Two bath developers

Harry Lime · Nov 13, 2009

Are you looking at the AP and XAP versions? Yes, that does seem odd...

I think I'm going to mix up a batch of PD-76. I've been using Bary Thornton's 2-bath for the past few years, but if PD-76 gives me a speed boot I may switch over.

el wacho · Nov 13, 2009

Harry,
if you liked Thornton's with 80g of sodium sulfite/a litre then you'll love fx4 as a two bath. the same granularity plus the speed boost. i notched the SS down to 80g in fx4 and got similar results. be careful with your times for B bath. start at 2 min and increment by 30sec as the highlights can blow out ( for condenser - might be perfect for diffusion though) all the best.

Lew1716 · Nov 13, 2009

I've noticed some loss in speed as well, but a full stop sounds like too much. Could be problem be that your home-brew isn't as strong as the store bought chemicals you're comparing to? For instance, if your using grocery store soda instead of soda from a photo-chemical supplier, your B bath my not have the right ph. Try increasing the amount.

Harry Lime · Nov 13, 2009

el wacho said:
Harry,
if you liked Thornton's with 80g of sodium sulfite/a litre then you'll love fx4 as a two bath. the same granularity plus the speed boost. i notched the SS down to 80g in fx4 and got similar results. be careful with your times for B bath. start at 2 min and increment by 30sec as the highlights can blow out ( for condenser - might be perfect for diffusion though) all the best.

Crawley fx4?

Do you have a formula?

thanks

dancqu · Nov 13, 2009

Two Bath - A Way to Compensate

Harry Lime said:
Crawley fx4? Do you have a formula? thanks

FX-4: Metol - Phenidone - Hydroquinone,
1.5 - 0.25 - 5 grams --- sodium sulfite - borax -
potassium bromide, 100 - 2.5 - 1 grams. Water
to make 1.0 liter.

A full fledged two bath does no or very little developing
in the the first bath. As more development takes place
in the first bath the second bath plays less and less
of a roll.

As a two bath some may wish to use water as a
second bath. With multiple passes high levels
of compensation are possible. Developer
depletion, and in the case of Metol,
bromide inhibited development
are the mechanism.

Little exposed areas of the film are developed fully
while the dense areas are held back. Similar results
can be had using very dilute single bath developers
and infrequent agitation; eg, FX-1 and Beutler's.
D-23 at a 1:7 dilution works well. With it I've
had good results and near full speed. Dan

el wacho · Nov 14, 2009

yes Harry, it's at jackspcs under film. mix the formula to the letter except notch down the sodium sulfite down to 80g/litre and use a 12g B bath of borax (remember to omit the borax from the A bath.)

Harry Lime · Nov 14, 2009

thank you gents. I'll give fx4 a try.

The hardest part will be getting hold of chemicals in my neck of the woods. Believe it or not it was difficult to get the basic 3 chems for Barry T's 2-bath

Harry Lime · Nov 14, 2009

el wacho said:
yes Harry, it's at jackspcs under film. mix the formula to the letter except notch down the sodium sulfite down to 80g/litre and use a 12g B bath of borax (remember to omit the borax from the A bath.)

Hey el wacho -

Is this right? I don't think it is...
Sorry, I'm not much as a chemist, but if I have a recipe I can cook it. ;-)

thanks

Crawley FX-4 as 2-bath

BATH A

Metol 2.5g
Hydroquinone 5g
Phenidone 0.25g
Potassium Bromide Solution 1g
Sodium Sulfite 100g (reduce to 80g)

Distilled water to 1000 ml

BATH B

12g Sodium Metaborate (aka Borax)

Distilled water to 1000 ml

juan · Nov 14, 2009

That's it with a couple of comments. The KBr is 1g of solid. If you use a solution, it depends on your percentage.
Sodium metaborate and borax are not the same thing, although it's possible they will work relatively the same in this formula. Both serve the same function.

juan

Harry Lime · Nov 14, 2009

Ok, take 2:

Crawley FX-4 as 2-bath

BATH A

Metol 2.5g
Hydroquinone 5g
Phenidone 0.25g
Sodium Sulfite 100g (reduce to 80g)
Potassium Bromide 1g

Distilled water to 1000 ml

BATH B

12g Sodium Metaborate (or Borax)

Distilled water to 1000 ml

Now a few questions:

- Reducing the Sodium Sulfite from 100g to 80g produces 'crisper' negs, because that way the developer is less solvent?

