Organoleptic properties of Harvey's 777 type developers

[Anon Ymous]

... As an aside, four of the great photographers mentioned in the Popular Photography article used DK-50. But as its formula is well-known, it might not generate the same level of excitement as Harvey's 777.

True dat!

 

[Pixophrenic]

As it just so happens, Formulary sells this developer to make 1l working solution. I wonder whether its ingredients are supplied as separate powder chems (which you could weigh individually), since instead of one Formulary provides four separate SDS for this product. Either way, for the low price of US$ 14.95 plus shipping to Canada you could answer all your questions related to this product, and deal a massive blow to all these conspirators in hiding who try to keep this info secret from you.

It may, however, turn out, that Harvey 777 is not magic fairy dust, that it is a normal developer with little to no advantage over TMAX, DD-X or Xtol. In this case you still developed a few rolls of film, and at least put some conspiracy theory to rest before it gets totally out of hand and ends up in a stream of insults to people who just didn't care enough about this developer to follow forum threads about it. All for the price of US$ 14.95 plus shipping !!!one!!!eleven!!1!

Rudeofus, as it has been commented about the Formulary's 777, I only have to add that quite likely no one today can get their hands on the "authentic" 777, unless its initial formula is published. In the issue of authenticity this will remain a legend for all eternity. However, a) this is likely unimportant because property-wise, the current incarnation sold by Bluegrass gives imperceptibly different results, and b) because whatever is in it, may result in a developer that works magically well with some contemporary films, but not with some others. It's still down to trial and error, if Ellen mails me my prospective order. And no, I cannot afford to test all 12 or so films on the market, probably one out of a category. There are a few interesting points to mention (thank you, jnanian, I am most grateful for the links) that this discussion happened already twice before, in 2011 and 2015, and one of these contained some organoleptic data and some images. Don't get me wrong, these were excellent pictures, but not those that push a film to its limits and reveal any kind of 777 exceptional character. And all this talk about how hightlights are not blocked. There is definitely a dozen developers with this property. I'd wish they have posted a picture of Stouffer wedge on a lightbox, and stuck an indicator paper in their solution, now and then. Also, it is clear from those earlier discussions that Bluegrass changed one of the ingredients. PPD is gone. Ellen of Bluegrass, who participated in one of those discussions, was talking about a problem with "coarseness". I do not understand what this means. Does it relate to the product or to the resultant image?
Curiously, the community watched me rambling and only after some days did I get the links, where sufficient organoleptic info was present.

 

[removed account4]

i was under the assumption ( as were maybe others who read this thread )
that you did a bare-bones/rudimentary search on this website regarding 777 and the other couple of
threads that have started and dwindled over the years.
if the search bar here is inadequate you can go to gooooogle . com and either do an advance search filling
the fields with necessary info, or enter in the searchbar sitehotrio.com "whateveryou want to search" and you will get
results from key words. ( sorry the colon p turns into a smily face )

personally, i think it is absurd that you are now claiming that the developer bluegrass is selling isn't the authentic 777, because
you don't know the formula for it. or can't compare it to authentic olde films from the era, as absurd as it is to suggest you have
discovered the formula for it, without ever having used it or even seen personally film and prints made with it... but to each their own i suppose, chances are im wrong LOL i usually am

while it might be useful to see results ... on the internet ( negatives and prints that have been scanned )
most likely you will get the wrong impression about the developer seeing the internet is 95% filler and less than 5% meat
not to mention chances are that the people whose work you allude to who are using the bluegrass 777 aren't using it at 75ºF+ and in deep tanks as it was designed.
i know for a fact some of the people who participated in the threads i emailed you the links to, did NOT use it in deep tanks, at high temperatures
and with sheet films so, how can you judge their results, if they didn't use it correctly ?

years ago a chemist who told me that 1:50 ansco 130 mixed with caffenolC was the ansco130 doing all the processing
because he processed film 1:50 with rodinal because he couldn't get ansco130 ... its the same sort of thing,
not apples to apples, but apples to mangos

And in many cases, the photographers didn't develop their films, nor did they print them. Many of them used very accomplished and experienced printers that made far more of a difference than any developer did.

LOL!

you must have forgotten, unless you process your own film, make your own prints
and know the intricate inerworkings of the exposure making process, and use specific name brand gear,
you are only a hack, not a "real" photographer and shouldn't be trusted...

 

[Rudeofus]

you must have forgotten, unless you process your own film, make your own prints
and know the intricate inerworkings of the exposure making process, and use specific name brand gear,
you are only a hack, not a "real" photographer and shouldn't be trusted...

I hate to say it, but many very successful photo artists had the printing done by professional labs - HCB comes to mind.

