Pyro Vs. Kodak Xtol developer

Bob Carnie said:

but IMHO the most significant point about Pyro is it is a tannin developer. the hardening effect stops migration of the exposed silver which keeps our highlight detail very detailed.

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Bob, could you elaborate on what this means when using non-staining devs?

I mean, say w/ d-76 or HC-110, are you saying while developing that the silver and image structure migrates in the highlights...? Do you think this have any correlation to the old practice of keeping the wet time of the film to a minimum (something that's been argued as false here, but which I was always taught..."don't let the grain swim around!")?

I ask, b/c there's a fellow I know and respect who runs very very very good film. He and I use the same dev, and when on rare occasion I've had him run my film, the one major difference I've noticed is how much sharper, acute in grain, and more tonal separation, he achieves in the highlights and say zone 7 and up.

I've often wondered what the difference is in how we handle the film...and I thought he may just develop to a higher CI more aggressively, but your above statement about silver migrating in the highlights made me wonder if there could be other things at play.

Apologies for derailing the thread!

I'm obviously not Bob Carnie (which is good for him), but I'd like to ask if your acquaintance maybe runs a replenished version of the same developer you use? That would give sharper negatives that are more acute, and with slightly finer grain.

Just an aside to your thought process.

- Thomas

GraemeMitchell said:

Bob, could you elaborate on what this means when using non-staining devs?

I mean, say w/ d-76 or HC-110, are you saying while developing that the silver and image structure migrates in the highlights...? Do you think this have any correlation to the old practice of keeping the wet time of the film to a minimum (something that's been argued as false here, but which I was always taught..."don't let the grain swim around!")?

I ask, b/c there's a fellow I know and respect who runs very very very good film. He and I use the same dev, and when on rare occasion I've had him run my film, the one major difference I've noticed is how much sharper, acute in grain, and more tonal separation, he achieves in the highlights and say zone 7 and up.

I've often wondered what the difference is in how we handle the film...and I thought he may just develop to a higher CI more aggressively, but your above statement about silver migrating in the highlights made me wonder if there could be other things at play.

Apologies for derailing the thread!

Click to expand...

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I'm obviously not Bob Carnie (which is good for him), but I'd like to ask if your acquaintance maybe runs a replenished version of the same developer you use? That would give sharper negatives that are more acute, and with slightly finer grain.

Just an aside to your thought process.

- Thomas

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Never mind, I just remembered out conversations regarding replenished developers... Even feeble brains will try to make things better. LOL Now, where's my coffee again?

Thomas, we both run replenished. But good call b/c THAT was one of the big steps I made in getting my negs closer to what I've seen him do. But still, there's something more. I know he uses a slightly buffer dilution though, which would cut about %40 of the time in developer, and that's why my brain clicked by what Mr Carnie had written about silver migration in the highlights. In fairness, the person I'm referring to is literally one of the most accomplished B&W techs in the world, so the bar is set high.

Granted, it's not day and night, looking at the film, more subtelties. When I run up to a higher CI, my TX shoulders off. When I've seen his TX, even denser, the shoulder looks like TMY (that is: not one).

Anyway...

The book of Pyro by Gordon Hutchings has been my film Pyro development bible since it was released and I have been using Jobo and pyro for 15 plus years and can easily state that we have processed thousands of runs of pyro .

But here is my layman take on what happens.. Ralph/ Ian, take over please if I am not explaining the chemical and physical details correctly.
Pyro is a tannin developer, and my understanding is as the silver is developing out the bloom effect is lessoned and the silver migrates less due to a hardening of the gelatin around the grain, which kind of stops migration the effect gives much more defined highlight detail.
***we must remember and I think this gets lost on a lot of people is that within highlight regions we are not only talking about white, but grey and black objects that are within this region.***
As development goes on these silver tones get hardened and set very nicely within the main highlight region as well. This adds tremendous local contrast which can be seen as greator detail in the highlight region. This has been pointed out many times by Les Mclean.

for example go into a room lit only by a light bulb and photograph the room.
with a normal developer the bulb will not be visible and their will be all kinds of flare around the bulb.
with a pyro developer the bulb will be visible and very little flare around the bulb.
There are those who argue that graded papers are the best and I do remember when all the papers were graded, a scene of extreme tonal range would be impossible not to sacrifice at one end , and make a much lower contrast print.
If you tried to keep super rich blacks with good separation and burn in the highlights you would get mushy , soft highlights.
This is why I split print on VC paper and use a Pyro Developer for photographers working with extreme or long tonal ranges in the original scene.

