Hi all,

I have been getting varying levels of greenish brown stain with Pyrocat HD. I use FP4+, HP5+ and BRF-200. BRF-200 true to pyro fame has shown the most stain but most b+F. Negs print nicely, so why am I worrying? I not to sure. Have other users been getting this stain colour? I have heard from other sources that the colour should be brown or reddish brown. I may just be red/green colour blind.

How does temperature effect staining? Does it really matter if the pre-soak is distilled or deionised - if it does surely everything should be done with distilled water? Does residual dye left after pre-soak effect stain? Is this all a bit obsessive?

One last think. Am going to start developing 5x7 in BTZS tubes. The caps don't seem to hold Sandy King's suggested developer volumn. Can concerntration be increased to compensate?

Look forward to some interesting replies.

Matt

-- Matt Baily (mattbenbaily@yahoo.com), May 28, 2002

Answers

All my pyrocat negs are a greenish brown - but decidedly more brown than green. My attempts at using rollo pyro yielded almost neon green negs on the same films. I wonder if there are small variations in local water supplies that influence the type and degree of staining. Unless you do your presoak, stop and wash in distilled water, you will probably get slightly different results than a person using a different water supply. In general, though, I have found that pyrocat has the least amount of non-image stain of all of them I have tried - in my local conditions.

Clay

-- clay harmon (wcharmon@wt.net), May 28, 2002.

I just began with Pyrocat-HD; TMX, Acros and HP5+ show brown stain, very low fog. No hint of green. Rollo otoh was really greenish-yellow.

-- John Hicks (jhicks31@bellsouth.net), May 28, 2002.

Probably if you had a PMK or ABC Pyro neg to compare your Pyrocat-HD negs with you would think them more brown. Here is my own comparison of two pinhole negs taken on the same day developed in PMK and Pyrocat-HD: http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Pyrocat2/pyrocat2.html. They can both be said to be greenish, but the PMK neg seems also to be more yellow.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edb@unblinkingeye.com), May 28, 2002.

The best stain results come only when using an alkaline fixer, like Formulary TF-4, and a water bath following the developer, not an acid stop bath. This comes from Gordon Hutchings, and my experience agrees. Minor color variations in the stain might make a difference, but long and involved testing would be needed to discover the answers, and the potential variations are almost limitless...

-- Mark Sampson (MSampson45@aol.com), May 29, 2002.