Parodinal Test with AEU400

Pioneer · Aug 1, 2021

I have been shooting very regularly with Arista EDU Ultra 400 for the past month and I normally use D-23, which works pretty well for me. But I also like AEU400 in Rodinal. It tends to give a grittier look which seems to work with some pictures.

However, I discovered that I was out of Rodinal and when I went to order some more my favorite online retailer was out of it. That is when I remembered an article on Parodinal from Donald Qualls that I read a while back. I would link but I haven't been able to find it yet.

However the formula is on Digital Truth under their film developer formulas. So I dug up the ingredients, contacted Mr. Qualls through this forum for any hints or tips, and proceeded to mix up my first batch.

To make a long post shorter, after waiting three or four days for the solution to settle down, I gave it a try on a recent roll of AEU400. I was thrilled when I pulled the negatives out of the wash and seen they were a success.

Attached are a couple of the shots from that experiment. I never intended them to be artistic wonders, just decently exposed film. I think they turned out all right. Now I have a usable home brewed alternative to Rodinal and will no longer have to worry when my online vendor is out.

These were scanned at a low resolution on my Epson V500 so the results are a bit grainier looking than I would have expected. Later, when time permits I'll try some real prints.

Horatio · Aug 1, 2021

You should try caffenol as well. I made my first batch a few weeks ago and it compared favorably wD76.

Donald Qualls · Aug 2, 2021

Parodinal has a huge advantage over Caffenol: it doesn't stink. Not to mention you can mix up half a liter of concentrate and develop nearly a hundred rolls before you need to mix more, vs. having to mix before each development.

I've never used commercial Rodinal, but I've done quite a bit of film in Parodinal (IIRC, I went through four or five half liter batches back when I was using it regularly).

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Aug 2, 2021

Donald Qualls said:
Parodinal has a huge advantage over Caffenol: it doesn't stink.

The stink reduces dramatically if some Sodium Sulphite is added to the working solution, but most Caffenol recipes don't use Sulphite.

David A. Goldfarb · Aug 3, 2021

Parodinal is a surprisingly good developer, and handy to make when you realize that you didn't need to buy the now long past date enormous 500-tablet bottle of acetaminophen 10 years ago, even though it was on sale, because your entire family uses fewer than 10 tablets per year.

Donald Qualls · Aug 3, 2021

David A. Goldfarb said:
you didn't need to buy the now long past date enormous 500-tablet bottle of acetaminophen 10 years ago, even though it was on sale, because your entire family uses fewer than 10 tablets per year.

Actually, when I used Parodinal for about a nickel a roll, I was buying *two* 500 caplet bottles of acetaminophen at Costco, for eleven bucks any day. I always looked at it as buying developer, since I've never had much use for acetaminophen as a pain reliever.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Aug 3, 2021

What's cheaper in America? 1 pound of p-aminophenol base/hydrochloride or equivalent amount of acetaminophen? Gainer's EZ Rodinal is a good option if p-aminophenol is cheaper.

Horatio · Aug 3, 2021

The caffenol smell didn't bother me. I like strong coffee. I'll add some table salt to the next batch, and think about getting some sodium sulfite. I still have about 250ml of Rodinal on hand, but I'm going to make some Parodinal one of these days. The nickel per roll cost appeals to my thrifty side.

Donald Qualls · Aug 3, 2021

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:
What's cheaper in America? 1 pound of p-aminophenol base/hydrochloride or equivalent amount of acetaminophen? Gainer's EZ Rodinal is a good option if p-aminophenol is cheaper.

Well, let's see -- 1000 tablets of acetaminophen is 500 grams, for (these days) about thirteen dollars at Costco. I don't think I can even get the p-aminophenol powder shipped for that money.

Pioneer · Aug 3, 2021

There are probably less expensive sources but Grainger sells P-Aminophenol in 500 gram bottles for @155 USD and that requires special shipping. I can almost certainly get a WHOLE BUNCH of generic Tylenol for that kind of money.

Donald Qualls · Aug 3, 2021

I should probably have mentioned that for those who lack a Costco membership, the same amount of acetaminophen tablets from a grocery store's medicine aisle will cost a little more -- around $16. Still comparable with the shipping for a pound of p-aminophenol from a supplier like Photographer's Formulary.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Aug 3, 2021

Donald Qualls said:
Well, let's see -- 1000 tablets of acetaminophen is 500 grams, for (these days) about thirteen dollars at Costco. I don't think I can even get the p-aminophenol powder shipped for that money.