Graeme
If your friend is using the same developer as you and it is not Pyro as you state then I am not sure why the difference. Agitation can have a tremendous effect in the highlight region which would cause softening in the highlights, otherwise I do not have an answer.

My clients these days have been with me for years, together we have discussed the options available for their particular needs and try to match the ISo and developer for certain applications.

Flat scenes we never use Pyro, but rather D76 or HC110 .

Medium scenes we make the decision based on shutter speed required.

Extreme scenes we usually go to expose for shadow , open one stop , and drop process for the highlights.
I always use a two bath Pyro Developer- 1000 ml + 1000 ml using the exhausted first developer as the stain.
We have not strayed from these principles . I do have a hankering to try the Pyrocat Semi Stand, as I have seen some awesome negatives made this way but with client work I cannot bring myself to experiment with their film.
Sandy King and I believe Steve Sherman use this method of film development for their work and the negs are good.

GraemeMitchell said:

Bob, could you elaborate on what this means when using non-staining devs?

I mean, say w/ d-76 or HC-110, are you saying while developing that the silver and image structure migrates in the highlights...? Do you think this have any correlation to the old practice of keeping the wet time of the film to a minimum (something that's been argued as false here, but which I was always taught..."don't let the grain swim around!")?

I ask, b/c there's a fellow I know and respect who runs very very very good film. He and I use the same dev, and when on rare occasion I've had him run my film, the one major difference I've noticed is how much sharper, acute in grain, and more tonal separation, he achieves in the highlights and say zone 7 and up.

I've often wondered what the difference is in how we handle the film...and I thought he may just develop to a higher CI more aggressively, but your above statement about silver migrating in the highlights made me wonder if there could be other things at play.

Apologies for derailing the thread!

Click to expand...

You are over 6ft, much younger , good looking and obviously pretty smart guy,.

I am short, old , ugly and as Dinesh will agree really dumb.

I want to be you.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I'm obviously not Bob Carnie (which is good for him), but I'd like to ask if your acquaintance maybe runs a replenished version of the same developer you use? That would give sharper negatives that are more acute, and with slightly finer grain.

Just an aside to your thought process.

- Thomas

Click to expand...

Bob, thanks for that info. Much much appreciated. I was just wondering, an ongoing curiosity of always tweaking stuff on my end.

You're saying, "Agitation can have a tremendous effect in the highlight region which would cause softening in the highlights, otherwise I do not have an answer" - along maybe w/ just using slightly different dilutions, is where I'm seeing the difference.

Might shoot yo a PM quick as not to take this further off track.

email, I have shut off the PM function and a whole bunch of forum catagories here.

GraemeMitchell said:

Bob, thanks for that info. Much much appreciated. I was just wondering, an ongoing curiosity of always tweaking stuff on my end.

You're saying, "Agitation can have a tremendous effect in the highlight region which would cause softening in the highlights, otherwise I do not have an answer" - along maybe w/ just using slightly different dilutions, is where I'm seeing the difference.

Might shoot yo a PM quick as not to take this further off track.

Click to expand...

Bob Carnie said:

You are over 6ft, much younger , good looking and obviously pretty smart guy,.

I am short, old , ugly and as Dinesh will agree really dumb.

I want to be you.

Click to expand...

Ha. Careful what you wish for. I have demons.

As an aside, though, I can completely relate to the 'naked bulb' in a room and pyro developers. I used Sandy King's Pyrocat-MC formula for a couple of years, and that highlight control was one thing that I noticed as an extreme strength of that developer.

The reason I stopped using it was that I had some problems with cross contamination and screwed up more than enough important negatives because of it. But I also don't shoot in very high brightness range situations, where the pyro developers will truly shine, so I went for something different.

- Thomas

Thomas, Bob, Sandy, et al

Silly me, I am puzzling out the advantages and disadvantage of replenished XTOL and Pyro, and looking for simple straight answers [Queque Music: The Impossible Dream]. I am particulary interested in Rollo Pyro, but I can't find anyone with experience with that product. Therefore, unless someone knows specifically about Rollo Pyro, I will make the perhaps invalid assumptions that basically all pyros are similar [Am I wrong?].

Goal:

Fine Grain, Good Shadows, Avoid Blown Out Highlights, Good Tonal Range​

I keep hearing conflicting answers on staining.
This takes on the tidal pulls of a religious war, but both can't be right. What is your understanding? No, I do not have a density meter so I cannot measure this myself.

