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  #21  
Old 7th March 2017, 11:19 AM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Thanks for the link. RC paper's development time is very short at 30-45 secs which suggests this is strong stuff and capable of further dilution but no mention at all of this as an option.

I can only assume that some users have experimented with dilutions instead of stock and arrived at a satisfactory print but this is just an assumption on my part

Mike
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  #22  
Old 7th March 2017, 01:02 PM
Svend Svend is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike O'Pray View Post

I hate to think what Adorama might charge for LPD from the West Coast of the U.S. plus VAT and Customs charges once it arrives in the U.K.

Mike
Mike, if you want to try Ethol LPD and don't want to go through the expense of online shipping charges, then I can send you some. At some point in the coming months, when I have enough other stuff to justify an online order, I will be getting a can or two of the powder type. Happy to order extra and send it over to you. Parcel rates by regular mail to the UK are very reasonable. Let me know...

Cheers,
Svend
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  #23  
Old 15th April 2017, 06:11 PM
Jerry Bodine Jerry Bodine is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SvendN View Post
...If you could post back here once you've run your tests that would be great -- I'd be very interested to get your impressions. Sounds like great stuff -- hope your overheated bottle is still usable. Would be a shame to dump it...
Well, Svend, all I can say is it’s been a very eventful five weeks since my last post about Liquidol. Some background chronologically: I opened the fresh bottle of Liquidol and used it to test Ilford’s FB Classic. When the paper first hit the market (and MGIV was discontinued) I bought a 100-sheet box of 5x7 glossy paper to make projection prints of a 31-step wedge, using Ilford’s under-lens filters (00, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, no filter). This was a repeat of tests I had completed with MGIV paper (of choice at that time), using Ilford Multigrade Developer 1+9, to check out my LED mod of the 5x7 Omega lamphouse. Those tests also included tri-color separation filters 47B (blue) and 58 (green) to see how closely #5 and #00 approached those limits, because the LEDs were 7500K and Ilford recommends incandescents (~2800K). I was very pleased with those results, which when plotted in Excel allowed me to “slide” each curve along the x-scale (RLE) to intersect at a common arbitrary point and compare the slopes more easily. Screenshot of plot is attached.

However, when doing all this with Classic / Liquidol (1+9) the results were horrid - #00 was ok, but all the #0 thru #5 showed little slope change. I queried Ilford with details of my experience, including the batch number, and received their response the next morning. They had already received numerous complaints, had issued a recall on that batch number from their distributors, and reformulated the emulsion to resolve the issues (but some boxes escaped the recall and I got one of the escapees). They sent me a replacement 100-sheet box of fresh 8x10 Classic Glossy (how’s that for customer service) and it took 13 days to get here – they used Royal Mail (no tracking) for cost reasons.

Tests are now completed for Classic / Liquidol 1+9 without the tri-color filters:
Dev time = 3 minutes (20C), Ilfostop = 10 seconds, Ilford Rapid Fix = 60 seconds, Rinse & dry.

Screenshots are attached of the Liquidol curves, both before and after “sliding.” The no-filter curve lies between #2 and #3 (~2.3) - a good thing. I was surprised to see that #5 slope was a bit less than #4, can’t explain, but since most of my printing is split-grade, I’ll just use #4 and #00 instead. I’m very excited about the color improvement of Classic, much better whites, it suits my preference for landscape work. MGIV lacked the bright whites. No experience yet regarding selenium toning results, but Ilford claims Classic accepts toning very well. I also did a print of one of the wedges in a tray that was left for over 48 hrs - no difference than fresh dev.

Regarding the issue with the overheated Liquidol, I did a side-by-side comparison of wedge prints and densities with #2 filter in both fresh and overheated developer 1+9; they were nearly IDENTICAL. So the overheated stuff was totally unaffected – very tough product. I see now that B&H has resumed shipping of chemicals and is offering Liquidol, but won’t ship the 2-liter concentrate size. Shipping is quite less than from the Formulary.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...op+Nav-Search=
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Last edited by Jerry Bodine; 15th April 2017 at 06:20 PM.
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  #24  
Old 16th April 2017, 07:52 AM
John King John King is offline
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if you go down the slot processor route, life can be further extended by using the replenish method. What rates you would youe would be down to guesswork but taking colour RA4 as an example, about 100cc per 800 square inches of paper (including test strips).
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  #25  
Old 17th April 2017, 10:49 AM
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Martin Aislabie Martin Aislabie is offline
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A good way of preserving the activity of any chemical kept in an open tray is to float blocks of expanded polystyrene in them.

Its an old photographic trick that was used in many commercial darkrooms, back in the day.

If you cut the blocks carefully, you will minimise the effective surface area of the chemical that is it exposed to the atmosphere - and so reduces the rate that the pesky oxygen renders your photographic chemicals useless.

