My PC-512 Borax Developer

[Alan Johnson]

Here is another start time, Lucky SHD 400 EI=200 in PC-Borax 1:50 ------7m 20C

 

[relistan]

Thanks @Alan Johnson . I'll get that stuff together this weekend.

 

[Alan Johnson]

At high magnifications it may be seen that PC-512 Borax gives a finer grain than the former Kodak HC-110 syrup (next to it on Flickr):

PC-512 Borax:

 

[relistan]

At high magnifications it may be seen that PC-512 Borax gives a finer grain than the former Kodak HC-110 syrup (next to it on Flickr):

PC-512 Borax:

Very interesting @Alan Johnson! That is quite a noticeable difference.

I had never done this comparison, but I had observed from the start that this developer has much finer grain (and less/very low fog) compared to other similar formulas I had tried. It is interesting here that it is outperforming original HC-110 syrup with its fancy sulfite substitutes. I had thought at first that the fine grain might have something do with borate and ascorbic acid interaction. I did not test too far in that direction to understand it better. I know that folks with better chemistry than me (notably @Rudeofus) did not think that is the case.

It may also have to do with the unbuffered pH, which already starts fairly low and should drop as the products of development form, but I tried other HQ developers in the same range of pH and did not see as fine a grain (and fog!), and a bicarbonate-based developer with only a bit higher pH did not do as well. I am looking in my notes and I don't seem to have a pH measured after development had finished. That might be informative.

This ratio of ascorbic acid to phenidone also seemed to give the best speed and fog characteristics, which was why I settled on that. I doubt that has much to do with grain size, but it's possible. Perhaps it has an effect if somehow the ratio switches something and the primary agent here is actually ascorbic acid? According to Anchell and Troop, Silvia Zawadzki thought that it might be ascorbic acid that was the primary agent in XTOL. But as far as I know, ascorbic acid as a primary developer on its own is fairly foggy and I'd expect that to be bad without sulfite—which XTOL has and PC-512 Borax does not.

Interested if you have any other theories.

 

[relistan]

I have added a Resource Page with all the collected development times for films so far from @Alan Johnson and me. @Andrew O'Neill, or anyone else, if you have times to contribute, I'd be happy to add them!

PC-512 Borax Development Starting Times

Some of us have been developing various films with PC-512 Borax developer for the last few years and have established some times you can use as a starting point for your own development process with this developer. I will update and maintain this...

www.photrio.com

 

[John Wiegerink]

Here is another start time, Lucky SHD 400 EI=200 in PC-Borax 1:50 ------7m 20C

Alan,
Is it me or do I see that blasted white speck snowflakes again? I don't see it in your building and foot bridge scene below it. It seems you aren liking PC-512 the more you use it. Thanks again for your experiments and posting your results.

 

[Alan Johnson]

Very interesting @Alan Johnson! That is quite a noticeable difference.

I had never done this comparison, but I had observed from the start that this developer has much finer grain (and less/very low fog) compared to other similar formulas I had tried. It is interesting here that it is outperforming original HC-110 syrup with its fancy sulfite substitutes. I had thought at first that the fine grain might have something do with borate and ascorbic acid interaction. I did not test too far in that direction to understand it better. I know that folks with better chemistry than me (notably @Rudeofus) did not think that is the case.

It may also have to do with the unbuffered pH, which already starts fairly low and should drop as the products of development form, but I tried other HQ developers in the same range of pH and did not see as fine a grain (and fog!), and a bicarbonate-based developer with only a bit higher pH did not do as well. I am looking in my notes and I don't seem to have a pH measured after development had finished. That might be informative.

This ratio of ascorbic acid to phenidone also seemed to give the best speed and fog characteristics, which was why I settled on that. I doubt that has much to do with grain size, but it's possible. Perhaps it has an effect if somehow the ratio switches something and the primary agent here is actually ascorbic acid? According to Anchell and Troop, Silvia Zawadzki thought that it might be ascorbic acid that was the primary agent in XTOL. But as far as I know, ascorbic acid as a primary developer on its own is fairly foggy and I'd expect that to be bad without sulfite—which XTOL has and PC-512 Borax does not.

Interested if you have any other theories.

The oxidation of hydroquinone when it regenerates dimezone-s in HC-110 can produce hydroquinone monosulfonate which is itself a developer(p70). Also the semiquinone can get involved in a chain reaction (p166).Either of these might increase grain size.
https://archive.org/details/photographicproc0000maso/page/64/mode/1up?q=

 

[Alan Johnson]

Alan,
Is it me or do I see that blasted white speck snowflakes again? I don't see it in your building and foot bridge scene below it. It seems you aren liking PC-512 the more you use it. Thanks again for your experiments and posting your results.