If I follow what has been said above:
Replenised XTOL Pyro
Flat scenes Yes No
High constrast Yes Yes
Bright Scenes -- Yes
Shadow Detail Yes --

I have Rollo Pyro that I will use in a Jobo processor. IIRC Per said that I do not have to worry about temperature:
Comments?
Experience

Steve

No real experience with Rollo Pyro, Steve.

But my experience with Pyrocat-MC, which uses a different developing agent, I think, was definitely in highlight control. You can prevent highlights from blocking up with replenished Xtol if you want. You just have to be careful to not develop too long. But with Pyrocat, you get more separation in the highlights, better contrast, in a negative of the same overall contrast. That's the key. Both developers can develop negatives of identical contrast index. But within the tone scale from the bottom of the shadow details to the top of the highlights, pyro has better local contrast in the highlight spectrum. You may like this, or you may not. This is especially advantageous to you if you photograph scenes of high to extreme contrast and brightness range.
If you photograph in low contrast to medium contrast, that advantage becomes decimated if not completely erased, and something like D76 or HC-110 would constitute a better choice.

Pick your tools based on what you need. Or wrestle the ones you have until it fits anyway. To me, I picked Xtol, because it was the best compromise; in my view it does the least amount of things wrong.

- Thomas

I think the magic bullet thing is totally dependent upon knowing what you want to do with your film and developer and finally your print. gaging the lighting conditions is most critical and then from there you can make educated / reasonable choice further down the food chain.
Like you I do not always use Pyro, in fact since I do a lot of solarization work, I prefer normal exposure, push process D76 to give me a more punchy neg.
If I am doing lith prints , I prefer a thin, but pushed neg in HC110.
I am going to give that Semi Stand treatment to a series of 8x10 film I am considering, if I make a mistake I will only be screwing up my own stuff.

I am also moving to a sink line for processing film which I want to hold in the air mid development and flash the negs,
My rotary system is great but not useful for this idea.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

Ha. Careful what you wish for. I have demons.

As an aside, though, I can completely relate to the 'naked bulb' in a room and pyro developers. I used Sandy King's Pyrocat-MC formula for a couple of years, and that highlight control was one thing that I noticed as an extreme strength of that developer.

The reason I stopped using it was that I had some problems with cross contamination and screwed up more than enough important negatives because of it. But I also don't shoot in very high brightness range situations, where the pyro developers will truly shine, so I went for something different.

- Thomas

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Thomas Bertilsson said:

But my experience with Pyrocat-MC, which uses a different developing agent, I think, was definitely in highlight control. You can prevent highlights from blocking up with replenished Xtol if you want. You just have to be careful to not develop too long. But with Pyrocat, you get more separation in the highlights, better contrast, in a negative of the same overall contrast. That's the key. Both developers can develop negatives of identical contrast index. But within the tone scale from the bottom of the shadow details to the top of the highlights, pyro has better local contrast in the highlight spectrum. You may like this, or you may not. This is especially advantageous to you if you photograph scenes of high to extreme contrast and brightness range.

Click to expand...

Thank you. That is what I remember Per saying.

But I cannot get any fully scientifically tested [with proper controls] results stating that staining is either good or bad. Most threads that try to thrash that out get into flame wars and I stop reading them.

Steve

Sirius Glass said:

Thank you. That is what I remember Per saying.

But I cannot get any fully scientifically tested [with proper controls] results stating that staining is either good or bad. Most threads that try to thrash that out get into flame wars and I stop reading them.

Steve

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The only thing you can do is to try it for yourself. Set up your camera and shoot two rolls, bracketed, of the same scene of high contrast. Develop one like you always do in Xtol, and the other in Pyro. Print them and observe.
That's the key, regardless of how much scientific evidence you can find. Until you get it into your darkroom and work it out for yourself, you won't know how it'll affect your work flow anyway.

Xtol rocks. So does pyro. You decide how it rocks for you.

I am not overstating the benifits of Pyro, my history in film and printing proves to me that there is great benifit for the proper situation.
Maybe you haven't seen the difference , not sure how much work you have done testing both types of developers with strong lighting as Thomas suggest.
give it a go , you can see for yourself the improvement.

I too have seen John Sexton's prints in person, so how does this come into play?
or even explain why many workers use Pyro for holding highlight detail in strong lighting conditions.
I believe Steve uses Pyrocat Semi Stand, also I have seen his prints live and they are great.

