Alan, could you point to your source of FX-4, since in mine it contains copious amounts of sulfite, which would change the pH (Fage's A+B is about pH 10) and bromide, so the similarity is only that it contains metol, HQ and phenidone at similar concentrations. Historically, could JF borrow the idea from Crawley?The second bath is similar to a 5x diluted solution of Crawley's FX-4, which is speed increasing.
http://home.alphalink.com.au/~simgrant/jackspcs/fx4.htm
The second bath is similar to a 5x diluted solution of Crawley's FX-4, which is speed increasing.
http://home.alphalink.com.au/~simgrant/jackspcs/fx4.htm
Crawley, BJP Dec 16 1960 p684:
"In FX-4 the Metol-phenidone-hydroquinone combination is used.This reduces overall contrast and allows the shadows to increase in contrast more than FX-3 by the time normal gammas are reached: speed increase over D76 is now 50-60%, roughly equivalent to Microphen.The presence of metol also assists discrimination in the highlights, which in some PQ developers are liable, the author finds, to "run away"."
The Jean Fage developer uses the same combination so one may speculate that it will show a similar effect on contrast and speed although the pH and sulfite are different.
Technically this developer would be a divided developer and not a two bath one. Their use was once fairly common before VC papers but usually to control contrast.
Good luck to you, I say. I only recently became aware of the Jean Fage developer, so have nothing to contribute specific to your search for information (though I do have some photo development books in French that I'll go thumb through). I like the idea of your trying to keep the information from being lost -- that's very laudable. And I do look forward to any improvements to JF developer you might suggest.
Where did you get the BJP archive online? All I can find is this:
http://tls.search.proquest.com/titl...itecture+Archive&format=html&IDString=1008719
I don't like to discuss if nobody else can see it.
Yes it would be interesting to trace anything on Jean Fage.
Thank you very much, Alan, for the reference. In fact, what I am looking for, is a similarly exact reference for the JF developer. I downloaded this article of Crawley and a couple of its installments that follow in later issues, I think it spreads to mid-January 1961, and it was very educational. However, in the first installment the formulary is promised to come at the end of the article, but I could not locate it. Some formulas are embedded in the text, but not all.
Correction: the formulary is actually found at :
Crawley, Geoffrey W . The British Journal of Photography (Archive : 1860-2005) ; London 108.5245 (Jan
27, 1961): 38-41, 49.
Having read this article I think that Crawley can certainly be credited for introducing developers with 3 developing agents, and among them metol, HQ and phenidone combo, but the <ratios> used in JF developer do not mimic any of the FXs. Incidentally, the other developer attributed to Fage, was a concentrated phenidon-HQ-glycin. which indeed closely matches FX2. I picked up the latter from a web page which is now gone. From the timeline, Fage could have read the FX publications, but his formula does not closely follow any of the FXs and he is not as focused on Crawley's idea of obligatory 100 g/L or more of sodium sulfite. Also, it is my impression that Crawley tended to emphasize borax as a preferential alkaline buffer, while JF is not alien to using carbonate.
Another idea is that bath A here is probably not only intended for development, but also to exploit the difference in "induction period", which puts metol ahead of HQ, i.e.pre-soak film with metol and then transfer it into a more alkaline solution with the other two developing agents. Unfortunately. the Jacobsens' book devotes very little space to discussion of induction period, but one learns that PPD and derivatives have practically no induction period, metol and phenidone seem to have a short one and dihydroxybenzenes have the longest one. Subsequently, in bath A+B we get (working concentrations) metol 0.75 g/L, HQ 0.75 g/L and phenidone 0.05 g/L. Metol/HQ ratio is supposed to give a soft working MQ developer and additional phenidone increases the overall activity, so such a combination does not seem to be borrowed anywhere from Crawley.
Don't overate Crawley, his series of articles is good his formulae less so, Most of the Paterson developers sold (all Crawley fomulae) were nowhere as good as Ilford, Kodak,and Agfa equivalent products.
Through work mid 1980's I met a photo-chemist who'd had to mix his commercial formulae for"Paterson" production and he was quite scathing, he he'd normally been making rather well known chemistry mostly still in production, by by then was in charge of research.
Ian
I reported the above post requesting Admin to ask if Photrio could be included as an Institution allowing login to the BJP archive.
I agree it would be helpful to have access to this. Sorry to take your thread off topic for a bit.
Crawley was not a chemist and his formulas often miss the mark. But at least he tested his formulas which is mare than can be said of some of the stuff seen on APUG.
That raises an interesting point, Crawley's work was methodical and quite detailed, it was for something more than its initial publication, it's academic but lacks citations.
Ian
The are several developers that use both metol and phenidone such as Perfection XR-1 and one formulation of Neufin Blue. Then there was Chrone Additive a solution of phenidone designed to be added to D-76 to obtain better tonal gradation
I am back from my sojourn in France. I did a pdf. of the series of 1960-1 for anyone who wants them. My apologies for the quality of the job, however. Best PM me.
I think I have a better idea. Why couldn't we ask the current editor of BJP if they could release it in public domain?
I contribute to a small publication (circulation) on personal photography in the UK http://www.inscapephotography.co.uk/ and having found a rather interesting paper
‘Becoming a Raven’: Self-Representation, Narration, and Metaphor in Fukase Masahisa's ‘Karasu’ Photographs
published in a rather obscure academic journal:
Japanese Studies
Volume number: 29
Issue number: 2
Year of publication: 2009
Requested permission rights to reproduce the article, this was the reply:
Thank you for your request.
For print rights for the whole article there will be a fee of £482.30+VAT.
Please let me know how you would like to proceed.
Kind Regards
Jo Bateman – Permissions Administrator, Journals
Now it may be that the BJP will look more kindly on a request from a much longer time ago and there is certainly no harm asking but don't hold your breath.
May I remind you that we are talking about a publication of 1960? .
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