@Pixophrenic : the main claim to fame for Harvey 777 was twofold: it offered high reliability, and you could use it at up to 90°F/32°C. While the first property is still desirable (but definitely no unique selling point today), its usability at elevated temperatures is all but irrelevant with today's prehardened films.

 

[Pixophrenic]

i was under the assumption ( as were maybe others who read this thread )
that you did a bare-bones/rudimentary search on this website regarding 777 and the other couple of
threads that have started and dwindled over the years.
i<snip>

you must have forgotten, unless you process your own film, make your own prints
and know the intricate inerworkings of the exposure making process, and use specific name brand gear,
you are only a hack, not a "real" photographer and shouldn't be trusted...

A-ah! No offence, but it follows that, in your opinion, Kodak engineers that only went as far as shooting standard targets and doing the densitometry on the negatives should not be trusted? Also, it is two different things, if you want "authentic" or you want a working developer that is as close as it can get, given that the provenance of its components has irreversibly changed.

 

[removed account4]

A-ah! No offence, but it follows that, in your opinion, Kodak engineers that only went as far as shooting standard targets and doing the densitometry on the negatives should not be trusted? Also, it is two different things, if you want "authentic" or you want a working developer that is as close as it can get, given that the provenance of its components has irreversibly changed.

NO they shouldn't be trusted !
especially if they posted their results on the internets !

how do you know the componants have been changed ?
was it in one of the threads ( sorry i haven't read them in a long time )
or is that something bluegrass told you ?

sorry for my cluelessness

personally .. good enough, has always been good enuf for me ...


rudeofus .. that hcb, what a hack ! how could anyone have taken him seriously
he didn't even process his own film ! not to mention he probably used a leica ..
and everyone knows only hacks who want to have people think they know what they
are doing use leicas jeez !!
if he had used a cardboard camera made from scraps and rubbish, and processed his
own film, then i could say with a clear conscience that he knew what he was doing and was
a real photographer ..
jeez .. if it is true and he wasn't a hack, you have just shattered my power-perspective into a zillion pieces !
and it is going to take years of psychoanalysis for me to regain self esteem and self respect ..

 

[Anon Ymous]

...
LOL!

you must have forgotten, unless you process your own film, make your own prints
and know the intricate inerworkings of the exposure making process, and use specific name brand gear,
you are only a hack, not a "real" photographer and shouldn't be trusted...

Oh, far from it! A photographer is the guy who takes the photographs, doesn't need to be doing his own developing and printing, nor have much, if any knowledge involving such technicalities. I'm merely pointing out that developer choice isn't a be all end all kind of thing. We shouldn't associate the beauty of a photograph with the properties of a developer, paper, you name it. For starters, the content is far more important than anything else. Apart from that, the way someone prints a negative can make a huge difference in the way a photo looks and has nothing to do with developer choice. In other words, people shouldn't get too hung up on things like that.

 

[removed account4]

Oh, far from it! A photographer is the guy who takes the photographs, doesn't need to be doing his own developing and printing, nor have much, if any knowledge involving such technicalities. I'm merely pointing out that developer choice isn't a be all end all kind of thing. We shouldn't associate the beauty of a photograph with the properties of a developer, paper, you name it. For starters, the content is far more important than anything else. Apart from that, the way someone prints a negative can make a huge difference in the way a photo looks and has nothing to do with developer choice. In other words, people shouldn't get too hung up on things like that.

huh .. i've read its the opposite !
we should get totally hung up on what sort of lens is used
the film, the developer and content well, that always plays second fiddle.

unless of course ....
it is a figurative image of a young woman .. and if that's the case, of course
her looks and "how the photographer found her, and how he got her to disrobe" is most important !!

come on anon y mouse .. get with the program !!

 

[Pixophrenic]

He was right. Incidentally, I took Caffenol apart and think it was the little investigation that got me hooked on going further into the history of developers. This community still believes that the work in that authentic Caffenol (coffee+soda) is done by caffeic acid or a derivative. However, there was a German paper about a variety of beverages analyzed for a particular class of compounds, and they found catechol and pyrogallol in coffee in reasonable concentrations. I contacted two of the authors, never got a reply. I just wanted to know what kind of coffee they used.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

LOL!

you must have forgotten, unless you process your own film, make your own prints
and know the intricate inerworkings of the exposure making process, and use specific name brand gear,
you are only a hack, not a "real" photographer and shouldn't be trusted...

Not that this piece of information changes your views, but according to Popular Photography May 1958 (you can read here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/38552878@N02/26997463387/in/album-72157668554829308/lightbox/), among the ten greatest photographers it profiled, at least five (Avedon, Cartier-Bresson, Eisenstaedt, Haas and Penn) relied either on an assistant or a lab for developing and printing. Of course, they all would have done everything you said before they started outsourcing the processing of their work; don't know if Cartier-Bresson is an exception.