- As it stands Bath A is the same as formula as regular FX-4. Don't we have to remove whatever chemical starts the development process from Bath A and put it in Bath B? Anyone? Inquiring minds want to know.

el wacho · Nov 14, 2009

Harry,
reducing the sod. sulfite is mr Thornton's strategy to minimize the solvency effect it produces at 100g per litre. no, the formula you now have is fx4 with reduced sod. sulfite and the activator ( borax ) removed and placed in the B bath... even though there might be enough alkalinity in bath A to start development. i would agitate for only the first 5 sec per minute for four minutes to ensure even absorption of the A bath and then let the B bath do the work. let us know how it goes.

Harry Lime · Nov 14, 2009

Hmmm... Sorry, but I still must be missing something.

SINGLE SHOT FX-4 is listed as follows:

http://www.jackspcs.com/fx4.htm

STOCK SOLUTION

Distilled Water (48°C/120°F) 750 ml
Metol 2.5g
Hydroquinone 5g
Phenidone 0.25g
Sodium Sulfite 100g
Potassium Bromide Solution 1g
Distilled water to make 1000 ml

That is what we have in Bath A of our 2-Bath version.
We added Borax to our Bath B, but Bath A still appears to be identical to the one shot formula (except the reduced Sod. Sulf.)

Do you see why I am confused? We haven't removed anything from bath A that isn't in the single shot formula...

thanks

nworth · Nov 14, 2009

I'll admit that I haven't tried FX-4 as a two bath. But I did try a number of the older two bath formulas a couple of years ago, and I found that they worked poorly with modern films. I'm not sure why. Some others claim be be getting quite acceptable results. Back in the late 50s and 60s I used these developers on a regular basis, with excellent results. I suspect some of the D-23 two bath variations may work better than the others with modern films because some real development occurs in the first bath.

john_s · Nov 15, 2009

Harry Lime said:
Hmmm... Sorry, but I still must be missing something.

SINGLE SHOT FX-4 is listed as follows:

http://www.jackspcs.com/fx4.htm

STOCK SOLUTION

Distilled Water (48°C/120°F) 750 ml
Metol 2.5g
Hydroquinone 5g
Phenidone 0.25g
Sodium Sulfite 100g
Potassium Bromide Solution 1g
Distilled water to make 1000 ml

That is what we have in Bath A of our 2-Bath version.
We added Borax to our Bath B, but Bath A still appears to be identical to the one shot formula (except the reduced Sod. Sulf.)

Do you see why I am confused? We haven't removed anything from bath A that isn't in the single shot formula...

thanks

Jackspcs is a useful web site but there are errors occasionally. In fact, there are often errors in formulas all over the place. My copy of The Film Development Cookbook 1998 shows FX-4 to have:

metol 1.5g
sodium sulphite anhydrous 100g
phenidone 0.25g
hydroquinone 5g
borax 2.5g
potassium bromide 0.5g

I don't know if it's really the correct formula, or whether the formula has been revised by Mr Crawley, but it does seem to contain borax (in its single bath state).

dancqu · Nov 15, 2009

Similar to D-76

el wacho said:
Harry,
...and the activator ( borax ) removed and placed
in the B bath... even though there might be enough
alkalinity in bath A to start development.

Borax does not act as an activator in the formula.
It has a ph less than the sulfite. The sulfite does
act as activator in the formula just as it does
in D-76. Very likely the borax serves the
same purpose as in D-76. That is it
works to stabilize the ph.

Alone borax will serve as activator though less
actively than sulfite. For something more robust
sulfite may be used in bath B. Dan

juan · Nov 15, 2009

So, does that mean that some real development takes place in the A bath of the divided FX-4 discussed here?
juan