That's sad. I can get 500g of p-Aminophenol shipping included for around that price here.

Donald Qualls · Aug 3, 2021

Sure, but you can easily buy paracetamol in powder form, and we can't. We have to deal with the wax and starch that make it a tablet.

David A. Goldfarb · Aug 3, 2021

I’ve always used leftover much past date acetaminophen, so I think of it more as recycling something I’d probably toss than as a cost.

Donald Qualls · Aug 3, 2021

David A. Goldfarb said:
I’ve always used leftover much past date acetaminophen, so I think of it more as recycling something I’d probably toss than as a cost.

Sensible, but if it were just me, I wouldn't even have the stuff around as a pain reliever. Never found it to work well for me, except in the tablets that combine it with aspirin and caffeine (migraine formula). Makes a great developer, though.

afriman · Aug 3, 2021

Personally, I find it a very effective pain reliever — but this is now really getting off-topic!

What amazes me, though, is how readily available this stuff is, even in large quantities, like 100s of tablets. Even a moderate overdose can wreck your liver, and even prove fatal. At the same time, it's almost impossible to buy some relatively benign substances.

Donald Qualls · Aug 3, 2021

Yep. The Nanny State is far from infallible. I've read that aspirin couldn't even be approved for OTC sale if it were introduced now, instead of 140 years ago.

The good news is, even if the maximum bottle size is cut way down, it only takes about 15 tablets to make a half liter of Parodinal concentrate. The per-tablet cost will of course skyrocket in that case (much more packaging per gram, as well as vastly increased product liability coverage costs). It might become cheaper to buy p-aminophenol...

afriman · Aug 3, 2021

Two questions, which are probably not easy to answer:

Is there any advantage (except for practicalities like cost and obtaining a clear solution) to using p-aminophenol instead of acetaminophen? Does it change the characteristics of the developer at all? I guess this is just the same as asking whether you have noticed any difference between Parodinal and Rodinal.
Does Parodinal have the same longevity as Rodinal? I've seen conflicting claims regarding this. (I'm referring to older Rodinal formulas and not R09, which does not seem to keep very well, although there also seems to be a difference between brands.) Obviously, users' experience with Parodinal won't go further than a few years, but is there solid evidence that it will last for say three years or more, and that turning dark does not necessarily indicate decreased activity?

David A. Goldfarb · Aug 3, 2021

Parodinal does seem to keep for a long time, at least a few years in my experience, but an attraction of mixing your own developer compared to any packaged product is that you can make it in quantities that are appropriate to your own usage, like what you can use in a year.

Pioneer · Aug 3, 2021

Fresh is always a good thing and that is what I like best about mixing my own developers.

afriman · Aug 3, 2021

Pioneer said:
Fresh is always a good thing and that is what I like best about mixing my own developers.

That is absolutely true, but even if you only mix 100ml of Parodinal, that can be enough for 20-40 rolls of film. Some of us don't shoot that much, or use other developers as well, so it would be nice to know it would last at least three years or so.

Alan Johnson · Aug 4, 2021

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/parodinal-5-years-later.72763/#post-1015221
I believe it lasts indefinitely if no air gets to it, either by diffusing through plastic or because a bottle is re-opened a lot.

Donald Qualls · Aug 4, 2021

My own experience relative to longevity is that in a jam jar (wide mouth, 400 ml or so, with rubber gasket cam-lock lid), 100-250 ml of developer would darken over a period of months until it was the color of Coca-Cola or coffee, but still worked the same (as nearly as I could tell, scanning and printing). I never mixed a batch that took a year to use up; my longest was about nine months.

That said, no visible change in activity with the level of color change I saw implies either that the dye formed by oxidation is extremely strong (quite possible), so that micrograms (or less) of dye can account for that color change, or that the oxidation product is still a developing agent (also possible). In any case, I'd be very surprised if, in a blind test, anyone could choose between Parodinal negatives and either original Agfa Rodinal or modern ADOX Rodinal negatives on the same film, processed at the same dilution, temperature, time, and agitation.

Parodinal Test with AEU400

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Parodinal Test with AEU400

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