Pyro Vs. Kodak Xtol developer

So you are saying the bare bulb in a room effect , one flared out* D76* , one crystal clear*Pyro* is a placebo effect and not real.

I think I need an asprin, I have sold all this development based on this percieved effect.

Michael R 1974 said:

Pyro/Cat development tans (hardens) the emulsion. There is less silver developed and this is "made up for" by the stain which increases density proportionately with the amount of silver developed (ie the amount of exposure). This does not necessarily result in highlight compression in the negative, although there can be a compensation effect when printing on VC papers.

One thing tanning does not do, is prevent silver migration, because silver does not migrate to begin with. That is a non issue with modern hardened films.

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You have your opinion, and I have mine. Time to coexist. What you say, and what I say, can go hand in hand. In my mind they are not opposing views. Both rely on an importance of understanding the materials we use.
You told me I shouldn't comment like that in this thread, so I simply returned the favor. Who gives you the right to decide what I can write and not?
I respect your opinion, Michael, as I think you're a knowledgeable person with experience and a critical mind. But I think I was sharing important information, to someone that may not know, or wants to know, the minute differences between the developers or why they work the way they do. He just wanted to know what developer to use, and you know that he'll get as many replies here on APUG as there are individual posters. He was asking for advice. And I gave mine.

Michael R 1974 said:

Give me a break. The original question was whether one was better than the other. Discussing how they are different (not better or worse) can help someone make a more informed decision regarding which one to pick first (depending on what format they shoot etc), and then they can focus on mastering it with consistency, control and creativity. I'm not talking about debating microsopic differences, but simply being aware of basic, visible properties.

I'm just saying that "pick something and learn to use it" should not be the default answer to technical questions. Otherwise we might as well have only one forum with an automated "learn to use it" response.

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Michael R 1974 said:

Point taken. No hard feelings I hope!

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None at all. It's all good.

Ok , I am going back quite a bit here so bear with me.

I got turned on to Pyro by Gordon Hutchings early 90's, at that time I had a small shop in Toronto printing for commercial photographers , before photoshop so there was big budgets and lots of film, I was using a lot of graded paper at the time and experimenting with split printing.

I do not believe everything I read or hear, so when people were boasting of the benifits of pyro I was curious.

so I did a lot of testing, and I mean a lot, included were some pretty good fine art photographers who were working only in BW.
We secured tons of films and did basically the one light source or high lighting range situation with different films and developers, we underexposed, normal exposed, overexposed with different times , under normal and push.
Then we made prints to 20 x24 to look at the results.

I followed Gordon Hutchings notes to a tee, and included this new to me developer into the mix.

In every case where strong lighting conditions were the source, myself and each photographer picked the pyro negs.. that were overexposed and drop developed as per Hutchings notes.
In every case the highlights were better defined and so too were the shadows.
This was with graded paper and all efforts were made to match the overall print.

Later came split printing which is not part of this thread, but it too opened more doors.

I think that each and everyone watching this thread should do this test, and see what their eyes are telling them, Pyro or Pyrocat vs Xtol or D76- same scene and pump up the lighting contrast.
Put the negatives and make prints, try to match and see which one works for you.

Michael I only can say that in every situation where there is strong lighting I recommend a staining/tannin/hardening developer with overexposure and under dev.
I am printing a show right now , 8x10 tri x in Pyro, indoor with window light only no flash and extreme long exposures to get the image.
I am absolutely certain that if we used D76 , the prints would not have the range that I am pulling out of them.
When you are at the extremes and trying to make a full tone print, there is a point of no return, blacks block up , highlights bloom and flare and go soft no matter how hard you try to burn in.

Remember the days of 7 to 8 stop burn ins on graded paper to bring in detail?
People resorting to hot water and finger development, muddy highlights.
Highlights not coming in no matter wtf you did.

When I brought Pyro into our workflow and split printing on VC paper those days are gone.
Probably dosen't answer you well but I am believing my eyes , rather than scientific proof or what is written, remember I did not immediately believe what Hutchings had to say.
Fred Picker wrote a lot about printing, I have all his notes, and books, his best advice was to test for yourself and see the results.

Michael R 1974 said:

No no. I mean silver does not migrate. That's only one effect. There are still other things that enhance accutance and value discrimination in the tanned negative, like less halation and irradiation, and a lower probability of infectious development. I'm just suggesting people not go nuts thinking a stained negative will show massively different highlights than a well exposed/processed negative using a non-staining developer. I'd also add if exposure is heavy with Pyro/Cat, which several people on this thread have said they prefer, the enhancements pretty much go out the window. Sandy King has written alot about this stuff in other forums etc. For what it's worth I've done alot of my own experiments.

I'm curious though about your flared-out D76 comment. Why does it have to be so? I agree there can be *slightly* more "bloom" around such objects with a sulfite developer than a staining developer, but the value differences and detail can be just as good, albeit harder to print in some cases. Can you explain?

