as old as Super XX from 1961. Both D-23 and Pyrocat-HD have produced very printable negatives, but - shockingly - there is evidence of fog. I would attribute this to being age related, not driven by chemistry. In any case, the images were quite printable and the fog was a fairly minor irritant.

You can see scans of prints made from that 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 Super XX here:

https://ozzie.tundraware.com/SuperXX/

The spots on the image are not caused by any processing artifacts. They are the result of mechanical failure of the emulsion being stored stacked in the box for 60+ years.

The grain is also quite expected. Super XX was grainy. It was pretty much replaced by Tri-X, especially in smaller formats.

Ian Grant · Jul 17, 2024

John Wiegerink said:
I have done the same thing with DK-50. Gerald Koch (miss him) recommended I try DK-50 diluted Beutler-style when I was playing with DK-50. I think DK-50 Buetler-style is mentioned in the Film DeveloperCcookbook also. It worked great for medium format, but 35mm might be different. I didn't really see any gain to using DK-50 diluted Buetler-style so I went back to using Xtol-R.

Geoffrey Crawley recommended using dilute DK-50 in the BJP Almanac in 1960, and it was included through into the BJP Annuals until the 1990s.

Ian

gorbas · Jul 17, 2024

John Wiegerink said:
DK-50 diluted Beutler-style

Can you please provide more info on this approach? Thank you in advance!

John Wiegerink · Jul 17, 2024

Ian Grant said:
Geoffrey Crawley recommended using dilute DK-50 in the BJP Almanac in 1960, and it was included through into the BJP Annuals until the 1990s.

Ian

Ian,
Yes, if I remember correctly, it even mentions that in the Film Developer Cookbook. Might be where Gerald got it from, since I don't remember Gerald actually saying he used it himself. I could be wrong on that part.

chuckroast · Jul 17, 2024

Perplexity can be helpful here, perhaps:

what is dk-50 diluted beutler style

DK-50 diluted in a Beutler style refers to a specific way of diluting and using Kodak's DK-50 developer for film processing. Here are the key points about...

www.perplexity.ai

I have gotten very sharp, very contrasty results from DK-50 at 1:3 in semistand application. See my example in #18 above.

As noted, however, at least in extended development scenarios, MQ developers develop way too much contrast for my taste. This is even worse with films like Fomapan 200 that like to get contrasty in their own right

gorbas · Jul 17, 2024

John Wiegerink said:
Ian,
Yes, if I remember correctly, it even mentions that in the Film Developer Cookbook. Might be where Gerald got it from, since I don't remember Gerald actually saying he used it himself. I could be wrong on that part.

OK, thank you! I will check FDC, have a few different editions. I tried Dk-50 at 1:3 and higher but with higher dilutions developing times become too long for my taste. My next plan is to try it with warmer developer, 24C.

gorbas · Jul 17, 2024

chuckroast said:
Perplexity can be helpful here, perhaps:

what is dk-50 diluted beutler style

DK-50 diluted in a Beutler style refers to a specific way of diluting and using Kodak's DK-50 developer for film processing. Here are the key points about...

www.perplexity.ai

I have gotten very sharp, very contrasty results from DK-50 at 1:3 in semistand application. See my example in #18 above.

As noted, however, at least in extended development scenarios, MQ developers develop way too much contrast for my taste. This is even worse with films like Fomapan 200 that like to get contrasty in their own right

Sorry, Chuckroast haven't seen your post earlier. Unfortunately Perplexity answer is absolutely useless here:
The Beutler developer itself is typically made from two stock solutions (A and B) mixed with water in a 1:1:8 ratio. DK-50 diluted in a similar manner aims to achieve comparable results
Generally I stay away from full stand developer. This is totally "fooling around" project for me, let's see what can be done.

First Beutler Results

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