Looking for good homebrew developer for Ilford 3200

Jeff Bannow · Jan 4, 2011

I'm going to be shooting some Ilford Delta 3200 in both 35mm and 120 soon. I'm looking for a developer with the following traits:

- Good speed - I'm hoping to get at least ei1600 with good shadow detail. I plan to test for personal film speed and dev time when I have a developer picked out.
- Long shelf life - it may be months between rolls. I suppose I wouldn't mind mixing right before use if necessary.
- Homebrew - I'd like to have the formula for it, and be able to mix it myself.

I don't want to be tied to Kodak chemistry, so I've ruled out XTOL. I was looking at MyTol and PC-TEA.

Currently I am developing HP5+ and Acros with Thornton's Two Bath, which I am really liking. I just don't think it's going to give me the speed I want for Delta 3200.

BetterSense · Jan 4, 2011

There's always D23, which is easy to mix up one-shot. But every time I've tested D23 against commercial developers I've shown that it costs up to a full stop of shadow speed, so that's probably not what you want. It was enough to make me switch to Xtol since sometimes I need as much speed as I can get for handheld photography.

It bothers me that we don't have a formula for Xtol. We know it contains phenidone and vitamin C, right? How hard can it be to reverse engineer it?

Jeff Bannow · Jan 4, 2011

BetterSense said:
It bothers me that we don't have a formula for Xtol. We know it contains phenidone and vitamin C, right? How hard can it be to reverse engineer it?

I ran into MyTol, which claims to be a clone formula for XTOL. I haven't tried it though.

Ian Grant · Jan 4, 2011

ID-68 is the best, better known as Microphen.

Ian

removed account4 · Jan 4, 2011

hi jeff

since you said homebrew, i'd suggest some java ....

john

domaz · Jan 4, 2011

See if you can find a formula similar to DD-X. That seems to be the best developer for Ilford 3200.

Ian Grant · Jan 4, 2011

domaz said:
See if you can find a formula similar to DD-X. That seems to be the best developer for Ilford 3200.

That's going to be ID-68, DD-X is a modern liquid equivalent.

Ian

Jeff Bannow · Jan 4, 2011

Ian Grant said:
That's going to be ID-68, DD-X is a modern liquid equivalent.

Ian

Do either of you know the shelf life on this recipe?

Ian Grant · Jan 4, 2011

ID-68 is about the same shelf life as D76 - should be a touch longer as there's no Metol, but I always used it replenished, about a year in practice.

It was my main developer for push processing HP5 before XP-1 was released and I used it extensively for about 10 years.

Ian

el wacho · Jan 4, 2011

you should get 3200 with this;

bath A:

metol 2.5g
Hydroquinone 5g
phenidone 0.25g
sodium sulfite 85g
water to make a litre.

bath B:

sodium metaborate 12g
water to make a litre

i was using a condenser enlarger so i switched to borax in the B bath. 4 minutes in each bath.

el wacho · Jan 4, 2011

forgot, shelf life is very good. my bottle laid dormant once for 3 months. no observable difference and that bottle lasted me around 8 months. threw it away not because of chem failure but had to clean my darkroom out and i was using the standard thornton's two bath as my main developer.

Mike Wilde · Jan 5, 2011

I have had good sucess with home mixing FX-37 for use with most T grain films and it seemed to keep very well. Gave me grain the size I was expecting when shooting P3200 at EI800 and EI1600.

Jeff Bannow · Jan 11, 2011

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions - looks like I'm going to start by testing out ID-68 / Microphen.

Now I need to figure out the reuse / replenishment. Using it one-shot in stock solution would be way too expensive.

Looking for good homebrew developer for Ilford 3200

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