What is going on with Kodak's developers?

BradS · Sep 26, 2019

Seems like a lot of fear mongering with respect to Kodak lately. It’s too early to start wailing and gnashing of teeth. Let’s give it some time, try some of this stuff and report back....maybe, just maybe, its not really a crisis?

DREW WILEY · Sep 26, 2019

Life goes on. Adapt or go extinct.

RalphLambrecht · Sep 27, 2019

Trey said:
HC-110 reformulation, looks like X-Tol has had some changes based on the new packaging (admittedly I didn't look very closely), and now D76 is being reformulated too???

Does anyone know why these would be changing? Seems very sudden.

for me D76 will never change;I still mix my own and always will.

JPJackson · Sep 27, 2019

New HC110 in dilution C, shows slightly increased activity, compared to the previous formulation, when used with Ortho+; based on my film/development tests.
Only time will tell about the storage life of the concentrate.

markbau · Sep 27, 2019

RalphLambrecht said:
for me D76 will never change;I still mix my own and always will.

AMEN! As long as I can get the raw chemicals for D76 I'll be a happy man!

fdonadio · Sep 27, 2019

RalphLambrecht said:
for me D76 will never change;I still mix my own and always will.

I like mixing my own from scratch too. Works great and I can trust it’s always the same (my scale is very precise).

I also mix my D-72 for processing my prints. Kodak says it’s pretty much the same as Dektol.

Nodda Duma · Oct 2, 2019

DREW WILEY said:
Life goes on. Adapt or go extinct.

Easy to say when you’re not running a business that depends on developer consistency and the developer changes out from underneath you. At best, you expend time and effort (money) characterizing the reformulation to ensure it’s compatible with your process and equipment and hasn’t changed. At worse, you find it’s not compatible with process / equipment or doesn’t reproduce the same result and expend more time, effort, and capital to transition to a new developer. Your quote costs more than a shrug.

pentaxuser · Oct 2, 2019

Nodda Duma said:
Easy to say when you’re not running a business that depends on developer consistency and the developer changes out from underneath you. At best, you expend time and effort (money) characterizing the reformulation to ensure it’s compatible with your process and equipment and hasn’t changed. At worse, you find it’s not compatible with process / equipment or doesn’t reproduce the same result and expend more time, effort, and capital to transition to a new developer. Your quote costs more than a shrug.

That's why it seems a very risky move to change to substance of a developer without giving out info on the exact changes that a user or photo business especially needs to make when switching from "old" HC110 to "new"

Any adverse effect on longevity is to be mourned but can be lived with easier than changes to the way it behaves unless such changes are clearly spelt out

As Kodak has not done this as far as I am aware then I am still unclear of whether there has been a change

pentaxuser

Nodda Duma · Oct 2, 2019

There is definitely a change in the formula. I bought bottles of the new stuff, and the differences in the viscosity are as described in this thread. No longer a syrup but liquid. Reminds me of Legacy Pro 110

pentaxuser · Oct 2, 2019

Any differences in dilutions and times? That's the key bit I'd have thought. Most labs' usage, I'd imagine, may make an effect on longevity academic. There may be few users whose volume of film processed is low enough to run into problems with shortened longevity if this has been affected. If longevity has had to be curtailed for whatever reason this may affect so few consumers that it will lose Kodak relatively few customers of HC110

I suppose that if it now flows more easily this may even be advantageous

Nice if we had chapter and verse on all of this from the maker but that looks unlikely

pentaxuser

MattKing · Oct 2, 2019

The Kodak Alaris website says, in the label to the exact same datasheet for HC110 - KODAK PROFESSIONAL HC-110 Developer - New Formula, same great results!
Somewhere on a thread that has contemporaneous posts with this one there is a post from someone using the new version in a production environment, and they are getting the same results as they were with the old version.
And then, in post #29 in this thread:

JPJackson said:
New HC110 in dilution C, shows slightly increased activity, compared to the previous formulation, when used with Ortho+; based on my film/development tests.
Only time will tell about the storage life of the concentrate.

DREW WILEY · Oct 2, 2019

Jason, I'm well aware of the headache that comes with product changes. I've got all kinds of densitometer plots standardized to HC-110, but also enough of the old dev to buy me time if I do need to recalibrate some detail. But this kind of thing seems to inevitably happen once one finally gets their ducks all in a row. It's called Murphy's Law, and just has to factored.

What is going on with Kodak's developers?

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