el wacho · Nov 15, 2009

From my experience, i switched from a sod. metaborate B bath of 12g/litre because the negs i was getting were too dense for my condenser enlarger ( not a true condenser, this meopta had a diffusing disc between the globe and the condenser ). i read somewhere ( edge of darkness i think ) that the alkalinity increases when you switch from borax to sod metaborate to sod. carbonate to sod. hydroxide. i needed something lower in alkalinity for a B bath but didn't think of using a 100g of sodium sulfite buffered with about 2g of borax. personally, i prefer sharpness over grain and have tried to keep the levels of sod. sulfite fairly low. the good thing about these A bath formulations is their keeping properties. i had one fx4 A bath for over a year in a brown ginger beer bottle with about 2" of air in it with no noticable oxidation or change in performance. i suspect that some real development takes place in bath A (80g sod. sulfite per litre) but it's a nice compromise between grain and sharpness with a real one stop gain. if you're serious about using 2 bath developers for their highlight compression you can start by standardizing your tests on 12g sod. metaborate / litre, lower the sulfite in bath A to about 35g / litre and start tweaking the levels of metol, phenidone and hydroquinone. at the end of the day, it is how much A bath the gelatin absorbs that should dictate development and development in bath B should be to exhaustion to eliminate variables. i remember a gentleman on photo.net who would develop techpan in diafine!! he would remove it from bath B at the 45sec mark and immediately quench it in a stop bath! he said he would get repeatable, printable negs everytime. hope this helps.

Alan Johnson · Nov 15, 2009

Crawley, BJP Jan 27 1961 gives the development times for single shot FX-4 120 film 68F as 7min for FP3 and 9min for HP3.So,yes,there will be some development in the A bath,but other 2-bath developers like Emofin also do this.

Donmck · Nov 15, 2009

"So,yes,there will be some development in the A bath,but other 2-bath developers like Emofin also do this."-----

So, why would I mix up a developer just for 2 bath development.I do what Barry Thornton suggests--"Simply use your normal standard developer (T-Max, ID11, llfotech, HC110, Econotol, Perceptol etc.) for half to two thirds of the maker's stated time as Bath A,"--which in my case is D-76._don

Ronald Moravec · Nov 15, 2009

I used to use a two back Leica or Stockler developer with Plus X and Tri x and it made beautiful sharp grain free negs . People who saw tri x prints did not believe they were Tri-x.

It does not work with modern thin emulsion films. Plus and Tri in current formation are thin. I have tried increasing the concentration of metol for the first bath and it helps, but frankly you are better off just using a standard D76. The new plus and Tri are better with d76 than I used to get with divided so I have totally switched.

I did have some sucess with the original 100 Delta, not the current Delta 100, using a divided formula I found in the Development Cookbook that had more ingredients than Leica, but still nothing exotic. But that film has been gone for decades.

If you have a tough high contrast subject, I recommend a water bath treatment. Developer 1 min, water 3, repeat 5 cycles.

Alan Johnson · Nov 15, 2009

Others reports note Diafine and Emofin give about a 1 stop speed increase,I assume this is relative to D-76,and it is interesting that FX-4 is also reported to do this.
With Thornton's method of starting with a regular developer there are not any results for speed increase.

el wacho · Nov 15, 2009

i processed some plusx last year in thornton's two bath and it yielded great negs though there was about 2/3rd - 1stop loss of speed. i don't understand where this " modern emulsions are too thin" comes from. Thornton himself reported positive results with the ilford delta films... am i missing something because i 've heard the same from other more experienced photographers but i've only had good results. ps i used a variation of Thornton's two bath that had only 35g sod. sulfite/litre 6.5g metol/litre and a b bath of sod. carbonate 12g/litre.

juan · Nov 15, 2009

I don't understand the modern films problem, either. I've been using Farber's variation of divided D-76 on 35mm for a little while (Tri-X, Forte 400) and it works well for me.

Maybe, since there is development in the A bath, divided FX-4 would overcome any such problems.
juan

dancqu · Nov 15, 2009

For Those that Replenish

Ronald Moravec said:
If you have a tough high contrast subject, I recommend
a water bath treatment. Developer 1 min, water 3,
repeat 5 cycles.

And why not use water alone for the B bath? After all most
divided developers include activator in the A bath. Two or
more cycles may be needed. Advantages: A long lived
A bath with a no chemistry one-shot water B bath.

A bath concentration and development times to vary
as film and contrast needs vary. Dan

el wacho · Nov 16, 2009

no development in bath A may be prefered because it slows down the accumulation of the bromide byproducts from development. water bath is a different strategy. an after bath of borax would continue to assist development in the shadows. the two bath strategy proves itself by being able to maximize development of differently exposed frames eg one bright day frame can be next to a night exposure.

Two bath developers

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