Instant Mytol Recipe

[BHuij]

I'll throw my recipe into the mix - I can't remember where I sourced mine, but it was definitely an "Instant Mytol" recipe rather than just "Mytol". I adjusted the recipe down to make 250ml of stock strength solution (which I guess is supposed to be essentially equivalent to XTOL stock). Just enough for a single roll of 35mm in my Nikor steel tank. I can just open a "capsule", toss it into 250ml of water, and stir for a minute or so, and then use one shot.

I absolutely love this stuff for Delta 100 and HP5+ in 35mm and 120. Extremely fine grain and full film speed or better. Tons of resolution.

Recipe is found on this page for a 3D printed "capsule" I made to store premeasured ingredients prior to use.

 

[Don_ih]

I'll throw my recipe into the mix

Seems to be the same as the one Koraks posted.

Yours, for 250ml

or Koraks' for 1 litre:

looks like 4x yours. (Easy for me to recognize, since I always mix 250ml of 1:1 calculated from that second recipe, and it is pretty much 1/2 of every bit of your recipe.)

 

[BHuij]

It's entirely possible that I got my recipe from Koraks originally. Been a couple of years since I started playing with Instant Mytol, and IIRC he was there helping me answer a lot of questions up front.

 

[aconbere]

I'll throw my recipe into the mix - I can't remember where I sourced mine, but it was definitely an "Instant Mytol" recipe rather than just "Mytol". I adjusted the recipe down to make 250ml of stock strength solution (which I guess is supposed to be essentially equivalent to XTOL stock). Just enough for a single roll of 35mm in my Nikor steel tank. I can just open a "capsule", toss it into 250ml of water, and stir for a minute or so, and then use one shot.

I absolutely love this stuff for Delta 100 and HP5+ in 35mm and 120. Extremely fine grain and full film speed or better. Tons of resolution.

Recipe is found on this page for a 3D printed "capsule" I made to store premeasured ingredients prior to use.

Thanks for chiming in. I’ve seen your recipe and was one of the ones I’d been planning to try (and another fellow in the club I’m in uses your recipe and canisters). Nice job!

 

[bluechromis]

In case you didn't know already, @relistan's PC-512 Borax uses fewer ingredients than Instant Mytol and is gaining a solid reputation as a XTol-like developer. Merits consideration.

I like PC-512 very much. To be clear, it is not an exact clone of Xtol, in the way that Mytol and Instant Mytol are meant to be. It is more like a cousin. I see it as a brilliant evolution of Pat Gainer's approach to sulfite-free ascorbate developers. Relistan has been able to mitigate the fog and graininess of Gainer's formulas while retaining the high acutance and long shelf life.

 

[BHuij]

I like PC-512 very much. To be clear, it is not an exact clone of Xtol, in the way that Mytol and Instant Mytol are meant to be. It is more like a cousin. I see it as a brilliant evolution of Pat Gainer's approach to sulfite-free ascorbate developers. Relistan has been able to mitigate the fog and graininess of Gainer's formulas while retaining the high acutance and long shelf life.

Out of curiosity, how does PC-512 combat grain without having the sulfite?

 

[BHuij]

Thanks for chiming in. I’ve seen your recipe and was one of the ones I’d been planning to try (and another fellow in the club I’m in uses your recipe and canisters). Nice job!

Hope you like it as much as I do. Glad to hear someone out there is using the capsules haha.

 

[bluechromis]

Out of curiosity, how does PC-512 combat grain without having the sulfite?

Many of Pat Gainer's ascorbate developers had fairly high pH. One of Relistan's innovations was to formulate that style of developer but with a lower pH. In his article linked below under the heading "What does it look like", he explains the effect of PC-512 on grain.

It's open to debate, but there may be advantages to using a developer that avoids sulfate, such as enhanced acutance.

https://imager.ie/a-simple-phenidone-ascorbic-acid-concentrate-developer/

 

[BHuij]

Yeah my (layman's) understanding is the sulfite is a solvent, so it rounds out the grains and makes them a bit smaller. This results in smoother and less visible grain, but by the same token reduces acutance.

I went down this rabbit hole a bit after reading Edge of Darkness by Barry Thornton. He made some compelling arguments for high-acutance developers. I messed around with BTTB, found I didn't care for it, and ultimately settled on Pyrocat HD for my acutance developer. In medium format and up, particularly with FP4+, I love it. For 35mm I find it... too grainy. Haha. With Delta 100 in Instant Mytol Stock, I find I can get great 11x14 prints from 35mm (assuming good technique, sharp lens near its sweet spot, etc). I haven't found the lower acutance to detract from the viewing experience on the final image too much, but we're well into subjective quality here.

Guess I'm on the "solvent is good for small format film" bandwagon, but maybe one of these days I'll try out PC-512 for 35mm and see how I like it.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

Working solution:
For use, dilute 1+19 with water containing 60 g/L of sodium sulfate. The resulting solution matches the activity of stock Xtol. To create something like Xtol 1+!, dilute 1+39 with water containing 30 g/L of sodium sulfate.

