Ilford Warmtone MGFB in different contrast developers

I'm not seeing a difference in contrast between developing this paper in Liquidol vs. ID-3. Is there anything about the emulsion on Ilford's Warmtone MGFB that would explain this? Might a different low contrast developer produce more appreciable results? Have you seen a substantial difference in contrast developing the paper in one developer vs another? If so, what works well for you?

I have found that almost any developer works with Ilford multigrade, as it can be very difficult to differentiate subtle tonal differences. I do know that compared to 'normal' multigrade developer, warm tone is itself about a half grade softer when used with non warmtone paper.

Well, you certainly should see a difference, all other things being equal. I use a similar soft-working developer in tandem with Bromophen or Dektol to get intermediate contrast with graded papers. The ID-3 should be about a grade softer than your Liquidol as long as you are developing fully in both and using recommended dilutions. What developing times are you using?

Doremus

It may depend on your development time and dilutions as well as your choice of developer. I'm only just switching to MG WT FB after years of using Forte Polywarmtone but the Ilford paper is very flexible.

If you over develop you kill the warmth and increase the contrast slightly as well. Since switching from fixed grade Record Rapid when it was discontinued I've never found a need to use ID-3 or ID-14 (a contrast developer) I used to keep both on my darkroom shelf. Ilford recommended ID-3 at 1+1 dilution and a development time of 1½ - 2 minutes at 20ºC, I'd go for the shorter time for increased softness with a touch more exposure.

Ian

Interesting. Sounds like I need to play with development times a bit. I develop for 1 minute in the Liquidol 1:9. The ID-3 is in the double concentrate form, and I'm using the recommended 1:1:6 dilution.

In my first runs the exposure was for minimum time to max black when developed in the Liquidol. When developing in the ID-3 for 2:00, a print with the same exposure was not reaching the maximum black. I increased the exposure about 15%, where the maximum black was reached with the ID-3 2:00. At that stage the ID-3 print had the same apparent contrast as the Liquidol one. I then tried developing in the ID-3 for 3:00 with the shorter exposure time, and got the same result.

I have noticed that the ID-3 prints are cooler than the Liquidol ones, which may be a clue that I'm over developing. I think I'll try a development time of 1:30 and adjust my exposure accordingly.

This paper is the only paper I have seen (Art 300 also but same emulsion) that explodes in contrast and density in the fix... just sayin

Bob Carnie said:

This paper is the only paper I have seen (Art 300 also but same emulsion) that explodes in contrast and density in the fix... just sayin

Click to expand...

I've seen this with Polywarmtone as well, it's the unfixed milkiness of the unexposed/undeveloped parts of the emulsion.

Ian

I've experimented with MGWT with very dilute Liquidol with a touch of Bromide - this for 2nd pass printing, bleach and redevelop. Gets much warmer. But generally, I'll do this if I make a lith print on MGWT with too much density in the highs (easy to do with MGWT lith since snatch time is an educated guess). I've also done straight prints with MGWT in liquidol 1+9 at a half stop or so over and then bleach back to the mids and redevelop in lith (which doesn't return the full highlights), stop, wash for a couple minutes, and finish up in dilute liquidol+bromide. This returns the rest of the highs to your desired point and goes warmer. Thing is, I've found MGWT to be a fairly one-trick pony color-wise, sort of a chocolate brown tone. Copper toner can push it more into reds but it's easy to stain the highs pink.

Thanks everyone for the replies.

I did another round of tests, developing for 1:30 in the ID-3 and confirmed that with my workflow and to my eyes, there is no difference between developing in Liquidol or ID-3 provided I increase exposure about 10% when using the latter. More likely than not the explanation for this is somewhere in my own workflow. I certainly don't have enough evidence to suggest that the paper just isn't sensitive to differences on developers. It is odd that I'm not seeing a difference and I wonder what the explanation is, but for my own purposes I'll just be sticking with Liquidol and adjusting other parts of my process to get what I'm looking for.

Trying to get the color I want out of the paper has been another long journey, and I'm still not completely satisfied. I was actually just about to add my observations to the thread dealing with MG WT warmth here https://www.photrio.com/forum/index...-developer-not-any-warmer-than-dektol.131951/.

A few years ago we were given a pack of Ilford Warmtone paper on a factory tour along with films etc. I'd just stocked up with a large quantity of Forte Polywarmtone from the very last production run.

I tested the pack of Ilford Warmtone FB to see if it was as versatile as the Polywarmtone, my main paper developer is Ilford ID-78 a PQ warm-tone developer Ilford used to sell as in powder form. (Note that in most US publications the formula is incorrect with the wrong amount of Bromide -it's correct in the Darkroom Cookbook 3rd & 4th editions). The current Ilford Warmtone developer is a liquid variant of ID-78.

With ID-78 I am able to control the warmth getting very noticeably warmer results when I want to, I have to cut development to 45 seconds to a minute to do this, I could also work more dilute.

The thread you link to compares Dektol to Ilford Warmtone developer and the differences would be slight, if you compared to a PQ developer containing Benzotriazole like PQ Universal the difference would be more marked. When I used ID-3 it was with Record Rapid which had far greater flexibilty in terms of colour shifts with development.

Ian

Thanks Ian. To clarify, you mean the color difference would be slight between Dektol and the Liquidol and ID-3 I'm using, but more pronounced between a PQ developer and those developers, right?

I have used LPD, which I understand is a PQ developer. In your experience is ID-78 capable of producing a warmer tone than LPD, or are they pretty similar in that respect?

A warm tone PQ developer gives warmer tone than the MQ equivalent, this is because Phenidone can tolerate much higher levels of Bromide without it's activity being repressed.

Ethol claim LPD gives cool tone developer at Full strength or 1:1, neutral at 1:2 and warmer at 1:4, but we don't see it here in the UK - it's not imported. There's like to be something added for it to give the cold tones and it's ineffective with the higher dilution. So depending on use of normal working strength there's less of a difference between Dektol, LPD or ID-3.

When Ilford first sold PQ versions of their paper developers (lmid 1950s) there were complaints of shifts in image colour, as a result they were re-formulated cutting the Bromide slightly and adding Benzotriazole which stops the colour shifts. More Bromide is released during development as exposed Silver Bromide is reduced to Silver. ID-78 or the current Ilford Warmtone developer (both PQ) have no Benzotriazole and a higher than normal level of Bromide, Agfa Neutol WA is a very similar formula.

Ian