Our aim was to make a liquid D-76.
I would have liked to have seen some comparison examples from the author of that article.Always found this article very interesting: T-grain: a problem
Article also states that the most efficient developer for T-grain films in terms of sharpness is Crawley's FX-37. I never tried it, so don't know how true that is.
I would have liked to have seen some comparison examples from the author of that article.
Same here. The article opens some intriguing perspectives, but lacks in details.
There are more about this in this old APUG thread:
Crawley's FX-37 Developer for T-Max/Delta Films
Gerald Koch submitted a new resource: (there was a url link here which no longer exists) - Crawley's FX-37 Developer for T-Max/Delta Films This developer is intended for use with T-Max and Delta films, although it will produce excellent results with traditional emulsions. FX-37 is designed to...www.photrio.com
photographicanalysis has a bit more details in this post:
What is FX37?
In a previous post I explained the importance of FX37 as a developer for T-grain emulsions. Currently, FX37 is the only developer I would recommend with T-grain emulsions, so for those of you who …photographicanalysis.wordpress.com
Also noticed you had a short discussion about FX-37 on the Digitaltruth forum back in 2013
I keep (forlornly) hoping that it should have long been obvious that the relatively anonymous scientists working in research for the big manufacturers (like 'SCH' referred to by Bob Shanebrook upthread) were considerably more knowledgeable about B&W processing (and how to improve the speed/ grain/ sharpness trade-off) - and had access to far more powerful image/ data analytics than someone like Crawley did. Crawley might have had some relevance 1955-65, declining thereafter, until the internet decided that his formulae needed to be turned into some sort of irrational fandom, like that around staining developers.
I appreciate the feedback. In the early 1980s T-Max developer was statistically designed using soon to be introduced T- the popular films of the time: TX, TXP, PX, PXP and VP as well as a few Ilford films that were available at retail. The metrics were speed, curve shape (toe, mid-scale, and shoulder), contrast( CI .42 to .56), fog, MTF, RMS granularity, pushing/pulling etc. Several chemicals were considered, traditional and the latest and greatest, (developing agents, buffers, antifoggants, stabilizers) were tried. Carefully processing was done aimed at small tank processing (20c to 30C?). Several iterations of regression analysis was run and the formula was refined. Various levels were used to make sure the process and storage of the chemicals would be stable. Our aim was to make a liquid D-76. Most of the hard work was done by a talented man with the initials SCH.
My recollection is that T-Max Developer was better than D-76 and HC-110 for all image structure criteria and at least as good as D-76 for all other criteria. Toward the end of the design of T-Max a small modification was made that resulted in T-Max RS for replenished processing for larger volume labs. Duraflo for roller transport processing used the same design protocol.
Robert Shanebrook (RS)
I keep (forlornly) hoping that it should have long been obvious that the relatively anonymous scientists working in research for the big manufacturers (like 'SCH' referred to by Bob Shanebrook upthread) were considerably more knowledgeable about B&W processing (and how to improve the speed/ grain/ sharpness trade-off) - and had access to far more powerful image/ data analytics than someone like Crawley did. Crawley might have had some relevance 1955-65, declining thereafter, until the internet decided that his formulae needed to be turned into some sort of irrational fandom, like that around staining developers.
Don't you think that Kodak's design criteria was not the same as smaller chemistry R&D labs? Kodak was a huge business back then and they couldn't afford to be distracted with niche products.
TBH it seems like it's clearly involved. Because what you described is literally the definition of a myth: "I see things and hear voices". "Plenty of other folks saw them too".Staining pyro gave a significant improvement for me back in graded paper days, and plenty of other folks too. There's no myth involved.
Tmax and DDX were developed for use with tgain film, as was Clayton F90. Tmax was made in 2 versions, Rs (?) which was aimed at labs and I think is no longer being made. As gain is smaller in Tgain film as recall reading at the time Tmax developer is more acutance type. I liked all 3 when shooting Tmax or Delta, but I as shoot Foma and other traditional films as my walk abouts films I have bought DDX or Tmax developer in well over 10 years.
I have worked with FX-37 quite a bit in the past 3 years, and given up on it. It does some of the things ascribed to it, but it is also brutal on grain (exaggerated, clumpy) and tends to give a very harsh separation of the more delicate values, leading to a very brutal tonal scale. Yes, it does give about 1/2 stop of a speed boost, but you're paying for it in the degradation of the tonality of the image.
My experience with FX-37 did not demonstrate that the developer was in any way "superior", nor did it deliver "better" results with T-grain type modern films. Other than the speed boost, I didn't see any compelling reason to use it.
Worth noting is that the times published on the Web for FX-37 are significantly longer than they should be! (although I see that Massive Dev Chart has some reasonable times listed for the likes of FP4) The development times I found originally suggested something like 7 or 8 minutes in FX-37, 1:3 which gave fried images with unusable dense highlights. At the 1:3 dilution, five minutes is about as long as you'd want to do with most traditional emulsions, and maybe 6 or 6.5 minutes for Tmax/Delta films. It doesn't take more than a minute too long in FX-37 to turn a good negative into a barely usable one.
Just curious, when you used FX-37 did you use rotary or inversion agitation?
TBH it seems like it's clearly involved. Because what you described is literally the definition of a myth: "I see things and hear voices". "Plenty of other folks saw them too".
In my testing, I have found nothing as good as Crawley's formulas, though I have not tried X-tol or T-Max developer.The components that do the heavy lifting in those developers (either a Beutler derivative or a set of subs on a common PQ film developer ratio) rather than the stain/ coupler do have specific effects that are potentially useful - it's just that the major manufacturers had discovered this long before, studied it properly and completely outflanked those formulae (and even published the MTF/ RMSg data) and evidently incorporated the knowledge into products like Tmax, Xtol etc, but with real understanding of where the trade-offs are (and why solvency matters) for results that people would buy in preference to D-76. I think that many of the stain adherents are in denial about the direct relationship between their choice of developer and it compensating for their (lack of) basic process control, whereas more mainstream developers are largely designed to offer a much more flexible range of contrasts (and better granularity).
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