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what happened to acutol-s/fx-15?

pierods

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I was reading Anschell and Troop's cookbook, where they write about fx-15 aka acutol-s, being superior to d76 and so forth.

What happened to it? Nobody sells it, photoformulary does not make it.

Was it not good after all? Is it sold as Acutol now?
 

Ian Grant

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It certainty wasn't superior, and A&T don't imply that, I just re-read that bit again yesterday.

Acutol-S gave excellent edge effects but the grain & tonality suffered, it wasn't as good as Acutol (which is a different formula). It had poor keeping properties as a commercial product less than a year. So after Paterson stopped production Crawley published it's formula FX-15.

I used it back in the early to mid 70's and it was terrible with 35mm film, compared to Acutol.

Ian
 

Keith Tapscott.

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I remember reading the test of Acutol-S (FX-15) in `Practical Photography` magazine and D-76 was much better. For a PQ alternative, try Ilford ID-68 or FX-18. Geoffrey Crawley published times for Fuji, Ilford and Kodak B&W films to be developed in FX-18 in the Amateur Photographer magazine published 15th September 2001.
 

Michel Hardy-Vallée

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Was the FX-14 formula ever published after the discontinuation of Acutol (non-S) ?