To be clear, it should be Sodium Sulphite.

It's open to debate, but there may be advantages to using a developer that avoids sulfate, such as enhanced acutance.

 

[albada]

I see, would you then mix the phenidone with something like IPA to aid in measurement?

I've had good results by mixing phenidone into propylene glycol (PG), creating a 1% or 2% solution. It lasts 6 months or longer at room temperature.
The quantity of PG in the resulting developer should be low enough to not produce fog.

Mark

 

[bluechromis]

To be clear, it should be Sodium Sulphite.

Right, my mistake.

 

[relistan]

Many of Pat Gainer's ascorbate developers had fairly high pH. One of Relistan's innovations was to formulate that style of developer but with a lower pH. In his article linked below under the heading "What does it look like", he explains the effect of PC-512 on grain.

It's open to debate, but there may be advantages to using a developer that avoids sulfate, such as enhanced acutance.

https://imager.ie/a-simple-phenidone-ascorbic-acid-concentrate-developer/

Thanks @bluechromis for the comments and link

Out of curiosity, how does PC-512 combat grain without having the sulfite?

There are a lot of factors that contribute to perceived graininess in negatives. At the top level these are set by the characteristics of the film, of course. Then within those confines the developer can control (fine tune) some of the properties through: control of the pH, control of fog, and by managing the emulsion (e.g. expansion) or access to development sites not directly exposed.

Sulfite was used for this in part because it is already used in many developers as a preservative, it has a noticeable effect on pH, and because it is a mild solvent (exposing more development sites) that also works as a mild anti-foggant.

If you can control the fog without sulfite, and you don't need it a preservative, the question then remains whether or not you can achieve similar results of perceived graininess without compromising acutance too much.

There are so many variables it's hard to describe all the effects and interactions (and that's why we have so many developers!) but what I did was get the pH right down low like XTOL, but that doesn't control the fog. What did control the fog was getting the ratio of the developing agents right. And that also had a noticeable effect on reducing perceived graininess. And there additionally is some positive grain effect of the interaction between ascorbic acid and borates that is sort of acknowledged but not yet explained well publicly (I am sure Kodak knows). In the end the effect of sulfite being added is really small when everything else is working right. But sulfite doesn't mix with glycol, and sulfite in water is much worse at preserving a developer than putting it into glycol.

My view is that Kodak largely used sulfite in XTOL because it allowed for cheap and easy shipment of a developer to be mixed into water, acted as a preservative in powder form in the event of mild water presence, and it produced an image that looked a bit softer, and more like D-76.

Hope it helps

 

[BHuij]

Thanks for the informative post! At the end of the day, did you find PC-512 to get the perceived graininess of the negative down to the same level as Instant Mytol? Or not quite that low? Or perhaps you haven't actually done side-by-sides haha. I'm just curious since I've always been really happy with Instant Mytol, but if I could improve acutance without adding significantly to perceived graininess, that could be a significant upgrade for me.

 

[relistan]

I forgot to mention a really important thing: film speed. Sulfite exposes latent development sites that are otherwise unreachable. It is required in many developers to reach box speed. Gainer’s developers mostly don’t each box speed without it. But there is something about the ratio of the agents that helps achieve that. Off by 5-10% and you don’t get box speed or you also get fog. Ascorbic acid is quite a fogging developer on its own. At higher pH it becomes more directly active and I think that’s why you get more fog.

Thanks for the informative post! At the end of the day, did you find PC-512 to get the perceived graininess of the negative down to the same level as Instant Mytol? Or not quite that low? Or perhaps you haven't actually done side-by-sides haha. I'm just curious since I've always been really happy with Instant Mytol, but if I could improve acutance without adding significantly to perceived graininess, that could be a significant upgrade for me.

I’ve done side by side with XTOL but not MyTol. It appears a tiny bit more grainy than XTOL but in no way unpleasant to my eyes. That’s a judgment call and YMMV. Here’s an example on Fotoimpex CHM 100 35mm. This film is the same as Kentmere 100.



@Alan Johnson did better grain analysis on several posts in the PC-512 Borax thread. It’s roughly analogous to HC-110 by his tests.

 

[dcy]

The original website that published the Instant MyTol recipe is gone, but there is a copy saved in the Web Archive:

Easy Film Developers – photosensitive.ca

There are two formulas that exactly match the ones posted by @Andrew O'Neill in post #11.

 

[relistan]

The original website that published the Instant MyTol recipe is gone, but there is a copy saved in the Web Archive:

Easy Film Developers – photosensitive.ca

There are two formulas that exactly match the ones posted by @Andrew O'Neill in post #11.

It’s not down, he just redid the site. https://photosensitive.ca/#easy-developers

 

[Alan Johnson]

@Alan Johnson did better grain analysis on several posts in the PC-512 Borax thread. It’s roughly analogous to HC-110 by his tests.