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Bob Carnie said:

So you are saying the bare bulb in a room effect , one flared out* D76* , one crystal clear*Pyro* is a placebo effect and not real.

I think I need an asprin, I have sold all this development based on this percieved effect.

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That effect is shown clearly in Hans Windisch's 1938 book
"Die Neu Foto Schule" (also published in English as The New Photo School) where he recommends what is now known as the Windisch surface developer. In fact's an older formula which he doesn't claim as his own.

The principle is that a tanning developer hardens the emulsion proportionately to development so in areas of extreme exposure there's more hardening and less penetration of the developer,. This was very important with older thicker emulsions prior to the 60's some of which had poor antihalation backing and that halation was worse in the emulsion closest to the support.

Modern emulsions will exhibit a less marked effect and will vary depending on the emulsion & staining developer used.

Ian

Thinking out loud here:

Perhaps using a film such as TMax 400 (TMY-2) presents an advantage with extreme contrast scenes. It records a very large brightness range in linear fashion, (I think 14 stops), which is more than most, if not all, other films. Would that make a difference in the necessity of using a developer to help contracting such extreme contrast, while getting less of the blooming effect? Or is this purely a developer related phenomenon?

Thomas Bertilsson said:

Thinking out loud here:

Perhaps using a film such as TMax 400 (TMY-2) presents an advantage with extreme contrast scenes. It records a very large brightness range in linear fashion, (I think 14 stops), which is more than most, if not all, other films. Would that make a difference in the necessity of using a developer to help contracting such extreme contrast, while getting less of the blooming effect? Or is this purely a developer related phenomenon?

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I don't use TMax films any longer, but I've found that the highlights withDelat 100 & 400, and also HP5, in Pyrocat HD in cases of extreme highlight contrast have been easier to print with better detail and less prone to what I guess you calling blooming - light scatter/halation.

Ian

That room situation is exactly the range I am talking about and encourage a lot of workers to get detail in the bulb and shadows.
If you have both with technique then all you have to do is work on your vision.

BTW most of my work is with print solarization so the original neg is not as critical as would with night scenes or extreme lighting.
I am now thinking to fog the neg(solarize) then fog the print (solarize) at 30 x40 size to see what effect I can get.

Ian Grant said:

I don't use TMax films any longer, but I've found that the highlights withDelat 100 & 400, and also HP5, in Pyrocat HD in cases of extreme highlight contrast have been easier to print with better detail and less prone to what I guess you calling blooming - light scatter/halation.

Ian

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So Ian, is this because of the curve shouldering, allowing the image to fit the paper curve better?

I don't do curves Mark, only in the past with ex-girl friends and now the wife, and it tends to mean a clip around the earss, and they get touchy if we spot differences

More seriously I think it's something at the top of the curve that gets missed with conventional densitometry. It might surprise you that we rely on a more visual tesing approach here inEurope with almost no densitometty. JohnBlakemore, perhaps the finest everv exponent of the Zone System does everything with visual comparisons.

My own view is those using densitometers have no confidence in their own abilities they never leave the nest and fly . . . . . . .

Ian

Thanks Ian.

The reason I asked is that I don't make curves either and the look is how I've ended up with Delta.

The thing that curves have done for me is provide a language to talk about exposure, placement, printing...

markbarendt said:

The thing that curves have done for me is provide a language to talk about exposure, placement, printing...

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That's very true, but with staining developers curves don't tell us eveything, the colour of the stain has an effect at the printing stage and that varies between graded and variable contrast papers and also brand.

Ian

great thread !

SNIP

Mainecoonmaniac said:

The weird part of using pyro PMK is after fixing, you dunk the film back into the developer.

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i have never heard of this ...
how long do you put it back in the developer for ?

i've never used pyro developers but use coffee developers
which some people suggest is like its the 3rd cousin 4 times removed ..
i might try this sometime ...

With PMK I'd put the film developer back in for 2-3 minutes. I haven't done this since switching to Pyrocat, but I believe for PMK it's supposed to help stain and hardening....someone now correct me!

Ian Grant said:

That's very true, but with staining developers curves don't tell us eveything, the colour of the stain has an effect at the printing stage and that varies between graded and variable contrast papers and also brand.

Ian

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So, a color meter like a PML2 could read that right?

jnanian said:

great thread !

SNIP



i have never heard of this ...
how long do you put it back in the developer for ?

i've never used pyro developers but use coffee developers
which some people suggest is like its the 3rd cousin 4 times removed ..
i might try this sometime ...

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You don't. All this does is increase general stain, aka fog. Gordon Hutchings, PMK's inventor, has abandoned this practice. So should you.

