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MMC110 gone for now.

Thanks to Team Adox and the others who provided the links/information. I look forward to the resumption of production of MCC 110 and will use it as long as it remains on the market (which I hope will be longer than I'm around ). Thanks to Mirko and the Adox team for their faith and efforts in providing and continuing such great products.

Doremus
 
Will there be separate neutral and warmtone developers introduced when Polywarmtone enters the stage or is the existing selection sufficient ?

Karl-Gustaf
 

Wow interesting. The specific similarity I’m talking about between Adox and Ilford FB papers is an extremely strong tendency to give “snow balls” in custom lith developer formula, if the developer is not heated. No other modern set of emulsions I’ve seen behave like this. Curious if there is some supply chain intersection or something that causes this particular effect. The RC emulsions of both Ilford and Adox does not have it
 

Graded Fomabrom can do this too. It may have to do with specific chemical components in the emulsion to enhance keeping properties or the dye ballasts in multigrade emulsions - or similar components. It is insufficient evidence to base any attempt at manufacturing plant identification on. I think some batches of Agfa MCC were known to do this too - and it should be noted that Agfa MCC and Ilford MGIV are near contemporaries in both time of introduction and likely technological approaches, albeit with slight differences in emulsions and numbers of layers. MCC's potential lithability may relate to it use of multilayer coating some of which may have had less ballasting of dyes as a result, but MGIV may have been using heavily ballasted dyes in each emulsion, which were then blended into a single layer for coating. There are a lot of variables to consider here, and the behaviour of emulsions under the use of lith-type developers at high dilution seems not to have been disclosed by the manufacturers (possibly because it would reveal confidential emulsion information) - albeit I recall Adox saying that the individual emulsions of PWT-II would lith, but the multilayer coating package wouldn't - at least at the time it was written about. This may have changed in the intervening.
 
I got a pack of Fomabrom Variant 111 to test as a replacement for MCC110.
This is really nice paper. Wow!
It feels a little softer somehow, less cardboard stiff like MCC110 feels. The glossy surface is beautiful when air dried.
This can indeed be a nice replacement for MCC110.
How do the graded versions of Fomabrom differ? Only in contrast/filtration or also tone and feel?
 
We ordered it several months ago and still haven't seen it.
 

I just ran out of Adox MCC 110 yesterday, in the middle of making a print. I had just made my first "keeper." I switched to Fomabrom 111 Variant to finish the run. I did a test strip and made the same print, with the same manipulations.

Result: The Fomabrom 111 Variant is a bit faster (26 seconds vs 33 seconds). The development time was the same, but the Fomabrom 111 comes up faster (maybe the emulsion is not as hardened?)

In the end I dialed in 10M more to get the print I liked, but that may just have been because I wanted that smidgen more of contrast for the Adox MCC 110 print as well. In the end, the print made on the Adox and the ones on the Foma were virtually indistinguishable visually. The distribution of tones seems the same as do the toe and shoulder, at least at the contrast setting I was working with. The finish seems really similar as well. I didn't compare any other contrast settings, just the one I was using (about 60M if I recall). The Adox paper is a bit stiffer; not sure why, but it may be due to emulsion hardening, which also delays onset of development a bit. Both are great papers.

Best,

Doremus
 
surface of the adox has a more elegant surface when airdried, foma is slightly more textured, but i totally agree foma has great tonality aswell.
 

Thank you for sharing your findings - very useful information.
 
Renato Tonelli said:
Thank you for sharing your findings - very useful information.
Click to expand...

I selenium toned the prints I mentioned yesterday. The Foma tones faster and browner. The Adox MCC 110 takes longer and tends toward eggplant color a bit more. Both end up toning very well. The Fomabrom does have a tendency to split tone bleached areas. Sometimes this can be aesthetically pleasing, other times I have to watch out when toning not to go too far. The Adox seems to do this too, but to a bit lesser extent.

Best,

Doremus
 
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