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what is the WORST! developer you have ever used and why?

NB23 said:
"try and get good results"? With D76??

funny.
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I have used Sprint, HC-110, Rodinal and D-76. Admittedly, I have pretty limited experience. 300-400 rolls, mostly in HC-110.

The only one I could not nail was the D-76, flat, thin negs, times were wildly inaccurate, just all around disappointing.

I can make HC-110 sing. D-76, not so much.
 

There's something odd going on there. I've been using D76 for decades and it's always been the easiest to get good results from and utterly reliable. I can't explain your problems.
 
Roger Cole said:
There's something odd going on there. I've been using D76 for decades and it's always been the easiest to get good results from and utterly reliable. I can't explain your problems.
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I can make it even more mysterious,

It was in a college lab, we tried multiple packages, mixed by different people very carefully, we developed multiple emulsions and used the Kodak suggested times.

I think it was something about the water, In the end I was tanking my 4X5 (Ilford HP-5) at N+3 as a baseline.


This time I'm at home, I also mixed the developer very carefully using distilled water. I'm going to start testing tomorrow night.
 
I experienced sudden death of Ilfosol 3 and I did not appreciate the short development times. Not recommended.

Now I use D-76/ID-11 for multi-purpose or Rodinal if I want to play around with the grain.

I just picked up a bag of Xtol and I am curious if I can see any difference compared to D-76. HC-110 seems attractive, because it will be as convenient to make one-shot solutions as out of my Rodinal bottle.

Jonas
 
Jonas you will like XTOL even better is you use it as replenished XTOL.
 
I cannot think of the worst developer that I have used but there have been a few which I didn't fancy with my choice of film, HP5+. Those being HC-110, ID-11, Rondinal. The best for me have been Xtol, D-19, and Pyrocat-HD. To each his own.
 
FA-1027. Terrible negs. Did a test with a step wedge and the curves were very lumpy. So you had areas in the tone curve where there was almost no contrast. This was before the sale to the formulary, so maybe it's better now.
 
I don't about the worst film developer, but I sure would like the know what is considered the best. Now that question will surely run for a few extra pages.
 
I really doubt that there exist any bad or worst developers, except the photographer.
 
Keith Tapscott. said:
I don't about the worst film developer, but I sure would like the know what is considered the best. Now that question will surely run for a few extra pages.
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replenished XTOL
Better tonal range
Better sharpness
Finer grain
 

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I have used only three developers: Rodinal, Dectol, and D-23. They all work. I learned Rodinal from my grandfather, in 1947. I started using Dectol when I worked for a newspaper in the late '50s, and D-23 for panchro emulsions applied to female portraiture. Later I found Dectol, diluted 48-1 worked great for my paper negs, and for my ortho-lith negs. But Rodinal is my everyday go to developer. My grand father bought a big jug of it in 1895, and we used the last of it in 1950. So, I guess it kept pretty well. :munch:
baachitraka said:
I really doubt that there exist any bad or worst developers, except the photographer.
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Worst I tried was an off the cuff developer with salt added. It was suggested on PN to a quiery about NaCL added (like Microdol-X) as an experiment.
It looked fine on paper but the test piece of film (I'd just bought 600' of the stuff) to see what a starter time might be frightened the hell out of me.
The gelatine shrunk and the base was left bare. I blamed the film of course (I tend to chose wrongly). I never went near that one again, not even to try and sort it out. There's plenty of perfectly OK devs around without making work for oneself.
 
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