 

[removed account4]

sorry, actually he was wrong. just as he was wrong that you need to exact/precise measure
all your ingredients if you use caffenol c, or you have to mix things in a certain order, or process your film in
some sort of ritualistic special way .. really wrong.

i have mixed ansco 130 1:50 with water and it did not process film
... not in any way shape or form in 7minutes or stand develop to completion in 1/2 hour...
and 100cc ansco 130 : 5000cc water
will not last 1000s of rolls+sheets of film and sheets of paper / 5-6months heavy use without replenishment

but that's ok keep on believing what you want LOL i'll keep doing what i want.
actually try and do the things i talk about ... otherwise i will not post about it.

unfortunately in this internet age ( as i said previously 95% filler, less than 5% meat )
very few people are experienced in what they talk about, they just repost what
somene else said and regurgitate the same old endless stream of non-tested, non-experienced "stuff"

 

[Pixophrenic]

sorry, actually he was wrong. just as he was wrong that you need to exact/precise measure
all your ingredients if you use caffenol c, or you have to mix things in a certain order, or process your film in
some sort of ritualistic special way .. really wrong.

i have mixed ansco 130 1:50 with water and it did not process film
... not in any way shape or form in 7minutes or stand develop to completion in 1/2 hour...
and 100cc ansco 130 : 5000cc water
will not last 1000s of rolls+sheets of film and sheets of paper / 5-6months heavy use without replenishment

but that's ok keep on believing what you want LOL i'll keep doing what i want.
actually try and do the things i talk about ... otherwise i will not post about it.

unfortunately in this internet age ( as i said previously 95% filler, less than 5% meat )
very few people are experienced in what they talk about, they just repost what
somene else said and regurgitate the same old endless stream of non-tested, non-experienced "stuff"

LOL here, too. You should have diluted Ansco not in water but in the thick carbonate solution of the same strength as in Caffenol ( but skip the coffee), then you would have known its contribution. In contrast, in advanced Caffenols like C-L it is ascorbic acid that does most of the work. I have a special formula for you, consisting of only sodium ascorbate and carbonate of soda. It is called "Whatever-ol". ;-)

 

[removed account4]

uh huh
i have done what you have suggested and it didn't process the film .. sorry
you can think what you want, but ansco 130 mixed with washing soda will not process 1000 rolls/sheets of film
and the same amount of paper .. you and the norwegian guy are equally not quite knowlegeable about caffenol

 

[Pixophrenic]

Before this thread completely degenerates into quite something else, I would like to inform you that I have been wrong about the original 777 composition. This thought came after just watching my Edwal 12 for a week. Something is going on in it. It is a brighter shade of tea color and there is a small brownish pellet. Today I am going to develop some clips, but I already anticipate that it is going to be, eh, different from the real 777, like others have said. I think Harvey's idea was to furnish D-23 with stability and optimal work at elevated temperatures. So I thought his patented idea may have been to introduce a reagent that protects metol from oxidation, while acting as a grain dissolver. But, this is not all. The additional thing is that the base developer is not D-23, but DK.15 (a), a tropical developer, containing sodium sulfate, a good candidate for the "fairy dust". DK.15 (a) developer is metol-only, and in a way similar to DK.50 (minus hydroquinone which is decomposed during ripening into one or more derivatives). Initially the solution was PPD, but obviously while a number of related compounds are available today, it may be difficult to find a good price.
On a different note, it occurred to me that a way to preserve the original 777 market place would be to sell it with the certificate of authenticity. This way, the photographers would not need to be "fooled" by substitutes, but have a conscious choice, whether to go for an "authentic" 777 or whatever its current mimics would be. What do you think?

 

[Alan Johnson]

These types of developers containing the grain solvent p-phenylenediamine were used in the 1930s by the early Leica photographers with the films of that era and gave good result, for the time
.https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/early-history-of-sharpness-1932.143631/

 

[removed account4]

not sure .
but im guessing you will probably have a better chance
selling your whatever all .. at least the non authentic 777's
will process film, the concoction of 1L of water 4oz of carbonate and a teaspoon of 130 didn't do much ...
not in 7minutes with constant agitation, not stand develop for 1/2 hour ... the only thing it did was waste my chemistry ...

 

[pdeeh]

I expect I shall regret jumping into this thread, but I'm feeling reckless today; and I can always mute it if it goes even further sideways

i have done what you have suggested and it didn't process the film .. sorry

You need to try harder, john; also a magic incantation is required (which I have vowed not to reveal).

I tried this years ago when I was first fussing about with Caffenol.

