Halcyon p-phenylenediamine developer test

Keith Tapscott. · Aug 27, 2025

Alan Johnson said:
Here are the results for Halcyon, Perceptol and D-76. All are sharpened equally.
Lppm resolution is subject to small scanning height errors.

Halcyon appears to be the clear winner for fine grain, in agreement with old timers who considered PPD the finest grain developer.

Halcyon has some downsides (1) May cause allergy, see eg The Film Developing Cookbook 2020 p87. (2) Deposits silver particles and requires frequent filtering of the stock solution. (3) Speed loss cf D-76, lower density.(4) Stains (5) Hard to find ingredients.

The numbers look more clearly defined with the D-76.

Alan Johnson · Aug 27, 2025

Keith Tapscott. said:
The numbers look more clearly defined with the D-76.

When I did the tests 5 years ago I was only interested in grain and emulsion speed, but now looking at the scans for D-76 and Halcyon I agree with what you say. Since both seem to just about manage a resolution of 80 lppm, I would attribute the poorer apparent sharpness with Halcyon to lower contrast. Although underdevelopment cannot be ruled out I do believe that from time to time the use of PPD has been associated with lower contrast negatives and may be a factor here.

John Wiegerink · Aug 27, 2025

Alan,
I've tried a couple of Jay's developers and they seemed to do pretty much what he claimed, but never found them to be that "Magic Bullet" that some folks seem to be searching for. The two that came closest for me were his 510-pyro and Hypercat. I never played with Halcyon, but it looks interesting. My main developer is Xtol-R (actually Adox XT-3R) and Pyrocat-HDC. What surprised me was your first comparison with Xtol, Halcyon and Pyrocat and how poorly, compared to the other two, Pyrocat did in the resolution department. I shoot mainly medium format so grain isn't the issue for me that it is for folks that live by 35mm. Maybe that's why I'm kind of stuck in the XT-3R rut. Still, I think this old comparison might be of interest to folks looking for a fine grain film developer with pretty darn good resolving power. It might warrant trying to figure a way to squeeze more speed out of it without hurting any of it's other two good traits.

Alan Johnson · Aug 27, 2025

John Wiegerink said:
Alan,
I've tried a couple of Jay's developers and they seemed to do pretty much what he claimed, but never found them to be that "Magic Bullet" that some folks seem to be searching for. The two that came closest for me were his 510-pyro and Hypercat. I never played with Halcyon, but it looks interesting. My main developer is Xtol-R (actually Adox XT-3R) and Pyrocat-HDC. What surprised me was your first comparison with Xtol, Halcyon and Pyrocat and how poorly, compared to the other two, Pyrocat did in the resolution department. I shoot mainly medium format so grain isn't the issue for me that it is for folks that live by 35mm. Maybe that's why I'm kind of stuck in the XT-3R rut. Still, I think this old comparison might be of interest to folks looking for a fine grain film developer with pretty darn good resolving power. It might warrant trying to figure a way to squeeze more speed out of it without hurting any of it's other two good traits.

Now looking at the resolution including Pyrocat for the first time it seems that you are right and this type of test is not much use for evaluating resolution. The pyrocat did much better in a test I did using a different target where the lines get ever closer together. Thanks for noting this, it may be of use to me in future.

Scans retain developer properties

Here I scanned some chart lines (the full 35mm frame is about 50x the width of the chart) made from Ilford Delta 100 developed in acutance developers Rodinal 1:50 and Neofin Blue, solvent developer Xtol, and pyro developer Pyrocat HD.Scans were made with a Plustek 8100 set at 7200dpi which...

www.photrio.com

John Wiegerink · Aug 27, 2025

Alan Johnson said:
Now looking at the resolution including Pyrocat for the first time it seems that you are right and this type of test is not much use for evaluating resolution. The pyrocat did much better in a test I did using a different target where the lines get ever closer together. Thanks for noting this, it may be of use to me in future.

Scans retain developer properties

Here I scanned some chart lines (the full 35mm frame is about 50x the width of the chart) made from Ilford Delta 100 developed in acutance developers Rodinal 1:50 and Neofin Blue, solvent developer Xtol, and pyro developer Pyrocat HD.Scans were made with a Plustek 8100 set at 7200dpi which...

www.photrio.com

Alan,
I kind of figured exactly that. I've had very good luck with Pyrocat-HDC as far as resolution goes and have no complaints as to fuzzy results.

pINO · Tuesday at 1:12 AM

Alan Johnson said:
I tried Halcyon as a 2-bath developer to try to get a bit more speed out of it.
It was tested using Rollei Retro 400s, believed based on Aviphot 200, because I happened to be using it at the time.
What follows gave an increase of about 1/3 stop in shadow speed cf Halcyon alone(comparing negatives of the same sky density).
There was slightly better separation of clouds and sky.
Also a slight increase in grain.
All attributed to reduction of development in Part 1 (Halcyon) and preferential development of the shadows in Part 2.

Part 1 (Halcyon)
PPD.....................7g
Sodium Sulfite.....50g
Salicylic acid........0.5g
Ascorbic Acid.......3.5g
Water to................1L..................pH ~8
Part 2
Sodium Carbonate anh...30g
Sodium Sulfite.................35g
Water to...........................1L.......pH ~11

I developed Rollei Retro 400s for 90% of the time in Halcyon (Re-used time see post 1) in Part 1
Followed by 8m 20C in Part 2, agitate 2 inversions every 2 min.
The effective EI was increased from 100 to 125.

Conclusion - Not a magic bullet ultrafine grain developer, Halcyon always loses speed cf D-76.

Allan, have you read T.H. James paper "Kinetics of Development by p-Phenylenediamine in Neutral and Moderately Alkaline Solutions"? It might help you to tweak halcyon.

Alan Johnson · Tuesday at 4:39 AM

pINO said:
Allan, have you read T.H. James paper "Kinetics of Development by p-Phenylenediamine in Neutral and Moderately Alkaline Solutions"? It might help you to tweak halcyon.

Thanks, I will see if that paper can be found.
However it seems to me that is better to use Perceptol if fine grain is wanted owing to the chance of dermatitis from PPD. This is in agreement with the Kodak recommendation to use (the formerly available) Microdol-X.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Tuesday at 5:31 AM

pINO said:
It might help you to tweak halcyon.

Tweak Halcyon towards what end? Better speed?

Rudeofus · Tuesday at 5:38 PM

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:
Tweak Halcyon towards what end? Better speed?

Replace PPD with CD-4 would be my first tweak ... PPD/CD-1/CD-2 are really not your friends ...

Halcyon p-phenylenediamine developer test

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