Turner Solvent Developer (Haist)

[Kino]

I am reading Haist's "Modern Photographic Processing", Vol 1. and came across this Turner Solvent Developer formula, which essentially adds sodium thiosulfate to D-76 for finer grained images.

It was called "M.C.W 1 Developer", for Miniature Camera World (the magazine it was first published in) and consists of this:

Metol 2g
Hydroquinone 2g
Sodium sulfite, desiccated 100g
Borax 2g
Sodium thiosulfae pentahydrate 3g
Water to make 1 liter

I find it fascinating to add Hypo (fixer) to a developer as a silver solvent. It is stated to give slightly less emulsion speed than D-76 with about half the graininess at essentially the same time of developent.

Has anyone ever tried this formula?

 

[Lachlan Young]

Thiosulfate and Thiocyanate are both powerful silver solvents - which is why they're often used in first development baths of reversal processes. It'll likely be foggier than you might want/ expect, but with some modern films it might also be sharper than you expect because its solvency can more readily access the iodide in the emulsion.