Is Acufine... Fine?

Hi All,

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience using Acufine with TMax 100 and APX 100. How does grain, acutance and sharpness compare with D-76? Your shared experiences will be greatly appreciated.

It really excels with medium speed films like Tri-X and HP5+. Not much sense in using it over D76 for slower films, it doesn't offer any increased resolution or granularity. Great for when you're shooting at faster EI's though...Tri-X at 1600 all day every day in acufine is a personal favorite of mine.

Acufine is a phenidone based developer and gives you a little extra speed, good sharpness and some extra grain. D-76 is a metol based developer. It gives "box speed" with sharpness slightly lower than Acufine but less grain. T-Max 100 and APX 100 are very different films. APX 100 us very grainy for its speed so you either like the effect or you don't. T-Max 100 is very fine grained for its speed. T-Max 100 in undiluted D-76 will give you results which are sharp and very fine grained. APX 100 in Acufine will give you results which are sharp but very grainy. If you are shooting in the 6X7 format and not printing much beyond 11X14 the grain will not be an issue. If you are shooting in the 35mm format you will see a big difference. APX 100 does not like to be pushed and Acufine will not get much more speed out of it.

Thanks for your input everyone.

Looking at 10x8s of tmax and apx shot in identical conditions on same subject in same dev you should detect a difference one has a lot less grain if you inspect close up.

Looking at Tmax in each developer or apx in each developer to close to call. Id avoid metol cause of potential sensitization.

The apx is a lot cheaper here it may have more latitude but this is subjective since I like the grain and use it a lot. I only buy Tmax or Delta when there is no APX.