Michael R 1974 said:

I think the blown-out highlight issue is usually overstated. I have seen many prints made with tanned negatives, and have never noticed the highlight detail and gradation to be more impressive than with a well controlled non-staining developer. For anyone interested in some examples of what can be achieved even with a standard PQ developer, I strongly suggest looking at John Sexton's powerplant and Hoover Dam pictures from his Places of Power project. Many of the negatives were made under extreme contrast conditions, with ho hum TMAX RS developer, more dilute than usual and with reduced agitation, and I have never seen a longer tonal scale, nor better highlight detail and gradation than in those prints.

Stand development techniques, including those with tanning developers are not just for highlight control. In fact there is often less compensation than one might expect. It does however produce a unique tonal scale and more pronounced edge effects, all depending on the film-developer combo. I think Steve Sherman uses stand development quite a bit with ULF. Can't remember if he uses Pyrocat or a Pyro developer.

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I'm not a golfer, but see film developer has different golf clubs in your bag. You don't want to use a driver when you only need a putter. As with golf, you only get better by playing. So see the lay of the golf course, and pick the right club for the right shot.

Michael R 1974 said:

I'd just add that if Sirius Glass hasn't printed stained negatives before, it can take a little getting used to. So it might take a little practice before you can really decide whether or not to stick with the staining developer. The same goes for evaluating the negatives visually. You might look at the stained negative while it is drying and think you failed because it looks a little thin and low in contrast. That's how they are supposed to look. The printing paper sees the negative differently than your eyes so you really have to print them.

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Agreed. For me, Pyrocat was the developer I used when I started being able to make pretty decent prints, so it was a learning curve in reverse when I stopped using it.
I agree that the negatives look visually different from regular negatives and that printing them is the only way to evaluate them properly. However, I hold to my opinion that Pyrocat does hold highlight contrast better than any other developer I have tried. That's the impression I have of about two years worth of printing pyro negs.

Michael R 1974 said:

...You might look at the stained negative while it is drying and think you failed because it looks a little thin and low in contrast. That's how they are supposed to look. The printing paper sees the negative differently than your eyes so you really have to print them.

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Does this men that you cannot evaluate them with a densitometer?

Yes you can

michaelbsc said:

Does this men that you cannot evaluate them with a densitometer?

Click to expand...

I think you have to zero out the densitometer on the film base and don't take the base density into account.

When you say will print with with more contrast than you expect.

Do you mean the contrast filters will need to be higher to get the same contrast print as a non staining neg of same subject matter? or do you mean that a pyro neg will need a contrast filter setting lower to get the same contrast as a non staining neg of the same subject matter?

Michael R 1974 said:

For most stained negatives you need to set a color densitometer to the blue channel, or use a blue filter on a B&W densitometer. You have to think like your printing paper when measuring densities. There is less silver density in stained negatives than normal negatives, but there is also stain density. If you use a regular white light densitometer it will therefore read less density than your paper will "see" (ie the negative will print with more contrast than you expect). The printing paper sees both the silver density and the stain density as additive. This is why a properly processed Pyro negative looks relatively thin and low contrast to the eye, but will print with higher contrast. It takes some getting used to.

The densitometer stuff can get more complicated unfortunately depending on whether you use graded or VC paper, and also depending on what kind of staining developer you use since different developers can produce different color stains. They can range from greenish brown to yellow-orange.

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So, using VC papers, do you use a higher filter grade with a pyro negative than if you use a non-pyro neg of the same scene?

I have the same results as you, regarding the filters or contrast needed to print pyro negs, I have found a whole grade increase starting point. Yes, maybe a bit of a test.( funny though, when I told Sandy King this , he did not seem to see the same thing, but he is using Pyrocat and has not done as much silver printing as compared to carbon printing}
I would be interested in asking Steve Sherman this question.

Here is a silly observation that I have regarding unstained pyro negatives.

If you look at Richard Avedon's studio portraits of lets say the Duke and Dutches of Windsor or Marylin Monroe you will see lots of uneven backgrounds for one, but also the grain is very defined, I have always thought that his film for this time period was developed in Pyro and unstained- most likely triX.

Super sharp, but extreme edge sharpness on these portraits on grey background.
I am not talking about In the American West or his work on white backgrounds.

Not sure if anyone else ever noticed this and I wonder how he made the negs.

Michael R 1974 said:

Visual evaluation of negatives (silver density vs combined silver-stain density) is one thing, printing contrast (in particular, local highlight contrast) is another.

