Pyrocat HD: Different films in same tank

I've read up on all I can find regarding Prescysol and Pyrocat HD's similarities. I understand many believe they are the same developer, but some disagree.

At any rate, Pyro HD seems to be a great, and cheap, developer. Prescysol, on the other hand, is not at all cheap.

The best feature to me with Prescysol is the ability to develop different films in the same tank with the same dev time and get good results. This has cleared out my stock of undeveloped films in no time. The results have been good. Better than when I used different times and developers for different films? I don't know. But definitely not worse. I have not measured, and will not, the densities etc of these films. They have been easy to sc*n. I think they look fine to print as well.

Has anyone tried the same routine with Pyro HD? (I use _mainly_ Delta 100 and HP5+. Sometimes I do Efke 25. I'll do some IR-films when the time comes.)

Many thanks,
Henning

Hi Henning

Take a look at this thread: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

You will need to do film tests to use this developer with your film(s) of choice. tim

I never used Prescytol but have been using Pyrocat-HD for quite some time, now in PEG-solution.
But I do not develop different films for the same time, like described in "Elements" for Prescytol. I do TMax 400 at 21C for 17,5 mins semi stand. FP4+ at 10 mins 20 deg C normal agitation. TMax 100 semi stand at 21C for 15 mins, etc. And I find it worthwhile to adjust one minute more or less to adjust contrast. Maybe it would work to develop everything for 10 minutes normal agitation at 20 deg C for scanning. But a better way to save time might be to do semi stand agitation. Then you will have time to agitate many tanks at the same time, like me!
/matti

Regardless of whether Prescysol and Pyrocat-HD are the same developer I would not recommend developing all films together for the same time unless you are willing to live with negatives of different average gradient. The plain fact of the matter is that if you develop the same fillm for a longer time in either Pyrocat-HF or Prescysol it will devleop to a higher average gradient. If having negatives of different average gradient is "good results" then by all means, develop all films together for the same time. So far as I know there are no development by-products from one film that will damage another one.



Sandy King

Thanks for the advice and the link!

With a good few of my cameras it's more or less meaningless to do anything else than develop and cross my fingers!

sanking said:

Regardless of whether Prescysol and Pyrocat-HD are the same developer I would not recommend developing all films together for the same time unless you are willing to live with negatives of different average gradient. The plain fact of the matter is that if you develop the same fillm for a longer time in either Pyrocat-HF or Prescysol it will devleop to a higher average gradient. If having negatives of different average gradient is "good results" then by all means, develop all films together for the same time. So far as I know there are no development by-products from one film that will damage another one.

Click to expand...

As I said. Sometimes, good enough is good enough. Sometimes you need ultimate control. And I think you can agree that Pyro'HD can give you both, it's all up to the user.

If you wish to soup two differnt films in the same tank, I would recommend a divided (two-bath) developer. It's really hard to miss with these. However, with today's thin-emulsion films, it's felt that there isn't as much emulsion to soak up enough of the "A" bath to make it work like the old days. It can still work, but you may have to increase the dev time. Test rolls are advised.

jim appleyard said:

If you wish to soup two differnt films in the same tank, I would recommend a divided (two-bath) developer. It's really hard to miss with these. However, with today's thin-emulsion films, it's felt that there isn't as much emulsion to soak up enough of the "A" bath to make it work like the old days. It can still work, but you may have to increase the dev time. Test rolls are advised.

Click to expand...

Jim,

I agree with your comments about divided two-bath developers. In fact, I believe these type of developers make a lot of sense today when so many people are scanning their negatives and printing digitally. Course, no one here on APUG is doing that, right?

What is not widely understood is that many two-part developers can be used as two-bath developers. Barry Thornton's Diaxactol was originally marketed as a two part developer, though apparently not a very good one and was later re-marketed as a single bath developer.

Pyrocat-HD can also be used as a two-bath developer with excellent sharpness and fairly low B+F. For this I recommend a 1:10 dilution of both Parts A and B, and development as follows. Temperature of 70-75F okay , and not critical.

1. Water bath for five minutes.

2. Six minutes in Part A, with two inversions at the beginning, and two inversions at the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 points of development.

3. Pour our Solution A and pour in Solution B. No rinse between.Initial agitation two or thee inversions, then two or three inversions at the 1/4, 12 and 3/4 points of development.

4. Pour out B, pour in water and leave for five minutes.

The purpose of the relatively long time in B and the final water bath is to allow developer exhaustion for maximum adjacency effects.

When used this way Pyrocat-HD is a very high acutance compensating developer, but with a slight loss of speed compared to normal use where you mix A and B together. I am currently looking at strategies to bring film speed up to box with the two bath method. But for now, if you choose to use the two bath method I would recommend that you halve the box speed.

Pyrocat-HD negatives with the two-bath method described above have incredible acutance, IMO even greater than with semi-stand development.

I will post an H&D curve later of a TRI- 320 negative developed this way.

Sandy King

Sandy, P'Cat HD is one dev I never thought of using as a divided. I'll have to try it. Thanks!

jim appleyard said:

Sandy, P'Cat HD is one dev I never thought of using as a divided. I'll have to try it. Thanks!

