Has anyone else had experience with Ilford ID-24 paper developer

Hello all,

Last night I experimented with ID-24 paper developer, following the instructions in The Darkroom Cookbook by Steve Anchell. It is a paper developer containing glycin that apparently, with extra exposure and dilution, can give sepia or even red tones in the print. I tested it first using Ilford MG IV RC, making a reference print using ID-78. I gave 10x dilution of ID-78 with 3x exposure and extra bromide and developed for 11 minutes. It gave a sepia brown tone but with very poor density and separations in the shadows and a muddy and grainy look. I tried Ilford Warmtone MG FB also but this gave a very mottled and uneven brown print, with poor density also. I tried diluting to 20x with 5x exposure and more bromide but this was still brown, and even more mottled. I couldn't seem to get any red tones. Although the print quality of the MG IV was poor, it was much better than the Warmtone.

When I get time I will post some print scans.

Does anyone else have any experience with this developer? What papers work best with it?

The Darkroom Cookbook was ambiguous with regard to how much 10% bromide solution to add as it didn't specify how much per litre of working solution to add. It is very hard to find info on the net about this developer but a Japanese web site seemed to imply that the mL of bromide was meant to be per 25mL undiluted developer so this is what I did. Can anyone verify this?

Regards, Simon.

I'm not familiar with this developer but the process sounds a lot like Lith printing. On that basis, not all papers are suitable and Ilford papers are some of the hardest to work with.

There aren't many currently produced papers that work for lith printing. MG warmtone can work but isn't that easy to get good results with. This may indicate that the chemical processes going on aren't completely analogous.

Foma MG classic papers and Slavich Unibrom are a couple of lithable papers available today. Otherwise old warmtone papers from Kentmere and Forte would be good bets but you'll have to fight me and any other lith printers for them.

Development times are listed in the table below along with the amount of 10%
potassium bromide to add at higher dilutions.

Development Times

Added
Color Exposure Dilution Bromide Min

Warm-black 1× 3× - 1½
Sepia 2× 15× 1 ml 5
Brown sepia 3× 30× 3 ml 10
Red-brown 4× 45× 5 ml 15
Red 5× 60× 6 ml 20

AKAIK, ID-24 has nothing per se to do with lith printing. When you dilute a developer it's activity is decreased. As the activity is decreased the image silver becomes finer grained and hence warmer in color. Typically warm tone developers used developing agents that were less active such as chlorhydroquinone,

Gerald C Koch said:

Development times are listed in the table below along with the amount of 10%
potassium bromide to add at higher dilutions.

Development Times

Added
Color Exposure Dilution Bromide Min

Warm-black 1× 3× - 1½
Sepia 2× 15× 1 ml 5
Brown sepia 3× 30× 3 ml 10
Red-brown 4× 45× 5 ml 15
Red 5× 60× 6 ml 20

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This table can be found in The Darkroom Cookbook. I was following it's guidelines.

Gerald C Koch said:

AKAIK, ID-24 has nothing per se to do with lith printing. When you dilute a developer it's activity is decreased. As the activity is decreased the image silver becomes finer grained and hence warmer in color. Typically warm tone developers used developing agents that were less active such as chlorhydroquinone,

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Interesting. In his toning book Tim Rudman gave a recipe for a developer that could give sepia to red tones that used chlorhydroquinone as the developing agent. He stated that the developer didn't generally work well with modern papers. Sometimes in they recipes given in The Darkroom Cookbook Anchell will mention if a recipe was more suited to older style papers. No mention of this was made for ID-24. He did state that the comparison developer ID-78 work very well with modern papers, which I can confirm.

simgrant said:

Interesting. In his toning book Tim Rudman gave a recipe for a developer that could give sepia to red tones that used chlorhydroquinone as the developing agent. He stated that the developer didn't generally work well with modern papers. Sometimes in they recipes given in The Darkroom Cookbook Anchell will mention if a recipe was more suited to older style papers. No mention of this was made for ID-24. He did state that the comparison developer ID-78 work very well with modern papers, which I can confirm.

Click to expand...

simgrant said:

Interesting. In his toning book Tim Rudman gave a recipe for a developer that could give sepia to red tones that used chlorhydroquinone as the developing agent. He stated that the developer didn't generally work well with modern papers. Sometimes in they recipes given in The Darkroom Cookbook Anchell will mention if a recipe was more suited to older style papers. No mention of this was made for ID-24. He did state that the comparison developer ID-78 work very well with modern papers, which I can confirm.