When visually evaluating a normal pyro negative it will look thinner and lower in contrast than we might be used to seeing with a non-stained negative, because we're looking at silver density and not including the stain density in the visual assessment. Stain is proportional to the amount of silver halide reduced, meaning in highlight areas a fair amount of density when printing is coming from the stain. So what I'm saying is that if you look at the negative, the highlight areas might look comparitively thin (ie overall contrast looks low) while in printing the combined optical/spectral density of the silver and stain might be normal. So all we're talking about here is the fact with a pyro negative the density is a combination of silver and stain.

The issue of printing contrast, what filters to use is less straight forward and really just takes experimentation. The reason is that filters increase or decrease contrast by the same amount everywhere, while stain works proportionately. That's why many people say pyro negatives are easier to print when there is delicate highlight detail to render. Vs printing a non-stained negative, the stain reduces local contrast (ie compresses tonality) increasingly as density increases, so the stain acts like a built in variable compensating contrast reduction filter. It's like having a yellow-type filter that acts more on areas of higher density than in thin shadow areas.

The situation is further complicated by the type of paper. Typically pyro negatives will print with higher contrast on graded paper than VC paper since VC papers have a broader spectral sensitivity.

Wait a minute... is this a test? You've got way more experience that I do! I'm suspicious.

Click to expand...

Michael R 1974 said:

Not sure there is a straight answer since the imagewise stain acts as a variable filter, reducing contrast preferrentially in the highlights vs a standard printing filter that acts uniformly.

What I would say is that you'd typically want to give a pyro negative more development if you're planning to print on VC paper, than if you were using graded paper since the filtering effect of the stain is more pronounced with VC papers. This is why some folks advocate staying away from say small format pyro negatives with VC paper - because you need to give fuller development which counteracts the grain masking effect of the stain.

Click to expand...

I'm beginning to wonder if there is a large difference between Pyrocat derivatives and pyrogallol based developers, grain wise. I have 16x12" silver gelatin prints on VC paper and FP4+ film, 35mm, where I have trouble seeing the grain a couple of feet from the print surface.
But the negatives seemed to print well on Grade 2 graded paper, but I had to jump to Grade 3 for VC paper for the most part using the same negative.

It is an interesting thread this, and I'm learning quite a bit about pyro developers. I might get some just for the heck of it to try in very large brightness range photos.

Ok, now we are getting to the details of some of my questions:

Sirius Glass said:

I keep hearing conflicting answers on staining.

One camp with Per, staining is proportional to exposure, use it.
The other camp with Sandy King [correct me if I am wrong], staining is uniform like a fog, do not use it.
​

Click to expand...

Michael R 1974 said:

Stain is proportional to the amount of silver halide reduced, meaning in highlight areas a fair amount of density when printing is coming from the stain. So what I'm saying is that if you look at the negative, the highlight areas might look comparitively thin (ie overall contrast looks low) while in printing the combined optical/spectral density of the silver and stain might be normal. So all we're talking about here is the fact with a pyro negative the density is a combination of silver and stain.

Click to expand...

So stain is not a uniformly dense fog across the film. If it were then people would not have been using pyro for decades. This is inline with my analysis of the anecdotal evidence that I have come across.

Michael R 1974 said:

The issue of printing contrast, what filters to use is less straight forward and really just takes experimentation. The reason is that filters increase or decrease contrast by the same amount everywhere, while stain works proportionately. That's why many people say pyro negatives are easier to print when there is delicate highlight detail to render. Vs printing a non-stained negative, the stain reduces local contrast (ie compresses tonality) increasingly as density increases, so the stain acts like a built in variable compensating contrast reduction filter. It's like having a yellow-type filter that acts more on areas of higher density than in thin shadow areas.

The situation is further complicated by the type of paper. Typically pyro negatives will print with higher contrast on graded paper than VC paper since VC papers have a broader spectral sensitivity.

Click to expand...

Bob Carnie said:

I have the same results as you, regarding the filters or contrast needed to print pyro negs, I have found a whole grade increase starting point.

Click to expand...

Translation: The pyro stained negative has an innate higher contrast than the same exposure, same film, same equipment developed with a non-staining developer. Therefore, I would start with a lower grade filter. Right?




Hence,

1. The pyro staining is non-uniform and therefore useful.
2. The result of the staining is that the contrast of the negative is effectively higher, although not visually higher to the eye, and therefore one can start with a lower grade filter and have a greater range of increased contrast available if needed.

I am I interpreting all of this correctly?

Notice: No XTOL was injured nor killed in this post or in this thread.

Steve

Hi Bob,
Given the time period most likely a mature replenished dev.
Not sure if he processed them himself. Did he ?
G