John, thanks for pointing that out.
At least partly it is due to using Flickr Pro which on my 15.6 in screen at the highest magnification gives an image effectively about 4ft wide from a 36 mm wide negative. But you are quite right, the specks do seem to be more visible on some films (aerial surveillance ?, underexposed?) than others.

 

[John Wiegerink]

John, thanks for pointing that out.
At least partly it is due to using Flickr Pro which on my 15.6 in screen at the highest magnification gives an image effectively about 4ft wide from a 36 mm wide negative. But you are quite right, the specks do seem to be more visible on some films (aerial surveillance ?, underexposed?) than others.

Alan,
I've only tried PC-512 on a couple of different films and saw no "specks" with those. I think PC-512 is a darn good developer. I was just wondering why the specks show up on some of your shots and not on others. The only time I had white specks show up on my positives/prints was on one batch of Foma 100 120 film. I changed out my used fixer for a new batch fixer and those specks never showed up again on Foma 100. Later in the summer, I'm going to play a little more with PC-512 and try it as a 2-bath. Until then, I will stay tuned to your posts and Karl's comments.

 

[Rudeofus]

Very interesting @Alan Johnson! That is quite a noticeable difference.

The question I always ask when facing such a comparison: were both negatives in the same density range? If you assume (and published scientific measurements confirm this), that silver grains are completely opaque to light, then you can assume classic B&W negative film as an arrangement of fully opaque and mostly transparent patches. Size of patches depends on development, but the actual granularity of the result will also depend on "how many patches do you need to create a certain density?".

If your density is 0.3, then you need an equal area of opaque and transparent patches, while D=1 will already require a 1:9 ratio. At D>=2 things will quickly go very very grainy regardless of which developer you used.

 

[M0427]

Hello landlord, according to your formula PC512 has been prepared, but there is a problem, when testing the development time, the film deepens for a very long time, a small piece of film soaked in the developer, about 4 minutes before turning gray, is it my mistake?

A, propylene glycol 100 ml, ascorbic acid 12 g, phenidone 0.5 g.

B, 21.7 g of borax is prepared into a 1000ml solution.

Dilute solution A in solution B at a ratio of 1+50

Please advise, thank you!

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Hello landlord, according to your formula PC512 has been prepared, but there is a problem, when testing the development time, the film deepens for a very long time, a small piece of film soaked in the developer, about 4 minutes before turning gray, is it my mistake?

A, propylene glycol 100 ml, ascorbic acid 12 g, phenidone 0.5 g.

B, 21.7 g of borax is prepared into a 1000ml solution.

Dilute solution A in solution B at a ratio of 1+50

Please advise, thank you!

The formula and how you diluted it with Borax is correct. Assuming your Phenidone is okay, everything should be fine. Out of curiosity, which film did you check?

 

[relistan]

Hello landlord, according to your formula PC512 has been prepared, but there is a problem, when testing the development time, the film deepens for a very long time, a small piece of film soaked in the developer, about 4 minutes before turning gray, is it my mistake?

A, propylene glycol 100 ml, ascorbic acid 12 g, phenidone 0.5 g.

B, 21.7 g of borax is prepared into a 1000ml solution.

Dilute solution A in solution B at a ratio of 1+50

Please advise, thank you!

Welcome to Photrio!

As @Andrew O'Neill said, that looks right. Your temperature was 20 Celsius? Just to be clear, an example of usage in a stainless tank for 35mm is:

• 300 ml of borax solution
• 6ml of propylene glycol solution

The only other thing I can think of is to be sure you have ascorbic acid. It can't be anything else, and definitely not sodium ascorbate.

One other thing that can go wrong with a very small amount of film: make sure you have the emulsion side up. If it's facing down, not enough developer will reach it.

Hope it helps

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Welcome to Photrio!

As @Andrew O'Neill said, that looks right. Your temperature was 20 Celsius? Just to be clear, an example of usage in a stainless tank for 35mm is:

• 300 ml of borax solution
• 6ml of propylene glycol solution

The only other thing I can think of is to be sure you have ascorbic acid. It can't be anything else, and definitely not sodium ascorbate.

One other thing that can go wrong with a very small amount of film: make sure you have the emulsion side up. If it's facing down, not enough developer will reach it.

Hope it helps

Good point! I accidentally grabbed a bottle of Sodium Ascorbate when I was mixing it up last night. I realised my error as I was removing the cap. That was close!

 

[Alan Johnson]

The question I always ask when facing such a comparison: were both negatives in the same density range?