For really beautiful negatives to enlarge, try Ilford Pan F+ in PMK.

markbarendt said:

So, a color meter like a PML2 could read that right?

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I'm not familiar with a PML2 but you may need to read more than one colour channel, and its not staright forward.

One reason this is a murkey area is the stain can act a a contrast filter, or even like a very mild safelight filter.

When a negative is intensified in a Uranium intensifier it goes redder and is visually less dense but prints with significantly more contrast and as far as a blue sensitive papers concerned needs more exposure.

Some staining developers give a yellowish stain others redish and this can vary depending on the film as well.

I use staining developers for prints occasionally and once the stain is formed the choice of stop bath and fixer has no effect on the stain.

The staining is the same after an alkali fixer or conventional Rapid fixer (unhardened) and is not affected by HCA (sodium sulphite) either.

Ian

thanks for the info and reasons behind the after-bath...
my coffee stained negatives are stained and fogged enough
as they are ... so i think i will avoid the after-bath

interesting just the same ...

thanks !
john

I can definitely see where measuring contrast could be problematic.

Ian Grant said:

I'm not familiar with a PML2 but you may need to read more than one colour channel, and its not staright forward.

One reason this is a murkey area is the stain can act a a contrast filter, or even like a very mild safelight filter.

When a negative is intensified in a Uranium intensifier it goes redder and is visually less dense but prints with significantly more contrast and as far as a blue sensitive papers concerned needs more exposure.

Some staining developers give a yellowish stain others redish and this can vary depending on the film as well.

I use staining developers for prints occasionally and once the stain is formed the choice of stop bath and fixer has no effect on the stain.

The staining is the same after an alkali fixer or conventional Rapid fixer (unhardened) and is not affected by HCA (sodium sulphite) either.

Ian

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markbarendt said:

So, a color meter like a PML2 could read that right?

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It certainly can. Use the magenta/green and yellow/blue channel.

The other problem with trying to make predictions based in densitometer readings is that not only does the stain have differing absorbance in blue and green, but VC papers have varying sensitivities in to blue and green light.

Many years ago, I did some looking into the stain and I took some film developed in PMK and PyroCat HD and I bleached out the silver and then measured the absorbance of these films with a scanning spectrophotmeter. Here's a pdf I made that shows the difference between the stain of these two developers.

http://www.keyesphoto.com/Resource/TechInfo/Kirk_D_Keyes-PMK_vs_Pyrocat_scan.pdf

It believe this data that PyroCat HD gives more UV absorbance/density than PMK, which is useful with alt processes. And is shows that PMK is going to have a greater compensating effect with PC papers than PyroCat HD.

great thread. and very informative for someone like me who knew nothing about pyro developers.

I missed this thread when it was originally started and I just finished wading through the lengthy postings. But some things generated questions in my mind.

1. It was said that a pyro negative would have a greater effect on VC paper. It was also stated that a pyro negative would be printed on a Grade #2 or VC #3 papers. Isn’t this backwards? If it has a greater effect on VC paper, then wouldn’t the VC paper be exposed at a lower contrast setting than a single-grade paper? If my question has no basis, then the comments relate to a local-contrast effect and not overall-contrast.

2. I couldn’t find it but I believe one of the commenters stated in another thread that he was having trouble getting sufficiently dark skies when using pyro developers even when using a red filter. Because of this situation, he was giving up on the pyro and going back to a more conventional developer. Has this position changed? I have also seen this effect and I will keep Xtol for shots involving a heavily filtered sky.

3. If one wanted to reprint some older pyro negatives using unsharp masking, would there be any issues that would present problems? I could see some with the stain color on panchromatic masking film. Unfortunately, I haven’t done this so can’t provide any input.

I learned a lot about pyro from this thread. If I were new to analog photography and read the post I would be tempted to believe pyro is the magic brew. I recommend the reader pick up The Film Developing Cookbook. There is much information not mentioned here about tanning developers. The authors write about low speed, high fog, poor grain, toxicity and unstable working solutions. This seems a developer suited to large format, rotary processing, and images featuring separation of high values. A class of developers for someone who knows specifically what they are trying to achieve and the limitations of other formulas.

When I look at web sites with portfolios featuring stained negatives, I often see images of moving water, surf, or fog. Some images look like the definition is unnatural. I'm on thin ground discussing pyro images. Never used the developer or viewed "in hand" an actual print. But I have a sense stained negatives favor certain images and may not be suitable as a general purpose (GP) developer.

Said another way, if you want something that looks different than the look of D-76, tanning developers may be one of several choices.

XTOL is the front line GP developer. Especially when you consider its sharpness at 1:3 and low toxicity. The speed gain is at least 1/3 gain. The shelf life is 8 months or a few months longer if properly stored. It can be used stock up to 1:3. XTOL 1:3 is arguably as sharp as Rodinal without edge effects. It's a great developer.