I only did a comparison test with the metaborate/glycol version, this had finer grain than the former Kodak HC-110 syrup and also than PC-TEA. I don't think anyone has yet published a test of PC-512 Borax vs Xtol.

My PC-512 Borax Developer

I wondered if DCM18 [or PCM20] might serve as a long lasting concentrate to replace my syrup HC-110 when it is eventually used up. HC-110 syrup is discontinued. PC-TEA is an alternative but is harder to make up as the ascorbic acid is slow to dissolve in TEA. DCM18- the ascorbic acid dissolves...

www.photrio.com

 

[retina_restoration]

A bit tangential, but I'll add this bit of data: yesterday I exposed a roll of FP4+ (bracketing exposure by half stops) and developed half the roll in Xtol 1:1 and the other half in another Ascorbate developer, FX-55. In theory they should both act similarly, as both are Phenidone/Ascorbate developers.
I scanned the results this morning, and there is no perceptible difference between the two sets of negatives. The CI is virtually identical, and the grain structure and sharpness/acutance are identical.

On the left is the FX-55 image and on the right is the Xtol image. These are unaltered scans right out of the scanner — no sharpening, no processing applied. This is a 66% magnification of 14,000 x 14,000 pixel scan from a 2&1/4" negative. The camera used was a Rolleiflex 2.8E Planar, and these two images came from negatives exposed with an aperture of f8 @ 1/125th.

Full image here:

 

[relistan]

I only did a comparison test with the metaborate/glycol version, this had finer grain than the former Kodak HC-110 syrup and also than PC-TEA. I don't think anyone has yet published a test of PC-512 Borax vs Xtol.

My PC-512 Borax Developer

I wondered if DCM18 [or PCM20] might serve as a long lasting concentrate to replace my syrup HC-110 when it is eventually used up. HC-110 syrup is discontinued. PC-TEA is an alternative but is harder to make up as the ascorbic acid is slow to dissolve in TEA. DCM18- the ascorbic acid dissolves...

www.photrio.com

Apologies, I was not saying you had compared to XTOL. I was saying I had on my own, but had not written about it.

 

[relistan]

A bit tangential, but I'll add this bit of data: yesterday I exposed a roll of FP4+ (bracketing exposure by half stops) and developed half the roll in Xtol 1:1 and the other half in another Ascorbate developer, FX-55. In theory they should both act similarly, as both are Phenidone/Ascorbate developers.
I scanned the results this morning, and there is no perceptible difference between the two sets of negatives. The CI is virtually identical, and the grain structure and sharpness/acutance are identical.

Good example. There is little enough sulfite in FX-55 that it would be there only for its other effects and not for much impact on grain.

 

[retina_restoration]

Good example. There is little enough sulfite in FX-55 that it would be there only for its other effects and not for much impact on grain.

Very little NaSO3 in fact: by the time you've made a working solution, there's about 2.2 grams of it in a liter of working solution. Given that detail, it's a bit surprising that the FX-55 negative and the Xtol 1:1 negative are virtually identical. There's far more NaSO3 in a liter of Xtol diluted 1:1!

At the 1:1 dilution, a liter of Xtol has approximately 42.5 grams of NaSO3 in it, compared to approximately 2.2 grams of NaSO3 in a liter of working FX-55.

 

[BHuij]

To my eyes the FX-55 has a very slight edge in perceived sharpness. Could very easily be a matter of film flatness in the scanner, or wind during the exposure, or any other tiny confounding factor, rather than developer differences.

In real world terms, identical.

Maybe sometime when I'm feeling intrepid, I'll shoot some A/B tests with my Instant Mytol recipe vs PC-512.

 

[John Wiegerink]

To my eyes the FX-55 has a very slight edge in perceived sharpness. Could very easily be a matter of film flatness in the scanner, or wind during the exposure, or any other tiny confounding factor, rather than developer differences.

In real world terms, identical.

Maybe sometime when I'm feeling intrepid, I'll shoot some A/B tests with my Instant Mytol recipe vs PC-512.

My eyes are not the best, but it looks that way on my monitor also. I had to blink five or six times, but every time FX-55 looks just a bit different. The tonality is the same for sure. I'm curious to see how your comparison goes between Mytol and PC-512.

 

[retina_restoration]

To my eyes the FX-55 has a very slight edge in perceived sharpness. Could very easily be a matter of film flatness in the scanner, or wind during the exposure, or any other tiny confounding factor, rather than developer differences.

Most likely it's because the shutter speed was 1/125th and it was quite windy, (I tried to wait for things to calm before exposing each frame) so there may be some motion blur in some frames.
I chose FP4 because it is so flat when dry, so there shouldn't be any issue with scanner focus. I might scan one of the other Xtol frames and see if it looks any difference. I suppose it's possible that FX-55 might not have the same grain solvent ability that Xtol has, due to the lack of sulfite.