The PC-512 Borax was slightly less dense. But not sufficient to change the conclusion that it gives finer grain.
I made a better test earlier with the unstable metaborate syrup version DCM18:

My PC-512 Borax Developer

I wondered if DCM18 [or PCM20] might serve as a long lasting concentrate to replace my syrup HC-110 when it is eventually used up. HC-110 syrup is discontinued. PC-TEA is an alternative but is harder to make up as the ascorbic acid is slow to dissolve in TEA. DCM18- the ascorbic acid dissolves...

www.photrio.com

 

[M0427]

The formula and how you diluted it with Borax is correct. Assuming your Phenidone is okay, everything should be fine. Out of curiosity, which film did you check?

Gave my friend's Lucky100 flush and scared me to change to D76 rinse

 

[M0427]

Welcome to Photrio!

As @Andrew O'Neill said, that looks right. Your temperature was 20 Celsius? Just to be clear, an example of usage in a stainless tank for 35mm is:

• 300 ml of borax solution
• 6ml of propylene glycol solution

The only other thing I can think of is to be sure you have ascorbic acid. It can't be anything else, and definitely not sodium ascorbate.

One other thing that can go wrong with a very small amount of film: make sure you have the emulsion side up. If it's facing down, not enough developer will reach it.

Hope it helps

Okay, thank you, I'll try again, and if you don't understand something, I'll ask you for advice

 

[Alan Johnson]

Noting that the image on which the tiny white specks were observed was effectively about 4 feet wide I made a test to see if they came from one of the process solutions. (Apparently not).
All the solutions were filtered and the development repeated with FP4 cine film EI=100, Adox HR-50, EI=50, and Lucky SHD 400, EI=160.
On the same test scene, FP4 cine was effectively speck free, Adox HR-50 and Lucky SHD 400 still did show a dusting, rather more so with the Lucky , all at large magnification.
With the Lucky, probably nothing would be noticed at less than 10x , Adox could probably be enlarged more IMO. Both have been reported as derived from aerial surveillance films.

 

[John Wiegerink]

Noting that the image on which the tiny white specks were observed was effectively about 4 feet wide I made a test to see if they came from one of the process solutions. (Apparently not).
All the solutions were filtered and the development repeated with FP4 cine film EI=100, Adox HR-50, EI=50, and Lucky SHD 400, EI=160.
On the same test scene, FP4 cine was effectively speck free, Adox HR-50 and Lucky SHD 400 still did show a dusting, rather more so with the Lucky , all at large magnification.
With the Lucky, probably nothing would be noticed at less than 10x , Adox could probably be enlarged more IMO. Both have been reported as derived from aerial surveillance films.

Alan,
Thanks for going to the trouble of finding the source of the "white-speck" syndrome. Wonder if it's in the emulsion itself? You would think an aerial surveillance film would be free of all defects in its emulsion due to having to be examined under magnification.

 

[Alan Johnson]

John,
I agree. The Aviphot 80 on which HR-50 seems to be based is designed to be processed at 30C but I don't know if that would affect the result.

 

[John Wiegerink]

You wouldn't think the temperature difference would cause the specks, but stranger things have happened. I wonder if it's age related? Something changing in the emulsion as the film gets older??? Just one of those mystery questions that might never be answered. Still, you would have to make a pretty big print to probably have it stand out.

 

[relistan]

Good point! I accidentally grabbed a bottle of Sodium Ascorbate when I was mixing it up last night. I realised my error as I was removing the cap. That was close!

Phew! Glad you noticed

 

[relistan]

@koraks any chance the first post of this thread can be edited to add a link to this resource page for development times? https://www.photrio.com/forum/resources/pc-512-borax-development-starting-times.462/ . I was thinking to put it above the photos. I would do it, but it's not editable any more as it's from a few years ago. Your help is much appreciated!

@Andrew O'Neill your times are in the chart now! Thank you!

 

[koraks]

@koraks any chance the first post of this thread can be edited to add a link to this resource page for development times? https://www.photrio.com/forum/resources/pc-512-borax-development-starting-times.462/ . I was thinking to put it above the photos. I would do it, but it's not editable any more as it's from a few years ago. Your help is much appreciated!

Yes, absolutely; I've just updated it! Please let me know if it's OK like this.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

@koraks any chance the first post of this thread can be edited to add a link to this resource page for development times? https://www.photrio.com/forum/resources/pc-512-borax-development-starting-times.462/ . I was thinking to put it above the photos. I would do it, but it's not editable any more as it's from a few years ago. Your help is much appreciated!

@Andrew O'Neill your times are in the chart now! Thank you!

It's my pleasure! I'll let you know when I've done more films.