Pyro vs. Ilfotec-HC/HC-110 ...

Don't know much about Pyro developers except the little I've read that suggests they are THE developer to use for the best quality negatives.
Is this true?
I've been pretty happy with my HC-110.

There is no single best developer Bob.
HC-110 may be the most flexible and adaptable, but that incorporates a number of factors like longevity on the shelf that are more about usability than the results themselves. On the other hand, HC-110 usually means at least a small amount of speed loss with some films.
I really like a replenishment regime. Only T-Max RS and X-Tol are currently available in a version that is optimized for replenishment, although Ilford does have instructions on how to work around the discontinuance of ID-11 replenisher.
The Pyro developers and some of the tanks and reels for 4x5 don't get along well, if you like using the relatively violent agitation that pyro devotees seem to swear by.
And if you like big, meaty grain, Pyro won't appeal to you.
By the way, the devotees of the Church of Rodinal will be appalled at the omission of Rodinal from your poll.
I've been using HC-110 E replenished for years, but have recently switched to replenished X-Tol.
If push came to shove, I could go back to the old Kodak Tri-Chem packs, and make things work.

I do use quite a bit of Pyrocat-HD, but I also use several other developers such as Rodinal, F76+, HC-110, and Acurol-N. Each is used for specific films and/or specific processes. IMO, and as Matt said, there is no "best" developer.

I use PyroCat-HD for 95% of my developing needs. Before that I used D76, Rodinal and HC110. I have been using Pyro for the last 13 years and love the stuff.

Eric Rose said:

I use PyroCat-HD for 95% of my developing needs. Before that I used D76, Rodinal and HC110. I have been using Pyro for the last 13 years and love the stuff.

Click to expand...

Hi Eric,
How do you dispose of the pyro developer?

Pyrocat-HD is my favourite thus far, but I do like DD-X too (especially for pushing).

Like Eric I've been using Pyrocat HD for around 13 years maybe a couple of years longer. I use it for all my negatives and get excellent fine grain with all the films I use.

I pushed some HP5 to 1600/3200 more likely the latter as the light was dropping so fast and was amazed how ell Pyrocat HD handled push processing.

Ian

@ Eric Rose, GLS, Ian Grant:
Is your favorable opinion of Pyrocat HD based mostly on enlarger prints or on a s**n + inkjet workflow?

bernard_L said:

Is your favorable opinion of Pyrocat HD based mostly on enlarger prints or on a s**n + inkjet workflow?

Click to expand...

Based on the qualities it imparts to the negs in terms of tonal range, acutance and lack of grain. I digitise film rather than use a darkroom, so the stain is of less importance.

I find the pyro negs stellar for both scanning and darkroom prints. According to Sandy King the 2 bath development technique is even better for scanning.

bernard_L said:

@ Eric Rose, GLS, Ian Grant:
Is your favorable opinion of Pyrocat HD based mostly on enlarger prints or on a s**n + inkjet workflow?

Click to expand...

I should have stated what I had at the back of my mind: the stained negative presumably behaves differently when digitized and when enlarged onto variable contrast paper (different contrast under blue or green illumination). I did see some fairly attractive (tonality) images from PyrocatHD, but generally from s*****d negatives, not from s*****d prints.

bernard_L said:

@ Eric Rose, GLS, Ian Grant:
Is your favorable opinion of Pyrocat HD based mostly on enlarger prints or on a s**n + inkjet workflow?

Click to expand...

Mine's based predominantly on a darkroom work flow, however I need to scan negatives for reproduction, websites etc. Like Eric and many others I find my Pyrocat HD negatives print and scan extremely easily.

I only really print on Fibre based papers and they don't scan particularly well, so the choice is also print on Glossy RC paper just to scan or scan the negatives, and cost wise it's a no brainer scan the negatives.

Ian

I use Pyro-m for 95% of my negs, with roodinal and xtol-R making up the 5%, film and lighting situation dependent.

I love the way that pyro negs print in the darkroom. they scan real well also, which is a nice side benefit.

Ian Grant said:

....... I find my Pyrocat HD negatives print and scan extremely easily......

Ian

Click to expand...

One of the reasons that Ian's negatives print and scan easily is that, due to his experience, his exposure and development times have been refined to be just right.

john_s said:

One of the reasons that Ian's negatives print and scan easily is that, due to his experience, his exposure and development times have been refined to be just right.

Click to expand...

I am sure his negs from other developers have been exposed and developed properly as well. As with mine I find PyroCat negs just a dream to either scan or print.

