Ilford warmtone vs. Arista Premium warmtone paper developer

[Dusty Negative]

Anyone have experience with both of these?

The Arista comes in at around a third of the price...obviously, quite a substantial difference. But...are you getting what you pay for here?

 

[Peter Schrager]

never used it but my experience is stay away from Arista developers for prints. I make my own
Ansco D55 is great...

 

[faberryman]

As I mentioned in the other thread, I didn't see much difference between Ilford Warmtone and Ilford Multigrade print developers with Ilford MGWT FB paper. I have never used any Arista products.

 

[igzabeher]

Buy the Ilford. In my brief experience with the Arista, I had what to/for me excessively long development times with the Arista. Bought the Ilford and times were reasonable.

 

[john_s]

We don't get Arista here at the end of the Earth. Just as a matter of interest, I looked at the MSDS docs for both. The Ilford is more concentrated (specific gravity 1.375 as against 1.062) which suggests that it would be diluted more, so that would have to be factored in to the cost calculation.

Also, I noticed that the Ilford contains two types of Phenidone:

1-Phenyl-4-methyl-3-pyrazolidone <1%
CAS number: 2654-57-1 EC number: 220-180-6

1-PHENYL-3-PYRAZOLIDONE <1%
CAS number: 92-43-3 EC number: 202-155-1

Why would that be? And neither are Dimezone_S which I thought was the best in terms of stability. This is from the Australian MSDS which are sometimes more complete than those in other countries.