MCM 100 2 years old and still going strong

Paul Howell · Feb 28, 2018

Found my jug of MCM 100 under my darkroom sink in the back of my chemistry, had not used for over a year and it was a year old when I last used it. Had been replenished. Just ran a roll of Ultrafine 100 12 ex in 135 test roll, still going strong. 70 degrees, 14mints with Unicolor film drum, ISO 100 is very clean. I had stopped using it because it has gotten so expensive, $20 a quart, but after this morning test broke down and bought a another quart kit.

Down Under · Mar 15, 2018

Where do you buy MCM100? Why is it so expensive?

Can you not mix it yourself with raw chemistry?

Paul Howell · Mar 15, 2018

Photographers' Formulary, it has P-phenylenediamine and Catechol, I didn't price out the raw ingredients, last I looked P-Phenyl was rather pricey and catechol is not cheap. I don't think many people use MCM 100 so no scale to bring down the cost. The liter kit arrived which I mixed, I filtered the old stock, almost a 1/2 gallon, then discarded 16 ozs and added new chemistry to bring the total back to a 1/2 gallon.

Born2Late · Mar 15, 2018

Paul Howell said:
Photographers' Formulary, it has P-phenylenediamine and Catechol, I didn't price out the raw ingredients, last I looked P-Phenyl was rather pricey and catechol is not cheap. I don't think many people use MCM 100 so no scale to bring down the cost. The liter kit arrived which I mixed, I filtered the old stock, almost a 1/2 gallon, then discarded 16 ozs and added new chemistry to bring the total back to a 1/2 gallon.

I have a spreadsheet that I made up to calculate the cost for mixing my own chemicals. I plugged in the numbers for MCM 100 and came up with the following: If I purchase the minimum quantity available to make 1 Liter, the totals for the chemicals would cost $34.65, but there would be a surplus of many of the chemicals, the cost for the amount used would be $17.81. If I buy sufficient quantities to make 10 liters, the total cost for the chemicals would be $86.75 (again having some left overs) and the cost for amount actually used would be $6.54 per liter.

Down Under · Mar 16, 2018

Thanks to you both for the information you have provided. Very useful.

As the main chemicals involved are especially costly here in Australia, I won't be going ahead with mixing up a batch. You Americans are so fortunate to be in a country where most things photographic are cheaper than the rest of us have to pay.

Rudeofus · Mar 16, 2018

I have mixed a version of MCM-100 with the much less toxic CD-4 instead of p-Phenylenediamine. It worked quite well, and I noticed, that developer pH would rise rather than fall over time, activity would go up accordingly.

Have you noticed somewhat higher fog levels with this batch of well aged MCM-100?

Paul Howell · Mar 16, 2018

I just ran a ring around to test my new replenished batch, no increased fog, E.I for Ultarfine 100 at 80 is spot on with test I did with the last unreplenished, prints. Print and look the same. I don't have a densitometry so there may be changes that I cant see by eye. I also don't have a pH meter so have not tested. I reserved 16oz of stock, I will discard and replace 1 oz for every roll of 36ex, or similar in 120 or sheet film. In my limited experience p-Phenylenediamine developers are very stable. I used Edwal 20 in the 60s, and used Edwal 12 along with MCM 100 for several years, I don't recall how I replenished Edwal 20 but it also lasted and lasted. I may order the raw chemistry to bring the cost down. But even around $6.00 a liter, D76 is around that for a gallon, mixed 1:2, very inexpensive, but I like the tones and balance of fine grain with good sharpness I get with MCM 100.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Aug 1, 2020

Paul Howell said:
Found my jug of MCM 100 under my darkroom sink in the back of my chemistry, had not used for over a year and it was a year old when I last used it. Had been replenished. Just ran a roll of Ultrafine 100 12 ex in 135 test roll, still going strong. 70 degrees, 14mints with Unicolor film drum, ISO 100 is very clean. I had stopped using it because it has gotten so expensive, $20 a quart, but after this morning test broke down and bought a another quart kit.

Hi Paul,

Is there a significant speed loss with MCM 100 replenished on any of the films you have tried?

Paul Howell · Aug 1, 2020

Ultrafine 400 is best at 200, but 320 is ok. As Photographer Formulary has been closed by the pandemic, and the cost of MCM so high I've moved back to D76. I've also changed back to Foma films for my daily shooting films with Tmax for travel. Now it's Foma 200 and 400, D76 stock for 400, D76 1:1 for 200 or a Rondinal clone for 200 or 400 in 4X5. I have no idea when PF will reopen, some products are carried by other sellers but not MCM. At this point don't know if I will dump my remaining tank of MCM. I really like the tones I get with MCM, have to wait and see.

