fotospeed fd10 filmdeveloper
 

I have been trying the Fotospeed FD 10 film developerwith HP5+ and no matter what I do I seem to be getting underdeveloped negatives,I have the fastertried the fotospeed dev times, way to litttle,even the longer time for incdreased contrast, Today I developed a film, hp5 120 for 16 minutes at the 1/9, still underdevoleped,the edge marking pale grey and the negatives, while a bit better, and printable, would all but 1 need grade 4 to 5 on MGWT, so something is going wrong somewhere. Has anyone else here used the same film/developer combination and had similer problems, looking for help to get it right,as I think if I can sort out the problem it could be a good developer,Richard

Richard I think Larry is the big Fotospeed fan in all areas including its FD10 dev. Hopefully he will have some words of wisdom.

Mike

May be the developer has gone off.

It was only opened about a month ago, and I have been having this problem from fresh, and the last film I processed in the developer was from a freshly opened litre of the stuff,just in case, that was when I put the post up,if the developer has gone off then it had to be off from the suppliers, I think that the fotospeed published data must be overly optomistic, Richard

I hadn't realised you had developed for over twice the time the Massive dev chart lists. It should be 7 mins according to the MDC.

It sounds like Keith's tentative conclusion may be correct. I am at a loss to work out how a developer can be working properly if it takes over twice as long as it should and still gives faint negs.


Mike

I exposed and developed 3 films today, one in the promicrol that I have been using for a while, at the given time as usual, and the negatives are perfect, the second I developed in FD10 that had been open a short while 1/9 for 17 minutes and one in the freshly opened bottle same dilution and time and the negatives are perfect, so either for some reason the freshly packed developer, both with use before date of 2012, is stale or the fotospeed published time, as on the back of the bottle,of 7 minutes for normal contrast, is way to to short, but at the times given you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the promicrol control film and the two test films in FD10, and at the times used the fd10 appears a very good developer. Any one have any further ideas? Richard

Richard some manufacturers times can be off but 2x+ extra dev and still off? I doubt this. I'd contact Fotospeed about this. You may not be alone. Others might be doing so as we speak. Ilford had a problem of I think it was ID11 bags being blown up inside due to faulty chems but it took a thread on another site to alert it. It seemed its QC or probably its contracted maker's QC hadn't picked it up.

Mike

Mike I have Emailed Fotospeed on Friday giving the problems and also giving the batch number of the bottles but to date have not recieved a reply, but it is certainly strange to me,I have sometimes had to increase timing by 2 or at the most 3 minutes with other developers,and this is the first time I have had a problem with Fotospeed products, They are normally very reliable, so I am as puzzled as anyone, but I am certainly having second thoughts about FD10, Richard

Hopefully you have a bad batch. By now if 7 mins was woefully short( but was the result of a simple miscalculation and not duff liquid)then so many users would have complained that Fotospeed would have addressed the issue.

I know nothing about dev chems production but it has to be in massive quantities and I suspect that any deviation from the correct manf process, even if it is discovered quite quickly afterwards probably means that many 1L or 5L containers have been filled and it may be impossible to determine from which container the suspect liquid starts.

Presumably they make a guess but it may allow many containers or at least dozens to "escape" and get out to customers. You may be one of them.

Mike

It certainly seems odd, but I sent them another Email last night asking is they have any idea as to what is going, they should reply after 2 Emails, and I will keep you informed as to what happens, but I feel sure something must be wrong with the developer, if one film develops perfectly in promicrol and 2 take 17 minutes in very fresh fd10 and opened fd10, all of the same subject and same exposure,Richard