Concerns expressed in this forum about the longevity of the stain due to fading discouraged me from continuing with staining developers. However I liked the results i got with Obsidian Aqua. Now I use Ian's other favorite developer, Adox MQ Borax.

john_s said:

One of the reasons that Ian's negatives print and scan easily is that, due to his experience, his exposure and development times have been refined to be just right.

Click to expand...

Eric Rose said:

I am sure his negs from other developers have been exposed and developed properly as well. As with mine I find PyroCat negs just a dream to either scan or print.

Click to expand...

I used to use ID-11 (D76) many years ago and later Adox BoraxMQ, but when I began using the Zone System it was with Rodinal for my slower films and Xtol for faster. As Eric says I refined my exposure and development times with those developers and the Agfa AP(X)100, and Tmax 100 & 400 films I used at the time.

I was still using Tmax when I switched to Pyrocat HD and also still using Xtol with Tmax 400. However I moved abroad and only took Pyrocat HD with me, I had to switch to Ilford films as Tmax was difficult to obtain and Foma films as a backup. I'd only print on trips back to the UK. I soon realised that the Pyrocat HD negatives were just a little easier to print,

More recently I've been scanning re-printing older Xtol & Rodinal negatives alongside Pyrocat HD negatives and while few are difficult to print there's definitely s slight edge to the Pyrocat negatives. It's due to the effects of tanning and staining during development keeping the highlights nicely under control.

A few weeks ago I accidentally exposed a negative by quite a few stops, a 120mm Angulon from th efrontlens I'd not used before with a Protor shutter, I mis-read the shutter dial thinking the markings on the front set to the same point as on the outside at the top, so instead of 1/50 it was actually 1 second, so 5 stops over exposure, I realised my mistake so made another correct exposure. I processed the neagde despite this alongside my others. Despite it's density the Pyrocat developer meant it's not totally blown out and would actually be printable just. In Rodinal or Xtol it wouldn't.

Ian

Call me cynical if you want, but I think the adoption (& often subsequent fetishization of) staining developers by a photographer tends to happen at about the same point that they start exercising greater control over negative exposure & processing, often along with adopting a bigger format. Thus, claims seem to be often attached to staining developers that may be far in excess of their absolute abilities & have more to do with the adoption of basic process controls etc. That's not to say that they have uses, but they're not some sort of panacea for poor basic technique. I think that people should perhaps start from asking themselves 'what does it do that well controlled D-76/ XTOL at 1+1 or greater dilution cannot?'

Well Lachlan, I started exercising greater control over my negatives 20+ years before finally switching totally to Pyrocat HD and I'd been using it alongside Xtol replenished, I still use the same controls.

I use Pyrocat HD with 120 and 35mm negatives as well as Large format so that's all counter to your comments. There were some very good articles on modern uses of staining developers published in the 1940's at a time when the older style staining developers had almost died out completely.

What I find more odd are the attack on using staining developers and also Rodinal, but then some don't like Xtol either. The late Peter Goldfield was an advocate of Rodinal however not with all films, it gives its best with slower T grain and films and was of course the recommended developer for AP25 and AP100, and later APX25 and APX100.

So you have people knocking Rodinal as giving coarse grain but with the right films it's a superb developer giving exceptionally fine grain, but it also needs very tight temperature control.

Personally I could get excellent results with ID-11, Xtol, Rodinal or Pyrocat HD, (with the films I use) however my experience is that Rodinal and Xtol negatives slightly better than ID-11, there's nothing between them with slow films but Xtol is better with faster films like HP5, Delta 400 and Tmax 400. Pyrocat HD gives be excellent results with all films and the main difference is negatives that print and scan very easily.

Ian

I'd also add Lachlan that all the photographers who influence me to first try a Pyro developer were extremely competent photographers with many years experience at a very high level of competency and control over their image making.

The first was a friend Gary Kirkam in the late 1980's, he is an ex Derby student from around the time Art Photography course began in the late 1970's, a lecturer with an MA from Birmingham School of Art. He began using a Pyro developer around the time the BJP published an article on a new Pyro developer, I still have the article. At the time I was working on a large exhibition project and didn't want to change the way I was working, but his print quality was superb (I have one of his images on my wall).

I didn't believe all the hype about some later Pyro developers and many weren't really suitable for smaller format, but when people who's work I respect and rate highly began talking about Sandy King's Pyrocat HD it was time to give it a try. There was one key reason it uses Pyrocatechin which is itself a fine grain developing agent when used on it's own and also Phenidone and so different to say Hutching's PMK. As a former Photo chemist I'd had an interest in Pyrocatechin/Meritol based developers and had thought of formulating something as an alternative to Rodinal that was more versatile, however I realised Sandy King had already done it once I saw the formula and tried Pyrocat HD. It was the sort of developer I was looking for and exceeded my expectations.

