Is FX-39II a good replacement for Acutol?

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Lachlan Young

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As someone who also started out with Acutol and FP4+, here's what I've found: most 'acutance' developers are no sharper or better resolving than most dilute 'fine-grain' developers. The slight apparent increase in acutance is nothing of the sort, it's usually just an increase in gross granularity. FX-39 seems to do away with some of Crawley's less scientifically grounded methods (I think it was Ian Grant who reported that Ilford's chemists in the 1970s - who were manufacturing Crawley's formulations at the time for Paterson - felt some of his formulae were rather off piste in their compositional choices) - FX-39 is PQ, rather than MPQ like Acutol, & I think it gets rid of the use of small amounts of iodide etc which seem to be of little to no purpose in developing modern (post early-mid 50's) BW emulsions with much higher iodide content. What you are left with is something that may not be all that different from a less solvent DD-X or Ilfosol-3. But here's the thing: in modern high-iodide/ specifically placed iodide emulsions, more solvent developers may well produce higher edge sharpness than a purported 'high acutance' developer because they can better access the iodide in the emulsion, while still producing fine grain.
 

Tom Kershaw

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Lachlan Young said:
most 'acutance' developers are no sharper or better resolving than most dilute 'fine-grain' developers
Click to expand...

I've used Pan F Plus with dilute Perceptol in the past which would come under this classification - a good combination in the right circumstances - perhaps if trying to maximise image quality from a 35mm negative. I got away with 125ml Perceptol + 375ml water in a Paterson tank but this may be rather marginal, I don't know.
 

John Bragg

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Ilfosol 3 (Crawley designed) is claimed by Ilford to be their sharpest developer and it does so at no great penalty in grain size in my experience. I have also gotten very sharp results with ID:11 @ 1:1 dilution over the years. These days I prefer a liquid to powders
 

Lachlan Young

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@Tom Kershaw all the evidence points towards dilute Perceptol and Pyrocat HD probably really being about equal in terms of perceived sharpness/ granularity at moderate sizes, apart from effective shadow speed. And it's perfectly possible to design a PQ developer that delivers high acutance, no staining etc too - as FX-39 etc do.

@John Bragg what's the source for Crawley having to do with the design of Ilfosol 3?
 

John Bragg

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I may be wrong. Stranger things have happened. I read it somewhere that he had helped reformulate the old Ilfosol S.
 

Ian Grant

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As Lachlan says Ilford used to manufacture Crawley's formulae for Paterson, I don't know when this changed but it was before Ilford closed their factories down south in Ilford, Essex, ect. I think it was 1983/4 when I had a business lunch with 2 Ilford managers and a senior research chemist ( all long retired). It was the chemist who recalled issues scaling up production of the chemistry and solubility issues, he also noted that developers sometimes used Metol, Phenidone and Hydroquinone which was unnecessary and that if simplified they'd work better.

I used Acutol in the early 1970's with FP4 I was never impressed, Aculux was a little better, I did try Acutol-S but it was too grainy. I found replenished ID-11 (D76) gave far better results all round in terms of sharpness, fine grain and excellent tonality,plus very economic, and by then I was mostly using deep tanks. Later I switched to Adox Borak MQ similar to Agfa 44/AgfAnsco 17 again replenished the drop in Sulphite gave slightly better sharpness, finer grain which was detectable with 35mm FP4, also because of the more optimal Sulphite level negatives were cleaner working giving a slight improvement in shadow detail, By cleaner working there's less solvency from the Sulphite so lower base fog.

Acutol came from an ERA of High Definition developers like Kodak HDD, Ilford Hyfin, Neofyn Blue, Acutol S, it was supposed to be a sort of mild half way product between ID-11/D76 and these developers.

Ian
 

Ian Grant

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Interesting the linked page doesn't mention Hyfin Ilford's high definition developer, or the likely formulae, and there's nothing about the packaging both Hyfin and Kodak HDD came is packs with sachets to mix 600ml of developer.

It's also worth pointing out the the then Adox (later EFKE) Kb17 was not a slow film it was the medium speed film in their range, the issue is Adox and EFKE used the Tungsten DIN speed in the name and the Daylight speed was a stop faster. I've been using EFKE Kb14 (35mm), and later the renamed sheet film Pl25 since the mid 1970's and ironically at the same 50 EI as Tmax 100 often both processed side by side in the same tank in Rodinal and aside from spectral differences bot print on the same grade of paper.

Aside from HDD and Hyfin there were many other high acutance developers like Definol, and of course the p-Amininophenol developers like Rodinal, Certnal, Kodinol, Azol etc which give higher definition tahn ID-11/D76. Kodak made quite a few developers in the UK for the European market that were never made or sold in the US, Kodinol came from research work done by Mees and Sheppard around 1907/8 while at SWratten and Wainwright although it was decades before Kodak released it. Ilford's Certinal dates from the same 1907/8 era and was in production for around 50 years.

Ian
 

bedrof

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Tom Kershaw said:
While organising my darkroom earlier today I came upon this original FX-39 leaflet from Paterson.
View attachment 246098
Click to expand...

Adox recommends 7 min for Delta 100 (1+9, 20C) in their datasheet. Here in Paterson leaflet it is 10 min (if the time was given for standard dilution).
Any ideas, which time is correct?
 

Alan Johnson

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FX-39 back to stay!

Barry, Kevin, we do ship to Australia from Germany. Shipping is a flat 29 EUR no matter how much you buy. I`m afraid Vanbar won´t be to keen on restocking it if they still have some around from 2005... Mirko http://www.fotoimpex.de/shopen/chemistry/adox-fx-39-500ml.html
www.photrio.com
Henning Serger obtained good results with Adox FX-39 II.
 

Alan9940

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No idea if the storage properties of FX-39 II are any better than the first version and it was years ago when I used this developer, but I remember that the first version didn't last long, once opened.
 

JerseyDoug

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Alan9940 said:
No idea if the storage properties of FX-39 II are any better than the first version and it was years ago when I used this developer, but I remember that the first version didn't last long, once opened.
Click to expand...
I recently developed a roll of HP5 Plus with FX-39 II that I opened two months earlier. The negatives look no different from those, also HP5 Plus, that I developed with the fresh bottle. FWIW I always use distilled water to dilute my developers.
 
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