So since I mixed a lot of TEA-glycin mixture up for my lith experiments.. and it seems glycin isn’t what I need there, I decided to try another use. One big thing I noticed is that glycin with no sulfite will stay active for over 24 hours, and seems to be unphased in activity over the course of a few hours. I wanted to make a bare bones glycin developer from this TEA mixture that contained no sulfite. I initially tried with just 10ml of glycin-TEA 10% in 500ml of water and doing 50m of stand development. However, contrast on this wasn’t too great (low, could be good for portraits), there was some streaking, and overall I didn’t care for the tonality nor grain structure. I figured I’d add some carbonate and ditch the stand method. So, here is the formula.
EXG1 Film Developer:
800ml of water (hot if mixing glycin from powder, otherwise at developing temperature)
20ml of Glycin-TEA 10% (can be substituted with 2g of glycin, added last, and 20ml of TEA/triethanolamine)
12 g of potassium carbonate or 60ml of 20% solution (sodium carbonate should work if the potency is converted)
top to 1L with water
Use within a few hours, preferably immediately if at the correct temperature. Will not keep
Plus-X 6x4.5@100 in EXG1 (expiration 1966)
Update: Developing Times
These are developing times I’ve used and tested. This list will be updated as I go. Of course your setup and process might vary some, so these should be taken as starting point times, rather than “guaranteed to be good” times.
FP4+@125, 70F 11m
FP4+@200, 70F, 15m
FP4+@400, 70F 19m
HP5+@1600, 70F 20m
Acros 100@400, 70F 20m
T-Max 3200@3200, 70F, 21m
Kodak Plus-X@100, 70F, 8m (expiration 1966 film that was well preserved but some base fog; not guaranteed to be the same with fresher film)
Ilford Ortho Plus in 120 format @ 80 ISO, 70F, 11m
Overall I’d recommend it as a sharp but “honest” grain film developer suitable for general processing as well as push processing. It seems to look a bit better with traditional grain film, rather than T-grain, but if you don’t mind extra grain the tonality can be quite striking. Contrast characteristics is that is has a fairly strong compensating effects keeping highlights from running away, full shadow speed, and somewhat higher contrast midtones. Highlights can go pretty low contrast if over exposed, but this is less likely to happen with box speed processing (rather than how I like to push everything)
Other blog posts made discussing this developer:
35mm FP4+@200 in EXG1 15m (with orange filter)
Old continued blog post:
I don’t have too much data on developing times for film yet, but FP4+ seems to be just right at ~11m for 70F developing temperature with the standard 30s initial agitation and 10s of agitation per minute after. I’ve developed Ilford Ortho and Ilford Delta 100 as well. The Ilford Ortho didn’t come out (camera problem) but didn’t have any fog or other obvious problems. The Delta 100 was over exposed by several stops and inconsistently (not shot by me) so it’s hard to judge if 11m was the right time for it. Overall characteristics:
Extremely prevalent and sharp grain, similar to rodinal but less chunky
Very high amount of overexposure latitude and with a reasonable amount of underexposure latitude. With 11m, I’d say it’s possible to shoot FP4+ anywhere from 3 ISO to 800 ISO with reasonable results, but with the safer range being 12 ISO to 400 ISO. ISO 1600 has quite a bit of detail but it’s so thin it’s difficult to scan.
Should work well for pushing, but time and testing is unknown at this point
Somewhat increased contrast with FP4+; similar to HC-110 but with more shadow detail and better highlight compensation. Very attractive separation between shadows, midtones, and highlights to my eye
Somewhat longer range than typical FP4+ negatives, with highlights being a bit darker but definitely compensated and far from Dmax
Virtually no base fog, and even development of fogged leader
Here is a gallery of brackets. Each scan was processed consistently with +0.5 stop exposure on my DSLR scan, and white/black points of the scans adjusted until it just barely clips within the image area. Note that the ISO 400 and 800 images definitely had more shadow detail to give if processed a bit differently.
The grain produced by this developer is quite interesting, with more grain in midtones than highlights, and with nearly grain free shadows if properly exposed. The grain is also prevalent, but not intrusive like it can be when pushed in HC-110 or developed normally in Rodinal.
Grain and sharpness detail at ISO 100
I’ve only processed 2 non-test rolls of 35mm that I actually care about in this thus far, so not too many results. Note some of the Delta 100 scans suffer from light leaks and almost all appear 2-4 stops over exposed. These were scanned for “best effect” rather than some consistent measurable way.
