This post is the first of at least two regarding my quest for an alternative to my usual D-76 / ID-11 developer (let's call them the same). Not that I am having problems with it, but along with Perceptol (for about one-third of my films), they are all I’ve ever used. So it’s time for a change.
More to the point, I am hoping to find a developer with a different “look” to it. Attributes of importance are tonality and sharpness, with fine grain being of lesser priority (but I’ll take it if I can get it). Tonality is probably the main thing that I am after here.
The developer should be general-purpose, as I use roll films exclusively and therefore may have scenes of varying contrast on the same roll. Subjects can be landscapes, nature, close-ups, city scenes / street photography, architecture, travel. No studio stuff or portraits.
Format is 135 and 120; films are traditional grain and T-grain, depending on the look I am after and the format. I favour FP4, HP5 and Tri-X (interchangeably), as well as TMY-2, and intend to experiment with PanF and Acros soon. Output is scanning and digital printing for the time being, with a proper darkroom on the distant horizon when I have more space and more time. This means the negs should be developed to suit both digitizing and silver printing. Max print size is 11x14 from 135, and (rarely) up to 20x24 from 120.
BTW, I always use the above developers diluted, one-shot – usually 1:1, and sometimes 1:3 if I want some highlight control. So I am negating the solvent action somewhat and getting better sharpness than stock, at the expense of grain.
That said, after much reading of Thornton, Anchell and Troop, and poking around the wider web, I have narrowed it down to a short list: Crawley’s FX-15 or FX-37; and Kodak Xtol. I kicked around the idea of Pyrocat HD, but it seemed to be not as versatile, not so “general purpose” as the others (feel free to correct me on that), and a lot fussier to mix and use. Two-bath brews also seem very appealing and versatile, but I get the impression they result in a rather compressed tonal range not really appropriate for bringing out the best in flat light scenes (again, correct me if that’s false).
I will start a separate thread about Xtol (there seem to be a rash of Xtol threads on the board these days), so for the moment I’d like to hear back from anyone who has experience with the Crawley formulas.
FX-15 (aka Acutol S) seems to be a strong candidate for an D-76 replacement. Reading the Acutol S reviews and background info, it checks all the boxes for me – good sharpness, nice tonal gradations, speed increase (a bonus!), solvent action for fine grain, and easy to mix. The main question then is: will I notice any significant visible difference in the tonality of this vs. D-76 @ 1:1? Anchell & Troop state that this developer offers significant improvement in image quality over D-76. Has this been borne out in practice? Do they mean only wrt. sharpness and grain, or does that also include other attrbutes? They don't say.... Any comments on this are most welcome.
FX-37 (similar to FX-39), on the other hand, is said to be excellent for T-grain films, but less suited for traditional grain. Also, it seems to work best for medium speed films, and not so well for 400 and up. Are these two assertions correct? Does anyone use this formula for faster films and/or traditional grain films? As with my questions above, how does the tonality appear?
Thanks in advance for your patience reading the long-winded preamble (takes me a while to get to the point sometimes
), but I thought it best to put as much background info as possible at the beginning to avoid the inevitable questions later on (what films? what subjects? etc....). If I am totally off-base here in my short-list selection, and should be looking in another direction entirely, then feel free to drop any recommendations you may have.
Looking forward to hearing back....
Best,
Svend