Developer choice is ultimately a personal decision, but some of us have the knowledge and experience to make informed decisions and later recommendations based on rather a lot of practical experience.

Ian

Let's also not forget that on top of its other merits Pyrocat-HD is extremely economical, and the concentrates have an almost indefinite shelf life (at least if using a glycol solution of part A).

GLS said:

Let's also not forget that on top of its other merits Pyrocat-HD is extremely economical, and the concentrates have an almost indefinite shelf life (at least if using a glycol solution of part A).

Click to expand...

Actually if Part A is made up using relatively fresh Metabisulphite it can have a shelf life of around 4 years made up with de-ionised water and that's even part used. I've some I made up double strength in Glycol that's at least 8 years old probably more like 9½ years, I tested it earlier this year and it's still perfect. The only reason for making it up double strength was weight when flying, I when I lived abroad, I diluted Part A to normal strength when I needed to use it, I bought th Carbonate for Part B once there.

Ian

Ian - the main thing I was aiming at is the tendency for photographers to pin a qualitative 'improvement' in their technical image making on changing film developer rather than a steady 'improvement' in general technical proficiency. This is quite separate from their abilities as artists - & there is (I would argue) often a significant psychosocial element at play here.

I'd tend to agree about most of the modern pyro developers not being drastically grainier than their non-staining counterparts - in fact I suspect that some of that attribution may well come from people printing on a harder grade because of the stain colour impacting on contrast.

More intriguing to me is that it looks a lot like a sequence of substitutions/ alterations on D-76 was the route to Pyrocat - not least as the P:C ratio matches that of a PQ version of D-76. Has anyone experimented with adjusting that ratio to something (for example) like DK-50?

Lachlan some years ago now I remember saying to Sandy King saying in a post or PM that Ilford had published a Pyrogallol/Phenidone developer that was in some ways asimilar to concentrated form of Pyrocat HD except using Pyrogallol instead of Pyrocatechin. It was in a Patent but was simply ID-3 with the Metol substituted by Phenidone in at the typical lower level needed due to it's increased activity.

In practice a comparison of D76 to Pyrocat HD ism't really valid, particularly as it's a high Sulphite solvent developer and uses a lower pH, however a comparison to Ilford Autophen their commercial PQ variant of ID-11 is valid in terms of the ratio of Phenidone to Hydroquinone or Pyrocatchin, I'm actually looking at the PQ & MQ rations in various Ilford developers at the moment as I want to mix a concentrated PQ contrast developer for printing. In the past I've always mixed ID-14.

It's not a simple change in ratio though as adjustments to sulphite and carbonate levels have a big impact. Two contrast developers have MQ ratios of appprox 1:8 ID-14 and 1:4 ID-19 respectively and Ilford's highest contrast PQ developer has a ratio of approx 1:40 and that matches the ratio of ID-72 the PQ version of ID-19.

Now adding DK50 to the mix is interesting as it's derived from the Wellington and Ward MQ BoraxMQ Fine Grain developer as you can see it's the same 1:1 MQ ratio, this ratio is still in use today in Kodak D96 motion picture developer

Wellington & Ward Borax MQ FG Developer

Metol 2g
Sodium Sulphite 20g
Hydroquinone 2g
Borax 20g
Water to 1 litre

Prior to DK50 there was probably a version with Borax, maybe D50. Looking at Kodak developers DK60 uses a touch more Metol, that's dropped back to 1:1 in DK60a. Kodak's first true Fine Grain developer, published by Kodak Research uses only Metol and is a high Sulphite solvent developer but is very close to D76 which was published a year or so later.

Kodak went for a 1:2.5 MQ ratio for D76, Agfa a 1:2 for their fine grain MQ developer Agfa 44 (Agfa Ansco 17) with less sulphite and so did Adox. We used Adox Borax MQ replenished in deep tanks at work and supplied two other photographers there was a detectable improvement in terms of sharpness, shadow detail etc, but this is largely due to a more optimal level of Sulphite and less solvency. This mirrored Geoffrey Crawley's comments in various articles.

So while Pyrocat HD uses a 1:25 Phenidone to Pyrocatchin ratio, which is the same as the PQ ratio of Autophen, the Metol version Pyrocat M uses a 1:20 which means it's quite different we'd expect a ratio of 1.2.5 like ID-1/D76.

Ian

When you ask about Pyro developer what do you mean ?
Pyrogallol or Pyrocatechin developer ? Not the same chimical products (even very different ones) and of course not the same results.