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Concerning ID-24 paper developer: I'm sitting here going through old papers and I've found a fax exchange from almost 17 years ago (August 2002) between myself and Ilford's great (and sorely missed) Mike Gristwood. I need to put this information up, somewhere on the net (in case it hasn't already been corrected, which I haven't found judging from an online extract), so here it is again: The formula in the Darkroom Cookbook for Ilford's ID-24 is INcorrect!

According to Mike Gristwood (backed up by copies he sent me of the actual formulas from Ilford's archive), the formula presented in the Darkroom Cookbook as ID-24 is actually Ilford's ID-26, with changes made to use anhydrous sodium sulphite and sodium carbonate monohydrate, instead of the crystalline forms. Mike wondered "how [Anchell] got ahold of it" (because it had never been previously published).

The formula in Tim Rudman's book —which I haven't seen, but judging from the above post stating that he "gave a recipe for a developer that could give sepia to red tones that used chlorhydroquinone as the developing agent."— probably IS Ilford ID-24.

Here's the correct formula , as best as I could copy it from a Xerox of an old, faded bad quality fax and with apologies that I couldn't create and post a normal table for the "colour wanted" here, due to formatting problems.. You're welcome to double check everything (the extended times and dilutions and the total solution volume of 500ml instead of 1 liter seem odd to me) but I think it's all right, lest I be perpetuating the same kind of error that caused this confusion in the first place!):

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ID-24 - ILFORD CHLORQUINOL- HYDROQUINONE DEVELOPER
FOR WARM BLACK TO BRIGHT RED TONES ON ILFORD CLORONA PAPER

To obtain warm black to bright red tones on Clorona paper, the formula below should be used, variation of tone being obtained by variation of bromide content, strength of developer and time of development, the exposure being varied to give the desired depth of print under development conditions in use.

Chlorquinol (or Adurol) … … … … … … … 3.4 gr
Hydroquinone … … … … … … … … … … 3.4 gr
Sodium Sulphite (cryst) … … … … … … …62.5 gr
Sodium Carbonate (cryst) … … … … … … 62.5 gr
Potassium Bromide … … … … … … … … 0.35 gr
Water up to … … … … … … … … … … … 500 cc [sic]

——————————————————————————————————————
Colour wanted / Approx.Exposure Times X normal / Dilution of Developer X full strength / Extra 10% Pot. Bromide Solution per 25cc. of Stock developer / Approx. Time of development in Minutes
——————————————————————————————————————
A. warm-black / normal / undiluted / none / 1.5 min. —
B. sepia /3x /10x / 1cc / 5 min —
C. brown-sepia / 5x / 15x / 3cc / 10min —
D. red-brown / 6x / 25x / 5cc / 15min —
E. red / 7x / 30x / 6cc / 20min —
————————————————————————————————————————
By “normal exposure” is meant the correct exposure for obtaining the best possible warm black print that is obtainable from a given negative. Prints of a warm tone dry colder and darker than they appear when wet.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

I hope this is helpful to someone out there.

Best,

Christopher Nisperos

In order to get the image tone to shift towards red, I would try adding a small amount of ammonium chloride or a large amount (in the 2-5% range, so 20-50g/l) of sodium chloride.
But one may as well go all the way to two-bath lith or polychrome development to get vivid colors. Warmtone papers have to be used in order to get much color; Fomatone MG comes to mind as the prime candidate.
Glycin apparently gives the most saturation, but I haven't tried it due to it being a bit difficult to get especially in Europe with only one source known to me.

Ilford MG is not responsive to dev change or toner; try Fomabrom.

Is the current fomabrom still responsive to changes in development? I have the strong impression that it's different from, say, 10-15 years ago. Results from that era reported by Wolfgang Moersch seem impossible to duplicate with the Fomabrom I buy today.

koraks said:

Fomatone MG comes to mind as the prime candidate.

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Please note, that Fomatone MG in its current version does no longer work as lith paper. I have wasted countless hours trying to lith print before finding this note and can therefore fully confirm what it says. Foma has in the meantime released Fomatone MG Classic, which at least produces very nice orange/yellow/brown colors in lith developer, although I was not able to see deep blacks created by infectious development.