John Wiegerink · Aug 3, 2020

Paul Howell said:
Ultrafine 400 is best at 200, but 320 is ok. As Photographer Formulary has been closed by the pandemic, and the cost of MCM so high I've moved back to D76. I've also changed back to Foma films for my daily shooting films with Tmax for travel. Now it's Foma 200 and 400, D76 stock for 400, D76 1:1 for 200 or a Rondinal clone for 200 or 400 in 4X5. I have no idea when PF will reopen, some products are carried by other sellers but not MCM. At this point don't know if I will dump my remaining tank of MCM. I really like the tones I get with MCM, have to wait and see.

Paul,
I ran more than a few rolls through a batch of MCM100 many moons ago and liked it, but at that time it was inconvenient for me so I went back to using HC-110 and ID-11. It was really interesting to take a negative for enlarging and not be able to tell which side was the emulsion side. MCM 100 made the emulsion side shiny too. I wasn't using a alkali fixer then, which is recommended now. I would buy the chemicals and mix my own if I were to try it again, but I'm pretty well settled in on developers at the moment. JW

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Mar 8, 2021

My last batch of MCM-100 stock/replenisher prepared in September 2020 and stored full in tightly capped thick HDPE bottles lost activity significantly when I used it last week. I had used it (and replenished) a few times in September-October 2020 and was quite pleased with the results. I guess a few months of inactivity with no replenishment and plausibly relatively high room temperature might have contributed to the degradation. There was not a noticeable darkening of color though.

Paul Howell · Mar 9, 2021

I've oved on from MCM 100, the price just got too high at around $48.00 a gallon. I still I have 1 liter kit that I will mix and use and used replenished for 8 rolls. I just ordered Freestyle's Arista Liquid Film Developer which is rebarnded Clayton F76+, 5, 12oz bottles, thinking that the smaller size will prevent a larger bottle of going bad. So, Rodinal and F76+ should do me well.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Mar 9, 2021

Paul Howell said:
I've oved on from MCM 100, the price just got too high at around $48.00 a gallon. I still I have 1 liter kit that I will mix and use and used replenished for 8 rolls. I just ordered Freestyle's Arista Liquid Film Developer which is rebarnded Clayton F76+, 5, 12oz bottles, thinking that the smaller size will prevent a larger bottle of going bad. So, Rodinal and F76+ should do me well.

I prepared MCM-100 from constituent chemicals and I still have good amount of PPD and Catechol. I liked the results MCM-100 produced but for my usage rate, it makes more sense to prepare a small volume of the stock solution and use it a few times over a short period of time than a workflow based on replenishment.

Paul Howell · Mar 9, 2021

I priced out making from formula, not much of a savings. Which is too bad, I think MCM 100 is an underrated formula.

Rudeofus · Mar 10, 2021

It may save a lot of money and effort to switch this formula from PPD to CD-4. Many years ago I used this modification and got decent results. PPD is considered very toxic, therefore its availability is bound to decline while its price rises.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Mar 10, 2021

Rudeofus said:
It may save a lot of money and effort to switch this formula from PPD to CD-4. Many years ago I used this modification and got decent results. PPD is considered very toxic, therefore its availability is bound to decline while its price rises.

I may want to do this substitution someday though CD-4 is not locally available whereas PPD is. I guess a molecular weight based substitution wouldn't work here due to the difference in the activity levels. Can you share some details of your substitution?

Rudeofus · Mar 11, 2021

My original MCM100/CD-4 formula made just a trivial 1:1 substitution. It gave me nice results, but to be honest I never ran a strict comparison against other developers, much less against original MCM100. If CD-4 is hard to obtain in your country, then chances are high, that CD-1 and CD-2 are easy to obtain. CD-3 would be preferable from a health standpoint, but it is significantly less active than CD-4, and you would likely have to tweak the formula some more.

Following Ron's advice I moved away from PPD + secondary developer to a PPD + coupler type formula, so I did not investigate this MCM100+CD-4 thing much further.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Mar 11, 2021

Rudeofus said:
My original MCM100/CD-4 formula made just a trivial 1:1 substitution. It gave me nice results, but to be honest I never ran a strict comparison against other developers, much less against original MCM100. If CD-4 is hard to obtain in your country, then chances are high, that CD-1 and CD-2 are easy to obtain. CD-3 would be preferable from a health standpoint, but it is significantly less active than CD-4, and you would likely have to tweak the formula some more.

This is very useful. Thanks!

MCM 100 2 years old and still going strong

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