roll call, people who process their FILM in PRINT devloper

I think PE has said something like Dektol being a good developer for film as well.

jnanian said:

i'm not making any nasty comments, just commenting they have a great sales staff
using a universal developer isn't for everyone ...

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I was just jerkin' your chain!

jnanian said:

snip


hi michr

could easily suggest if you don't want to play
fast and loose with your film one should know
how to process his/her film in any developer ?
i have seen an awful lot of poorly processed film that was put through film developer ...

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Fair enough, it's just as easy to get things wrong using what are normally designated as the right tools for the job. Don't develop your precious negatives in Dektol expecting good results unless you've run a few (or lots) of practice rolls through it first, the same goes for any developer.

Sirius Glass said:

I was just jerkin' your chain!

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of course ...

:munch:

ok ... it has been a month and 1/2 since i posted last
and i am happy to say that i have been using dektol as my film developer
now for over a month. i haven't processed rolls in it, just sheets, maybe 36 of them,
maybe more than that, i lost track. i didn't process in straight ductal 1:6 but used it
as part of a split developer routine that i have been doing with great success with other print developers
i split it with caffenol c ...
so for these negatives the way i processed them is 1/2 the time i would have processed them in ductal for whatever dilution
i was using ( i used about 1:7 so i developed them (shuffled) for 4 mins in the dektol ) ... and then i switched developers
so i picked the stack of film out of one tray and put them into another containing caffenol c. i shuffled the film in that for another 4 minutes.

they came out exactly the way i expected them to come out. the same stain and fog.
i also hand colored a bunch of images from the same batch, and made some tri-chrome images, both of which i can't talk about here

feel free to go to my website / blog to see more details and photographs .. ( including trichomes and hand colored stuff )

I have used Dektol on FP4+ and Efke100 -- both 11x14 sheets. I wanted a contrast boost and am happy with what I got. I used it 1:1, I believe.

I use Ilford Universal PQ Developer with FP4+ for negatives for platinum printing -- but as a 'universal' developer (film and paper) I guess that would not count.

Michael R 1974 said:

Vaughn, I think PQ universal is fair game since at one time Kodak's UK formulary characterized D-72 (Dektol) as a high contrast rapid developer for films and plates. So it could be argued John is actually using a film developer to develop his film!

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hi michael

you are right, i am using a plate, film, paper developer to develop my film
but in the last i don't know, 60 years ... because other developers have been
developed ( sorry, bad pun ) and smaller formats introduced, fewer people use
these developers for film, and even if they have it on hand, it is not their developer of choice ..
maybe its sort of like lost technology ??

maybe its kind of like make a fire using 2 pieces of wood or flint and steel,
or a Dcell battery and wirewool (steel wool) ... bic lighters or matches ...
even though it is not new technology for a lot of people, it is lost / forgotten technology ...

Not everyone is trying to get the sharpest, smoothest, smallest grained negatives possible. There are certainly projects where going for the less than perfect gives perfect results. That's the beauty in what we've all chosen to do. It's very malleable, forgiving, and only restricted by lack of imagination.

But I'm going for the *best* results possible and I develop everything in 130.



*Best = what I'm lookin for.

I used D-72 on film in High School when there was a need to get things done very quickly or when the Tri-X was pushed. The film would then be rinsed, fixed, hung and dried with a hair dryer. I might have done it in college but the school newspaper used an Ektamatic print stabilization machine.

FOMA markets a "FOMA UNIVERSAL" developer which is intented for film and paper. Looking at the suggested development times for film, it seems a quite active developer.

The formula, from the package, seems to be PQ + some sodium carbonate.

I have used 130 and LPD paper developers to develop sheet film. Worked just fine! I didn't see any particular advantages to do so, though, so I went back to the film developer I had been using.

I just did it for fun, to see how it would work. I used a rotary base and a drum for 5x7 negs.

personally, i didn't want to have 3 or 4 or whatever developers lying around my darkroom
that sometimes get used, sometimes don't get used, get mixed, have to be discarded &c
i wanted to pare the tree down to essentials and results i liked.
i found using a a130 and dektol developer for film works great.

i can understand why some don't use them, or are hesitant .. they read rumors about "golf ball sized grain" or " excessive contrast "
or other stuff mostly from people who regurgitate what others have said and have never done any work using these developers themselves.
its their loss if you ask me !
but to each their own, as i have said all along, it isn't for everyone, ... just like some people
refuse to use expired film because it isn't their cup of tea and they would rather have predictable and reliabe results without any worries...

personally i can't complain one bit about the results i get from dektol ... and if i had issue with the results i got
from ansco130, i wouldn't have used it for 15+ years and best of all, it lasted a year in stock ... and worked fantastically every time i used it.

maybe my results for these print developers used with film are not typical ? i don't know ... i have used
many other developers and they really didn't give me what i wanted, and a130 ( and now dekol ) seem to deliver ...

YMMV

Golden Gate Bridge
Carbon Print
4x10 Ilford FP4+ in Dektol (straight)

Back when I was learning to develop film, Kodak sold a liquid developer called Versatol. It was fairly cheep And I used several bottles of it, in fact I still have a 40 year old sealed bottle at the back of my Cupboard.

For Kodabromide they called for 1 part developer and three parts water for 1.5 minutes, while for Verichrome pan it was one part developer to 15 parts water for 5 minutes. according to this picture from am eBay listing. Velox, Azo only needed a miunte and had higher capacity.

If you consider that Dektol is used one to one, I am sure that you can figure out a good test dilution in the 1 to 7 or 1 to 8 range and a startiing film time of 5-10 minutes. Likewise Multigrade or PQ universal would also be useful, although ILFORD only gives times for PQ universal for film. Again they recommend a higher dilution for film than for paper.

Me, I just use HC-110 for negatives these days.