Ascorbic acid powder and Caustic soda in solution will develop film, and very quickly too. Unfortunately it's such a high contrast developer that you almost don't get any midtones at all. Washing soda instead of Caustic slows it down (lower pH) somewhat, but it's still rather unsatisfactory.

Adding coffee slows it down a bit more and by superadditivity (it is assumed) makes it into a useful developer.

Saying 'ascorbic acid does most of the work in Caffenol' is a bit like saying 'in D76, metol does most of the work, so we can disregard the hydroquinone'

PE has been heard to say something to the effect that experimental results always trump theory. And faced with your experience versus someone else's unevidenced theory, I'm inclined to your side of the bargain ...

 

[Pixophrenic]

These types of developers containing the grain solvent p-phenylenediamine were used in the 1930s by the early Leica photographers with the films of that era and gave good result, for the time
.https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/early-history-of-sharpness-1932.143631/

Thanks Alan. You always give a sound advice. Perhaps you could tell something about the history of metol-only paper developer Gevaert 253?

 

[Alan Johnson]

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/something-old-is-new-again.128411/
I would guess it has been known since antiquity that hydroquinone makes the darker part of the silver image more contrasty than does metol.

 

[Pixophrenic]

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/something-old-is-new-again.128411/
I would guess it has been known since antiquity that hydroquinone makes the darker part of the silver image more contrasty than does metol.

Very interesting discussion is there in this link. I have this developer from several sources, and at least some of them made an incorrect conversion of sodium carbonate to potassium carbonate. Could it be at any time in the 1930s sold as "GAF Universal"?

 

[removed account4]

pixophrenic
gaf wasn't selling agfa/ansco products until they changed names in 1967
GAF didn't exist in the 1930s

 

[Pixophrenic]

i was under the assumption ( as were maybe others who read this thread )
that you did a bare-bones/rudimentary search on this website regarding 777 and the other couple of
threads that have started and dwindled over the years.
if the search bar here is inadequate you can go to gooooogle . com and either do an advance search filling
the fields with necessary info, or enter in the searchbar sitehotrio.com "whateveryou want to search" and you will get
results from key words. ( sorry the colon p turns into a smily face )
..

Actually, it is not as straightforward as you think. Barebones search, ha-ha. I just found a lot of useful hints on Harvey's 777, reading df caldwell survey on Edwal 12. More useful info there than in the threads that popped up from a search with more relevant keywords.

 

[removed account4]

you might also look at this post
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...veloper-made-again.112424/page-2#post-1486472
patrick knows his stuff .. and it relates to your findings+info said by df cardwell

 

[Pixophrenic]

Thank you, jnanian, I have spent an evening looking at this and other internet sites, casting a wider than before net of searches.
Now that I had a limited testing of Edwal 12, too, I am convinced that it could not have been a relative of the Harvey's 777. Edwal 12 is a specialty developer, working best after some ripening, yet still too contrasty for general use, but I understand how it can yield brilliant results in flat light.
However, I found also that Gerald C Koch wrote on March 21, 2014: "A word of caution about this developer and similar ones mentioned in the article. The developer uses p-phenylenediamine." I am curious, Gerald, since you were instrumental on so many occasions before, where exactly does this come from? One of the old articles reproduced on KennyE blog features an interview with Mr. Harvey, and he says, among other things, the following: "Forgetting the pyro type of developers there are two others now in wide use; one the Eastman D-76 or Defender 6D, and the other is Sease 3 <...> My particular developer is as different from both of these as they are from each other." Now, Bluegrass denies that there is glycin in it. By looking at Part A powder some <think> that this is PPD, but is it? As in the same article Harvey goes at length how he was motivated by heat in his lab to produce something that would work well at those temperatures, and how 777 was a number in a close series of developers. So, it was intended for use at temperatures where contemporary emulsions would have melted or reticulated, so one should be looking for aromatic compound of relatively unusual structure, but likely a common precursor in large scale chemical synthesis, not pricey, not too unstable like catechol/pyrogallol derivatives are and which also tans gelatin. At this angle all those internet articles are starting to look as a clever series of (un)intentional misdirections. I am not accusing anyone in particular, but when you mention that the pH "was different" from Edwal, what was it? Harvey was not a professional chemist, so the spectrum of these compounds should have come from one of his friends, who in turn was only familiar with a certain range of them, available in the 1930s.

 

[Alan Johnson]

Mees & James, 3rd ed p371 notes the temperature coefficient T is the ratio of the rate of development at a particular temperature to the rate at a temperature 10 degrees lower on the Centigrade scale.
It is particularly high for developers containing ppd. Among other things, T for a soft emulsion is substantially higher than that for a hard emulsion. Maybe Harveys contains an ingredient to harden the emulsion.