Hello!

Does anybody know of a developer which delivers higher contrast than Technidol LC while retaining the micro-fine grain this developer offers? I make alot of large prints on Luminos Charcoal R, which is only available in grade 2 1/2, resulting in somewhat flat images. The C.I. Technidol delivers is too soft for my tastes, but I'm unwilling to part with the super-fine grain structure I've enjoyed thus far. Is there anything out there that will help?

Thanks alot,

Walter

-- Walter Massa (Massacam@aol.com), May 21, 1999

Answers

Go here to retrieve Kodak's publication P-255 on Tech Pan. In it you will find a chart with various developers and their contrast indeces. CI's range from 0.5 to 2.5 so you should find one that is as contrasty as you want. I have used D76, Tmax, D19, and technidol on Tech Pan and they all had very fine grain. In fact I think that it would be tough to produce a negative with large grain.

-- Fritz M. Brown (brownf@idhe.state.id.us), May 21, 1999.

I've used D-76, T-Max, and Dektol. Worried about big grain? Don't use Dektol. The grain is bigger in some of the other developers, but not too much bigger.

Watch how much you compress the tonal range. If you aren't careful your fleshtones will have grain but lack real detail.

-- John O'Connell (oconnell@siam.org), May 25, 1999.

Walter:

I have some recently discovered info that may or may not be of help to you. Anyway, It is some new info for all tech pan users. The ultimate developer IMHO for tech pan is diafine. I just started using it on 2415 and I am getting super full scale negatives at an E.I. of 100. No need to worry about temperatures as diafine performs the same at 70 to 85. Non uniform development due to agitation is no longer a problem, as diafine is insensitive to agitation. The only trick is to develop tech pan in the B solution for 1 1/2 minute. I suspect that you can increase the contrast to as high a gamma by careful development timing in the B solution.

Diafine is also excellent for t-max for the same reasons. With 120 T-max 100 exposed at 320, the results are super. With T-max, the development results are insensitive to time, temperature and agitation(I just died and went to t-max heaven). You just can't screw up the development.

-- Gene Crumpler (nikonguy@worldnmnet.att.net), May 27, 1999.

Thanks everyone!

Photographer's Formulary TD-3 was the key. Problem solved!

Walter

-- Walter Massa (Massacam@aol.com), June 10, 1999.