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Jim,

Let me know of your results. And you might want to experiment with different dilutions. I have not promoted this kind of use in the past but believe it has a lot of promise today and plan to do some more experiments in an attempt to bring the speed back up to box.

But as is you can get great sharpness with the processing method given in the other message.

BTW, I did some further tests today with 2-bath Pyrocat-HD and found that it is possible to get box speed (or perhaps even more) by using 3X times phenidone in Stock Solution A. I plan to use that as the standard in the future for 2-bath Pyrocat-HD.


Sandy

I'll let you know. It sounds promising. It might even work on T-Max!

jim appleyard said:

I'll let you know. It sounds promising. It might even work on T-Max!

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Jim,

I am going to do a T-MAX 400 test this evening. I will post the H&D curves later today, or if not, tomorrow.

I am pretty excited about this. What I am seeing so far is very promising.

Sandy

mr King, or anyone else that may know,

what are the keeping properties of pyrocat hd's A bath at the 1:10 dilution you've suggested for two bath development? will one be able to reuse bath A for a reasonable period of time ( +3 months?) would you have to modify it to extend its life at this dilution?

thanks in advance.

Not trying to be the authority that Sandy is, but when you dilute a dev more than its stock solution it goes bad in a short time. With pyro devs, I'd use it within the hour.

... is it a matter of increasing the preservative?

el wacho said:

mr King, or anyone else that may know,

what are the keeping properties of pyrocat hd's A bath at the 1:10 dilution you've suggested for two bath development? will one be able to reuse bath A for a reasonable period of time ( +3 months?) would you have to modify it to extend its life at this dilution?

thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

Hi,

Not sure. I need to test. Today I used the same A and B working solution for a period of 6-8 hours and the first and last films through seemed to have about the same density and contrast.

It may be possible to modify the developer to extend the life of the working solutions for several days or longer. Your question is very pertinent, and one that I had already begun to investigate.

My initial suspicion is that the A solution will have a fairly long life as it, but the B solution will oxidize quickly. What is not bad, since the B solution is a a very inexpensive carbonate solu tion that can be replaced at very low cost, if economy is a factor.

Sandy

thanks for your response Sandy.

sanking said:

<snip>
3. Pour out Solution A and pour in Solution B. No rinse between. Initial agitation two or thee inversions, then two or three inversions at the 1/4, 12 and 3/4 points of development.
<snip>
The purpose of the relatively long time in B and the final water bath is to allow developer exhaustion for maximum adjacency effects.
<snip>

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Sandy,

It appears that you don't specify the time in Solution B in this post. I do see the times for Solution A and the final water bath. Am I missing something, or is it in another post that I missed? Thanks for any clarification.

Lee

Lee L said:

Sandy,

It appears that you don't specify the time in Solution B in this post. I do see the times for Solution A and the final water bath. Am I missing something, or is it in another post that I missed? Thanks for any clarification.

Lee

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The time should be 8 minutes, but 6-10 will give about the same result.

I am really still tweaking this myself so nothing is in stone here.

Sandy

sanking said:

The time should be 8 minutes, but 6-10 will give about the same result.

I am really still tweaking this myself so nothing is in stone here.

Sandy

Click to expand...

Thanks Sandy. Ballpark is fine for me at this point. We all do it a little differently anyway. Looking forward to seeing what you work out as your standard.

Lee

Lee L said:

Thanks Sandy. Ballpark is fine for me at this point. We all do it a little differently anyway. Looking forward to seeing what you work out as your standard.

Lee

Click to expand...

BTW, I am finding that just doubling the amount of phenidone works a bit better than tripling it. 3X the original amount add a bit too much B+F.

The curious thing to me is that B+F is pretty high with all of the two-bath developers, including the commerical one Diafine. But that may not be much of a negative with the Pyrocat-HD two-bath solution since the purpose here is to develop negatives for scanning and the extra stain should decrease grain a lot.

And you can definitely use the A solution again several times within a period of 4-6 hours, but I think it better to use fresh B each time.


Best,

Sandy

I am attaching the Pyrocat-HD H&D curves for two-bath development of TRI-X and T-MAX 400.

As you can see, the SBR of both files is over 9.

Because of the stain measurement was with Blue mode with the densitometer.

B+F is quite high, overall Dmax is quite low so these negate\ives should scan very well. And they appear to be very sharp.


Technique: 2 minute pre-soak, 6 minutes in Solution A working, 1:10, 10 minutes in Solution B working 1:10, 5 minute post soak, stop bath and fix normally.

The only change to the developer is that I doubled the amount of phenidoine compared to normal Pyrocat-HD.

Sandy King

Thanks for sharing this Sandy.

Is this the new TMY-2 ?

Lee

Lee L said:

Thanks for sharing this Sandy.

Is this the new TMY-2 ?

Lee

Click to expand...

Lee,

Yes, it was the new TMY-2, and also a fairly new TRI-X 320 TXP. Kodak improved the grain of this film significantly several years ago and it is very much like the old version. Curiously, that change went almost unnoticed, in contrast to the big news Kodak is making about the new TMY-2.

Sandy