SUPROL film & paper Developer by CHAMPION

angah316 · Nov 21, 2023

Hi
I'm not sure whether members here familiar with this brand "Suprol" by Champion chemical used as Developer (black & white). Currently using this for testing with fomapan 400 film (135/36) .

i noticed is very limited in Digitaltruth database to refer for guiding process development with this brand. Any ideas other website ? or maybe there is similar type of developing process .. ? as example .. film BW like fomapan, shanghai, ilford pan400 .. there is no record

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koraks · Nov 21, 2023

Looks like a pretty straightforward PQ developer without any weird bells or whistles. The only odd thing is that they seem to use hydroxide as the accelerator, which I'd expect makes it kind of temperamental in that it's not as well buffered as a typical carbonate developer. Hence, it'll easily drop in pH if lots of film or paper is run through it without replenishment, reducing its activity. But that's guesswork on my behalf.

I never heard of it before; looks like perfectly fine product. If you work out any reliable development times, you could consider submitting them to the Massive Dev Chart for inclusion.

angah316 said:
or maybe there is similar type of developing process .. ?

Although the components are listed in the safety data sheet, the percentages are always a bandwidth, so it's hard to tell if this is e.g. comparable to something like Ilford PQ Universal. And there's the issue with the hydroxide while virtually all commercial developers of a similar application are carbonate-based, which will make comparisons a little different.

What I sometimes do is determine the development time that's equivalent to a developer that's better documented and then use the ratio between these times as a starting point to determine the time for a third film. For instance, I might determine that for Fomapan 400 I'd need a development time of let's say 10 minutes while D76 requires 12 minutes. The ratio is 1:1.2. If I then want to develop e.g. TMX which might have a time in the list for, I dunno, 8 minutes for D76, I could divide 8 by 1.2 (=6.67) and then try 6.5 to 7 minutes for the new developer and see what I get. While this won't be perfect, it's a good approximation and for my practice, it's virtually always good enough.

angah316 · Nov 21, 2023

koraks said:
Looks like a pretty straightforward PQ developer without any weird bells or whistles. The only odd thing is that they seem to use hydroxide as the accelerator, which I'd expect makes it kind of temperamental in that it's not as well buffered as a typical carbonate developer. Hence, it'll easily drop in pH if lots of film or paper is run through it without replenishment, reducing its activity. But that's guesswork on my behalf.

I never heard of it before; looks like perfectly fine product. If you work out any reliable development times, you could consider submitting them to the Massive Dev Chart for inclusion.

Although the components are listed in the safety data sheet, the percentages are always a bandwidth, so it's hard to tell if this is e.g. comparable to something like Ilford PQ Universal. And there's the issue with the hydroxide while virtually all commercial developers of a similar application are carbonate-based, which will make comparisons a little different.

What I sometimes do is determine the development time that's equivalent to a developer that's better documented and then use the ratio between these times as a starting point to determine the time for a third film. For instance, I might determine that for Fomapan 400 I'd need a development time of let's say 10 minutes while D76 requires 12 minutes. The ratio is 1:1.2. If I then want to develop e.g. TMX which might have a time in the list for, I dunno, 8 minutes for D76, I could divide 8 by 1.2 (=6.67) and then try 6.5 to 7 minutes for the new developer and see what I get. While this won't be perfect, it's a good approximation and for my practice, it's virtually always good enough.

if there any specific formula to apply , that will be great . for example : -

fomapan 400
developing time : 5 minute (35mm)
dilution : 1+19
temperature : 20c

Ernst-Jan · Nov 21, 2023

koraks said:
What I sometimes do is determine the development time that's equivalent to a developer that's better documented and then use the ratio between these times as a starting point to determine the time for a third film. For instance, I might determine that for Fomapan 400 I'd need a development time of let's say 10 minutes while D76 requires 12 minutes. The ratio is 1:1.2. If I then want to develop e.g. TMX which might have a time in the list for, I dunno, 8 minutes for D76, I could divide 8 by 1.2 (=6.67) and then try 6.5 to 7 minutes for the new developer and see what I get. While this won't be perfect, it's a good approximation and for my practice, it's virtually always good enough.

Yes, that what I did several times before. I make it even "wider"
For example with Silbera U400 - a traditional grain 400 speed film.
I looked for other traditional grain films (eg HP5+, 400TX, Agfapan APX400) and made an average factor for it. Sometimes the factors between times vary per film. If you take more films, this levels more out. Anyhow, I got very decent result with from my Silbera in ID11 1+2 with this method

Ian Grant · Nov 21, 2023

It used to be a Phenidone Chloroquinone developer but that was 40 years ago, it's been PQ for some years. May & Baker (now Champion) used to have a multi page photocopied datasheet for Suprol, my copy went missing. It was used for reversal processing, and there were extensive recommendations for a variety of processors, also for regular photo finishing, all replenished.

M&B used to give times for 1+19 and also 1+29, Ilford used to give times for films for PQ Universal 1+19 but didn't recommend it for 35mm films. I tested FP4 in PQ Universal at 1+29 and the results were very good, the downside was a slight loss in film speed.

Ian

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