Why do staining developers cause problems with VC papers?
Foma's graded papers (FOMABROM and RETROBROM)
As @MsLing implies above, the stain tends to have a higher density as the wavelength of the light gets shorter. In other words: pyro stain is more dense to blue light than to green light. This means that image-wise pyro stain will block blue light more so than green light, which means that VC paper will effectively print at a higher grade in the shadows (less image and stain density in the negative) than in the highlights (more stain density) of the print.
Whether this is an advantage or a drawback depends on your preferences and your point of view. Some consider it a benefit since it results in highlight compression, which can help retaining tone in highlight areas. The penalty is that this tone doesn't come with a lot of contrast, so while a highlight may not blow out into paper white, it may render as an undifferentiated light tone. Again, it all depends on what you want to achieve in a print - and subject matter plays a role, too.
The suggestion of @Augustus Caesar that pyro developers are by definition problematic when printing VC evidently lacks nuance and I wouldn't agree with it. It all depends, as shown above.
Fomabrom C is probably the best starting point for the negs described , Retrobrom is a pretty soft G2 (1.5 even), and the base colour is a bit weird for some. Fomabrom can be persuaded a bit warmer in emulsion colour, and is a lot faster than MGWT (for the unwary).
Maybe Split grade printing could be another tool?
Staining pyro developers DO NOT interfere with VC paper performance. They make highlight reproduction easier in that case just like they do with actual graded papers. The specifics of this can get a bit complicated to explain because different formulas can produce somewhat different hued stains; some are rather yellow-green, others more brownish. Some films stain more than others. And not all VC papers respond the same either. But in real-world printing, one learns pretty fast by just doing it.
I mean simply that because staining developers produce a colored stain rather than a pure silver deposit, the results can be unpredictable, because the stain is not equivalent to silver density. This doesn't matter to graded papers, which are not sensitized to green, so if one is going to use VC papers, it would be advisable to use non-staining developers. Changes in the paper may affect results, too. Multigrade was revised just a few years ago.Thanks MsLing and koraks for the explanation It was the fairly "absolute " nature of Augustus Caesar's statement that worried me If the problems were that bad I'd expect the users of staining developers to have mentioned this if it was a serious disadvantage and I could not recall ever hearing such a statement
pentaxuser
I have a formula somewhere for Ilford ID6 developer and ID6R replenisher which is a Pyrogallol, Metol and Hydroquinone process.Yes, I guess I am.
One of my life’s ambitions is to shoot a black and white motion picture developed in replenishable pyrogallol. I have someone on it now, will take some years to sort out the formula, if ever, I’m sure.
Testing Galerie versus Lodima and Lupex some years ago (chronicled here) is what committed me to chloride papers. There was no comparison. Galerie showed much less detail, looked much less dimensional and had weak blacks next to Lodima. It almost looked like a newspaper reproduction by comparison. That was the last time I used a fast and presumably bromide-leading paper.
I have a formula somewhere for Ilford ID6 developer and ID6R replenisher which is a Pyrogallol, Metol and Hydroquinone process.
I mean simply that because staining developers produce a colored stain rather than a pure silver deposit, the results can be unpredictable, because the stain is not equivalent to silver density. This doesn't matter to graded papers, which are not sensitized to green, so if one is going to use VC papers, it would be advisable to use non-staining developers. Changes in the paper may affect results, too. Multigrade was revised just a few years ago.
You might want to ask yourself this: why did Ilford leave all these behind when they got PQ to work; and why did the rest of the industry rather quickly fall in behind Ilford's lead on that? It wasn't because of an anti-aesthetic conspiracy.
At the time I did the comparison test, Galerie was actually my usual paper and I had never used MGWT. Lodima G4 and Galerie G3 were not that different in contrast. But the sharpness and "dimensionality" of the Chloride paper led me to walk away from Galerie forever.A great deal more of that has to do with curve shape (and crystal characteristcs etc) than specific formulation. With today's technology a very fast very high chloride content paper is entirely feasible, and as a matter of fact is the basis for modern RA-4 papers.
Having used the papers in question, I can see why you didn't have a good experience with Galerie - it has enough curve shape difference, grade for grade, to MGWT that you could draw certain assumptions from that (just as Michael A. Smith seems to have drawn a whole sequence of errant assumptions from the significant mismatches between Kodabromide and Azo - which will have been exacerbated by the problems of emulsion changes for environmental reasons running ahead of the technology in the 1970s in what was then very much a cinderella sector of the market). The various contact speed papers with very high chloride content (Azo, Lupex, Fomalux - which was one of the other grades of Lodima, etc) have curves that plot very remarkably closely to MGWT - as do the two grades of Fomabrom. Retrobrom plots round about where a G1 Azo-type might wind up - just a lot faster. It's a great paper, just not necessarily on a base colour that people may want. For whatever reason, the shape of curve of the Azo type emulsions seems to deliver visual characteristics that people like - but they aren't the only route to that end.
I think one of the other things that is being underestimated here is that the contrast differences between grades of Azo/ Lupex type papers can have something to do with the surfactants used in coating (i.e. if they have development accelerating effects due to affecting gelatin swell) - along with the use of small amounts of very powerful restrainers (PMT). Modifying some developers with a specific molecular weight of a polyglycol might (or might not) work. There are also better developers than Amidol, but they do require a little bit of digging to find relevant information (and the real answers as to why you ideally don't want 1 min+ dev times in chloride contact papers), along with some experimentation.
You might want to ask yourself this: why did Ilford leave all these behind when they got PQ to work; and why did the rest of the industry rather quickly fall in behind Ilford's lead on that? It wasn't because of an anti-aesthetic conspiracy.
At the time I did the comparison test, Galerie was actually my usual paper and I had never used MGWT. Lodima G4 and Galerie G3 were not that different in contrast. But the sharpness and "dimensionality" of the Chloride paper led me to walk away from Galerie forever.
What would curve shape have to do with sharpness and resolution?
I mean simply that because staining developers produce a colored stain rather than a pure silver deposit, the results can be unpredictable, because the stain is not equivalent to silver density. This doesn't matter to graded papers, which are not sensitized to green, so if one is going to use VC papers, it would be advisable to use non-staining developers. Changes in the paper may affect results, too. Multigrade was revised just a few years ago.
Tone reproduction/curve shape could potentially make a print subjectively appear sharper on one paper than another even if total contrast is the same because the shape of the curve determines the contrast of different parts of the exposure scale (darks, midtones, highlights).
In general given a particular negative/image the tone reproduction (ie paper contrast, curve shape, D-Max/D-Min) and surface characteristics, combined with what we are conditioned to expect to see can all influence the subjective perception of print quality.
While a slow chloride emulsion like Azo/Lodima/Lupex would tend to technically be finer grained and higher resolution than an enlarging paper like Galerie, realistically there can’t really be a visible difference in the sharpness (acutance, edge effects, resolution, MTF) of different paper emulsions as we are never looking at an enlargement of the paper emulsion. Without a magnification factor these image structure characteristics are just too small to see.
I agree that a carefully designed PQ developer is perfectly suitable for the task. However, Jarin wants to use a replenishable developer that employs Pyrogallol as a reducing agent hence my suggestion of the Ilford ID-6 formula.
As I already pointed out, I don't know if it is suitable for cinematography
I don't personally use staining developers, but I do know some photographers who do.
I have a formula somewhere for Ilford ID6 developer and ID6R replenisher which is a Pyrogallol, Metol and Hydroquinone process.
Whether or not it is suitable for cinematography I don't know.
Curious to see the formula. I assume it wasn’t a staining/tanning developer.
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