When did you purchase your fomatone, @Rudeofus? The fomatone I currently use (last batch I purchased about 9 months ago I think) liths fine. I use fomatone MG gloss (I think it says "classic" on the box but I'd have to check). The letter you refer to is from 2013 it seems and perhaps the paper has changed once again since then. All I can say is that I get very apparent lith development with fomatone, with strong infectious development and vivid colors depending on developer balancing.

koraks said:

When did you purchase your fomatone, @Rudeofus? The fomatone I currently use (last batch I purchased about 9 months ago I think) liths fine. I use fomatone MG gloss (I think it says "classic" on the box but I'd have to check). The letter you refer to is from 2013 it seems and perhaps the paper has changed once again since then. All I can say is that I get very apparent lith development with fomatone, with strong infectious development and vivid colors depending on developer balancing.

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I got my Fomatone MG Classic directly from Foma just a few months ago. I tried to lith with homebrew Kodalith, diluted about 1:10 from spec. I get wonderful orange/yellow tones, the blacks are not very strong and there is no specific snap point. It just starts developing within a few minutes and slowly builds up density. I added more Formalin just in case my bottle lost strength from leakage over time, but it remained pretty much the same. Beautiful images, but not really like what I see&read in Tim Rudman's book. Do you self mix your lith developer? Can you share the recipe ?

Yes, I mix it myself in an adaptation from a Riyu Suzuki formula I found on photrio. My formula is as follows:
Developer concentrate (stock A, 1 liter):
36g hydroquinone
18g sodium sulfite
12g potassium bromide.
You'll find that the hydroquinone will not dissolve out of itself; start with eg 500ml water and add something like 100ml of ethanol (I use generic bio-ethanol) to get the hydroquinone to dissolve. Glycol (propylene, ethylene or diethylene) should work just as well or even better. Top off to 1000ml with water; the hydroquinone will stay in solution. The stock keeps quite well in a full bottle.
Optionally you can leave out the bromide, leaving only hydroquinone and sulfite in the developer stock. You can add the bromide as a concentrate to the working solution to taste. Lowering the bromide concentration helps in promoting infectious development so you may try a minimal amount of KBr if you're having troubles getting infectious development.

For activator, I use either 20% sodium carbonate (plain washing soda; stock B1) or 10% sodium hydroxide (stock B2).

A good starting point for the dilution of the working solution is 1A + 1B1 + 5 or 10A + 1B2 + 50. Development time should be between 2m30 and 4 minutes at this dilution with Fomatone MG. I use it one shot without addition of 'old brown'.

Addition of sulfite and/or bromide can be done as usual, as a fairly strong (e.g. 10%) concentrate to the working strength developer. Both will inhibit infectious development. KBr will enhance the color of the print. KBr tends to shift the color towards green/yellow, while adding copious amounts of NaCl (use e.g. a 25% stock solution and be generous with it) shifts the color towards orange/ocher/reddish tones. NH4Cl also shifts the color towards the red end of the spectrum and requires much less than NaCl to achieve a similar effect, but easily introduces dichroic fog. This can in turn be prevented somewhat by adding KBr, but I find this a bit of a hassle as the balancing act is a bit precarious, so I tend to prefer NaCl (it's dirt cheap anyway).

Christopher Nisperos said:

ATTENTION: The formula in the Darkroom Cookbook for Ilford's ID-24 is INcorrect!
​

Concerning ID-24 paper developer: I'm sitting here going through old papers and I've found a fax exchange from almost 17 years ago (August 2002) between myself and Ilford's great (and sorely missed) Mike Gristwood. I need to put this information up, somewhere on the net (in case it hasn't already been corrected, which I haven't found judging from an online extract), so here it is again: The formula in the Darkroom Cookbook for Ilford's ID-24 is INcorrect!

According to Mike Gristwood (backed up by copies he sent me of the actual formulas from Ilford's archive), the formula presented in the Darkroom Cookbook as ID-24 is actually Ilford's ID-26, with changes made to use anhydrous sodium sulphite and sodium carbonate monohydrate, instead of the crystalline forms. Mike wondered "how [Anchell] got ahold of it" (because it had never been previously published).


.......

Christopher Nisperos

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Just for future reference if anyone has any interest, these are taken from The Ilford Manual of Photography, 1935 Edition (n.b. I couldn't find it in my 1955 edition), and [II] Index Cards issued in 1936 in London Photographic Periodical which someone very kindly cut out and pasted to boards and boxed for me to discover 80 years later:






Perhaps not providing any additional assistance, but possibly of historical interest.

Kindly,
Molli