Presyscol(?) anyone used it?

[Tom Stanworth]

Hi,

I saw a glimpse of Les McClean's review and it made we wonder if anyone else has tried it? Curious to now if it differs from Exactol Lux/Pyrocat HD as it souded familiar and the negs looked exactly like Pyrocat Negs. Is the Chap selling is the inheritor of Barry T's formulae?

Those addicted to Exactol might have a replacement. I have not tried Pyrocat on small negs to see how much larger the grain is, tho is does appear a little larger.

Tom

 

[Les McLean]

Hi,

Is the Chap selling is the inheritor of Barry T's formulae?

Those addicted to Exactol might have a replacement. I have not tried Pyrocat on small negs to see how much larger the grain is, tho is does appear a little larger.

Tom

Peter Hogan, the manufacturer of Prescysol does have the licence to sell Barry Thornton's developers but I understand that Prescysol is a different formulation from Thorntons products. Have a look at his web site monochromephotography.com

 

[Will S]

I've used it on about 5 rolls so far and I like it. The biggest advantage it gives me is that I can develop different films at the same times and not worry about mixing up the canisters, etc. The semi-stand at 10.5 minutes seems to be OK for just about any film. I did a TMAX400 and a Hp5+ in the same tank and they both came out lovely. I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try Efke100 and HP5+ in the same tank, but maybe I will just for grins.

Delta3200 at 10.5 minutes looks a little thin to me, but it is printable. I suspect that pushing it one stop (20% more time I guess) might help, but I haven't tried it yet. Or exposing at 1600. But that seems to be a feature of delta3200 in any developer.

I notice that it smells almost exactly like pyrocat-hd....

Best,

Will

 

[gainer]

Hi,

I saw a glimpse of Les McClean's review and it made we wonder if anyone else has tried it? Curious to now if it differs from Exactol Lux/Pyrocat HD as it souded familiar and the negs looked exactly like Pyrocat Negs. Is the Chap selling is the inheritor of Barry T's formulae?

Those addicted to Exactol might have a replacement. I have not tried Pyrocat on small negs to see how much larger the grain is, tho is does appear a little larger.

Tom

Pyrocat HD came from Sandy King, not Barry Thornton.

 

[tomishakishi2]

I have used both Barry's Exactol Lux and Dixactol Ultra as well as Sandy's Pyrocat HD -My fault for an ambiguous use of words. Sandy has already had my thanks for pyrocat, which I started to make after BT's death. I was referring to its apparrent resemblance both to Exactol Lux and Pyrocat. The thinking was that if the man selling presyscol had not inherited the formulae (in which case perhaps presyscol IS Exactol Lux) then maybe pyrocat HD? As Les has said, it is not the same as Barry's brews, which could mean that it is Pyrocat HD, or similar. Having used all three devs, there is not much scope for variety here as they occupy the ground of fine grain (Exactol) Medium fine (Pyrocat) and fairly coarse but very sharp (Dicaxtol). I would therefore imagine that it must be close to one of them.

I for one will be sticking to pyrocat HD, which is truly superb stuff and ridiculously cheap to make (once you have bought scales - mine weight to 0.1g and cost £40). For 5x4, it has no disadvantage that I can see over the other two. For 35mm, tho, exactol Lux might be finer grained - but having none left, I cannot compare identical negs. One other observation is that so far, I suspect teh pyrocat negs to be very slightly browner, with a tad less greeny yellow in the brown if you catch me. Hard to tell as I have not dev'd the same brands of film in both.

As an aside, I am still curious about the disasterous results Les McClean had with Dixactol when he first tested it.

Tom

 

[Bob F.]

I suspect any developer containing pyrotatechol will smell much the same - I put diluted bleach for 12 hours in the container my pyrocatechol came in so I could use it for something else - it still has a strong smell of pyrocatechol...

This is really why I just recently decided to try Pyrocat-HD when I wanted to try staining developers: you just do not know what is in the commercial products and you can come unstuck if something happens to the supply. The chemicals for Pyrocat are readily available, it is very economical, there is a lot of info on the Web (if somewhat scattered about...), it has good shelf life and Sandy seems always happy to jump in if anyone has a problem or a sensible query.

This was the 1st time I ever made up a chemical from assorted ingredients (ID-11 does not count!) and it worked fine - it can't be that difficult if I can manage it... PC-TEA is next on my shopping list... then I'll try an all alkaline workflow with home brewed fixer and then....

Cheers, Bob.

 

[Juraj Kovacik]

I've used Perscysol for few months and I love it - I'm sticking with delta 100 and perscysol for last few weeks. Before I used for delta 100 ID11, but Perscysol result are much better, from my point of view. Working with 6x9 the grain is not matter for me.