Using D76 as a One-Shot

I would go the route Gerald suggested, HC110, pretty much designed to have similar results to D76. When I do make D76 I mix the whole package, and separate it into individual liter bottles for use, and always one shot it as a 1:1 usually.

David Brown said:

D76 at 1:1 is a very common and widely used one-shot developer. A gallon is currently $5.18 at the big New York store. OK, maybe $7-8 if bought locally. That gives you 2 gallons of working solution. 16 ounces will develop two rolls of 35mm film. So, that's enough for 32 rolls. At $8, that's 25 cents a roll. Even for 120, it's 50 cents.

Exactly how much money are you trying to save? If you ended up throwing out half of the stuff after six months, it would still be cheap.

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^^^NAIL-ON-THE-HEAD!!!^^^

what the heck is it with all these cheap ba$+@rds these days ? Chems for the most part are CHEEEEEEEEAAAAAAPPPPP.....

Well, I'm not trying to save money, I'm trying to avoid inconsistency. This is how it goes at my place. I mix up my D76, then put it into 16 oz brown plastic bottles from Freestyle, filled up to the very top. Works fine for a week or three (always used full strength), then there's a falling off that is just not easy to compensate for. I have some that is 5 weeks old and the negs I developed yesterday were underdeveloped. Maybe it doesn't store well due to higher temps in the home here in Fl. Either the plastic bottles that I'm using need to be replaced w/ glass bottles, or, as has been suggested, I should mix it up from scratch and leave out the suspect chemical. D76 does exactly what I want it to do when it works right, and I'm hesitant to go to something different. Sometimes I use the whole gallon up within a few weeks, sometimes I go a few weeks and don't shoot more than a roll or two. I'm not going to mix up a whole gallon of developer to develop two rolls of film.

The other option is to save up my rolls and develop them at once, but in the past this just created more problems. Sometimes a camera may develop a light leak or other issue, and I don't want to shoot several rolls only to discover this after the fact. What I find enjoyable is developing my film right away, as soon as it's exposed, because everything is still fresh in my mind from shooting.

I'd better learn to mix it up from scratch. You never know till you try, but my gut instinct tells me that HC-110 will end up close, but not the same. D76 is a great developer, I just need to find a way to get it to work well over a reasonable time period. Thank you for the advice on the hydroquinone Bob. That sounds like the fix.

I don't trust the plastic darkroom bottles not to allow air to migrate in and age the developer. I purchased a bunch of 250ml Amber Glass Large Mouth Bottle to be able to mix up Xtol (20 bottles) or D76 (16 bottles) and store in smaller bottles with no air so it would last longer. Then I could use one shot or 1:1.

I still have hundreds of bottles left, brand new. PM me if you want some. $1ea.

cliveh said:

I don't use distilled water, just water out the tap.

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I used to but had to replace my hot water heater this past spring. Mixing with water from the new gadget killed contrast on both Tmax and Tri-X films. Mixed with distilled -- works fine. I hypothesized that the new magnesium anti-corrosion rod in the water heater was the culprit. Now I mix with distilled.

Mike

So far I did not experience problems with D-76. I mix up a gallon with distilled water at a time and use it 1:1 as one shot. However, I always feel I get better results once the D-76 had time to cure at least over night, so mixing it on the spot is something I try to avoid.

Just a comment on D-76 and the environment. When used as a one shot you are dumping quit a bit of sodium sulfite into the environment. Kodak states that HC-110 is a better choice since it is biodegradable and produces results nearly identical to those of D-76.

mjs said:

I used to but had to replace my hot water heater this past spring. Mixing with water from the new gadget killed contrast on both Tmax and Tri-X films. Mixed with distilled -- works fine. I hypothesized that the new magnesium anti-corrosion rod in the water heater was the culprit. Now I mix with distilled.

Mike

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You can take cold water and boil it. The effect that has is that it off-gases the water, which protects the developer, and it doesn't add 'stuff' from inside your water heater to the solution either.
I recommend stainless steel pots for it.

But of course, distilled water is pretty much fool proof. My suggestion is only if you don't wish to pay for distilled.

One word: HC-110.

jim appleyard said:

One word: HC-110.

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Another word - D-76

They do not come out the same for me. With TMX, HC-110 develops in 6 minutes. With D-76 1:1 it develops in 9 1/2 minutes. I see better results with the D-76 times.

Clayton F76+ comes out very much like D-76 for me but comes conveniently in a liquid. One quart of F76+ index 1+9 with water develops a lot of film.

I am using HC-110 now but still like the D-76 and F76+ results.

I do everything wrong. Lol. I'm learning d76 right now. I use tap water, coke bottles...and...I dilute 1+1 and reuse it within 48 hours up to 3 rolls of 135 with no discernable issues... Then again, what do I know.

The stuff Kodak bags is made so the metol goes into solution before the sodium sulfite dissolves, the metol will not dilute in a high sulfite solution. Not sure how you'll do that with you little bags of developer. If you want to try this I would:

1. Not use paper bags or envelopes, use zip top bags.
2. Put the Metol into a bag marked Part A.
3. Put the rest of the ingredients into another bag marked Part B.

As others have suggested, you could just use another developer with better keeping characteristics. Currently I have HC-110, Rodinal, and replenished Acufine. If I want D-76 I'll just make a half liter from scratch and dilute to make a liter of 1+1.

Last seen September 2016 - nearly 19 months ago. Maybe Sean can devise a flag that warns us we may be wasting our time with responses

pentaxuser

If others can learn from a thread then it isn't a waste of time imo. I've read a number of interesting threads that have been revived from yesteryear.

pentaxuser said:

Last seen September 2016 - nearly 19 months ago. Maybe Sean can devise a flag that warns us we may be wasting our time with responses

pentaxuser

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Or better an option to ignore threads explicitly by marking and also by date, if it’s not already there.

momus said:

After reading Curt's post about darkroom safety precautions, I had an idea. I would love to have D-76 as a one-shot developer because in my place it does not store well. After a few weeks I get inconsistent results. I know D76 is a mixture of different chemicals, so I was thinking about buying a thrift store food processor and using it to mix up the powder (out on the back porch), then measure it out into packets and store it. Would this work? Can I just use taped up folded paper to store the packets individually, then place them in a Tupperware tub w/ a lid? I'm thinking of putting the food processor in a plastic bag after the D76 is initially poured in, tie the bag up, then plug the food processor in to mix it up. That should contain the particulates.

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doing so, You'll end up with inconsistent ratios of chemicals. You're better of mixing from ulk as much as you need.

I do one-shot D76 all the time.
I wouldn't mix the stuff in a food processor though as I believe you will over oxygenate the stuff and "bruise' it.
You want to gently coax those latent tonalities from your negs...