Hi
I have seen recent recommendations of SPUR HRX developer for Acros II 100 and TMAX 100. I have also seen great results from SPUR Acurol-N with Foma 100, on photo.net.
I'm not familiar with SPUR as a company, and there is limited distribution in the US (only Freestyle carries SPUR HRX alone).
I would like to start this thread not only to share experiences with their B&W developers, but also hopefully petition US stores to carry their products.
Thanks!
As I know the company very well from a critical customer point of view, and using several of their products very successfully for many years, I can give some more detailed information.
First about the background of the German company SPUR (
https://spur-photo.com/ ):
The founder and master-mind of SPUR is Diplom-Ingenieur Heribert Schain. He studied photo engineering at the University of Cologne, and set his main focus on photo-chemistry already as a student there. After finishing the studies with the diploma he started his professional career in R&D and production of BW photo chemistry.
His main focus has been innovative R&D and trying completely new approaches for significant performance improvements especially for BW developers.
He has developed / designed all kind of new developers, from developers for high-volume developing machines to special high-performance developers for niche special films. But also high-quality general purpose developers like HRX, Acurol-N, SD2525, SLD.
During his career he has designed / developed dozens of different developers. He is most probably the most productive / active researcher / photo chemist in history concerning BW developers. At least I don't know anyone else who has designed so much different BW developers.
During the last 20 years alone he has every year either introduced at least one completely new developer, or a further improved version of one of his established developers (including the developers he has designed and is producing for other brands).
He is a person who just really loves to do R&D in BW chemistry and improving products. He is living for that.
He is definitely the best expert worldwide concerning special developers for highest-performing special films like microfilms, and for ultra-fine grain developers which also offer excellent sharpness.
A general very positive experience I've made over the years: When I have discussed my results with his developers with him, and when I had critic and wasn't fully satiesfied with a new product (that happen't really very rarely, though), he has been always very open minded and listened. And if possible, he tried to further improve the critical parameter / weakness I found in my tests.
When I started my big scientific comparison film test project, I tested several developers and had then chosen SPUR HRX as my standard test developer for the BW films, because I've got with most films the best results concerning fineness of grain and sharpness with HRX. As I wanted to see how good the films generally can perform in detail rendition, for that approach it has been the optimal developer.
These days SPUR has just introduced another new developer: Omega X. It was designed to even surpass the outstanding results of HRX. And it is also a reaction to the really excellent JOBO Alpha developer.
I have not yet tested Omega X. Therefore I cannot yet assess its performance.
Best regards,
Henning