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Old 4th July 2012, 11:57 PM
S Nicholls S Nicholls is offline
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Default Metol or Phenidone: Your choice?

For a very long time now I have always mixed many of my own developers both film and paper but always using Metol as the reducer. Recently a friend gave me 2 gms of Phenidone which I mixed with alcohol for ease of use.

I made two almost identical film developers and was quite surprised by the differences between the two reduction agents.
My question after that is do you have a preference between Metol or Phenidone or a combination of both. Are there characteristics of one over the other you prefer?

If you have used both are you able to quantify the strong points of either as well as what you would consider the weak points. Consider grain, speed, gradation of tones and storage as well as consistency of developer. Oh and what is the self life of powder Phenidone and Phenidone stored in alcohol [not beer ].

Steve

Last edited by S Nicholls; 5th July 2012 at 12:01 AM. Reason: Should be Phenidone in title
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Old 5th July 2012, 07:11 AM
Dave miller Dave miller is offline
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I only use Phenidone because of an allergy I have to Metol so can't comment fully.
I understand that Phenidone absorbs moisture readily so must be kept in sealed containers,it darkens as it absorbs moisture. The other point is that the rate of use is around 10% of that of Metol.
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Old 5th July 2012, 08:12 AM
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Trevor Crone Trevor Crone is offline
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The only developers in which I used phenidone is Pyrocat-HD and 510-Pyro. I prefered 510 over HD as I found the grain to be a little finer and the keeping qualities was much longer than HD. Other than that there wasn't any real difference. However my personal favourite is PMK-Pyro which uses metol, which again gives finer grained negs than HD and is on par with 510. However PMK is much easier to mix both as stock and working solution. It also has a long shelf life.
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