Pyrocat and Ilfosol

[jmdavis]

For the past year and a half, I've used Pyrocat to develop my fp4 and Fortepan 200 film. Technically I used pyrocat to develop film for about 8 months and shot nothing new for another 10 months.

So since I had 10 sheets to develop and lacked any fresh pyrocat, I pulled out some unopened ilfosol. I had used ilfosol for more than 2 years before switching to Pyrocat and I was basically satisfied with it.

In this case however, the results were not that great. I don't know if the issue was unopened concentrate over a year old or something else, but the negatives seemed too contrasty and they were not nearly as easy to print for me.

Has anyone else had this sort of experience with pyrocat vs. non-staining developers?

 

[Tom Hoskinson]

Yes, and it is a very important reason why I use Pyrocat and other proportional staining and tanning developers for my work.

You should be able make a non-staining developer work ok, but you will need to do sufficient testing to determine the right combination of exposure, developer dilution and agitation technique (plus your targeted printing method and materials).

 

[jmdavis]

Tom,


I think that my surprise was really over how big a difference that going back really was. I had used ilfosol for more than 2 years before I switched to pyrocat. I still think that its a good developer. I probably need to finish this open bottle with some work of differing contrasts. Or, perhaps the difference was fortepan in ilfosol. This was the first time that I've used that combination. Since I stuck exclusively to fp4 and hp5 when I used it regularly.


Mike