You can buy expended polystyrene from B&Q or Jewsons in the UK - and it is cheap as chips.

For what its worth - I would keep the expanded polystyrene float for each chemical separate and not mix them up.

A quick rinse in running tap water and they are ready to be re-used.

Martin.
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  #26  
Old 17th April 2017, 04:58 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Sounds like a good idea, Martin. I imagine that you could cut the polystyrene to fit almost exactly so the exposed surface area was as close to zero as made no difference.

Mike
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  #27  
Old 18th April 2017, 12:37 AM
Svend Svend is offline
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Hi Jerry, sorry for taking so long to respond. Just got free from Easter visitors and long weekend craziness. Phew...

That's quite a trial you conducted. Thank you very much for getting back here, and for your very detailed reply. I'm encouraged by your results, especially the fact that Liquidol seems to be just as potent after 48 hrs. in tray as when fresh. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Walk away from the darkroom for a couple of days and jump right back into a printing session without mixing a fresh batch. I think between the good keeping qualities of a developer like this, and doing as Martin and others suggested and using a floating lid or decanting into a big jug, I should be able to stretch out a batch of developer over at least a week. That would be brilliant if I could make it work.

I will take some time over the coming days to study your graphs, and may get back to you with a question or two. For the moment, the only thing I'm curious about is whether you have a sense of any differences in image quality vs., say, Dektol or Bromophen or whatever your standard developer is/was? Your comment about better whites with Classic seem to come from your first impression of the paper as compared to MGIV, with Classic being new to you, as much as the paper/developer combo. Am I right with that assumption?

As for ordering, it's a no-go for online orders of this stuff at B+H -- special order only, no online orders accepted (maybe it's 'cause I'm a Canuck ). But Freestyle and Adorama also sell it and it's in stock. No restrictions on shipping from them either, which is nice.

Martin -- I actually don't have a clear idea of what expanded polystyrene actually looks like. Is that the same as the Dow Styrofoam rigid board insulation? That's the only stuff like it that I can think of.

Sounds like just the thing, though, and would certainly be quick and easy to cover a tray with a sheet of this stuff. I will snoop around here at some plastics suppliers and see what I can scrounge up. Good tip - thanks!

Svend
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  #28  
Old 18th April 2017, 05:56 AM
Jerry Bodine Jerry Bodine is offline
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So far I can only judge from step wedge tests I've done with Classic/Liquidol vs. MGIV/Ilford MG Developer when I said the brighter whites are impressive. Even step wedge prints look much better than MGIV (muddy and warmer by comparison). The Liquidol instructions suggest a dev time of 60 seconds, which is quite shorter than my norm; I noted that Alan Ross (who makes the Special Edition prints from AA's negatives) uses 3 minutes for Classic paper in Ilford MG developer, so I used 3 min in doing the wedge tests so far. I have some more wedge prints drying at the moment which are 60s spot checks to see any benefits.

As for covering the open trays, I've always covered Dektol with plastic clear-wrap (for food) from the supermarket and placed it directly on the developer and up and over the sides of the tray to totally seal out an oxygen. Seemed to work well.
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  #29  
Old 18th April 2017, 09:53 AM
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Martin Aislabie Martin Aislabie is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SvendN View Post
Martin -- I actually don't have a clear idea of what expanded polystyrene actually looks like. Is that the same as the Dow Styrofoam rigid board insulation? That's the only stuff like it that I can think of.

Svend
Hi Svend

Yes - expanded polystyrene is Styrofoam in North America.

Styrofoam is the trade name Dow Chemicals give to it expanded polystyrene.

Martin
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  #30  
Old 18th April 2017, 01:14 PM
Svend Svend is offline
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Martin -- aha! Good one. That stuff is available at every home centre here, and is cheap as chips. I should be able to get all I need for less than $20. Thanks!

Jerry -- thanks for the clarification of the Classic vs. MGIV. Sounds like the former is a good fit for using Liquidol.

I'm to the point now where I've got some experimenting of my own to do wrt. paper developers. It looks like there are a few with really good tray life and high print capacity that would serve well: Liquidol, Ethol LPD, and Ian Grant's homebrew recipes for ID-62 and ID-78. Each have the advantage of being long-lasting in the bottle as stock as well. The ID-62/78 formulas have a couple of extra pluses in their favour in that I can quickly toss together a working batch right before printing and don't need to store any as stock. And then I can tweak their tray solution by adding a bit of carbonate or bromide if needed to suit a particular image. Not sure I can do that with Liquidol or Ethol. We'll see... So now it's a matter of evaluating all four for their image properties with the papers I will be using. Should be interesting, and I will post back here once I run some side-by-side tests.

Thanks everyone for all the great tips and help here! As always, much appreciated.

Cheers,
Svend

Last edited by Svend; 18th April 2017 at 01:24 PM.
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