Today I’m introducing an unexpectedly successful developer. I mixed this up just kind of guessing at ratios and just wanting to see what a dilute PQ print developer could do. The actual end result is a formula somewhat reminiscent of ID-78, a warmtone print developer formula created by Ilford, but with notable differences. The end result is a developer with a surprisingly good shelf life, tray life and contrast consistency across its life span. It also is a fairly unique developer producing warmtones which are resistant to going olive colored, instead it will go toward brown tones.
Read MoreGVM1 - A unique film developer for pushing, portraits, and landscapes
Lately I’ve been doing more regular darkroom printing and this has left me in a bit of a slump. Although I love many of the developer formulations I’ve made, they’ve often not been designed explicitly for darkroom printing. EXG1/GVG1 would produce excellent negatives with increased speed, fine grain, etc… but in the darkroom it was often very difficult to get everything on the negative onto the paper without resorting to lith printing. This problem was only slightly improved with GVK1. GVK6 (yet to be published) has significantly improved this problem, but these developers also reflected the time in my life at which they were formulated. I was doing almost exclusively lith printing and with early ModernLith formulations I needed extended scale and moderately high contrast negatives… So GVK1 specifically was formulated with this aim. EXG1 was formulated when my main priority was getting the best scannable negative, which also benefits from a long density range. And now, I’m doing regular darkroom printing a lot, so it calls for a developer with a new aim.
GVM1 is recommended for:
Extremely smoothed portraits of light skinned people in controlled light
High contrast landscape scenes
Pushing film to use it at increased speed without greatly increasing contrast
Taming the contrast of very high contrast materials
Getting all of the image detail onto a print in the darkroom without great difficulty
GVPX1 "Super Solvent" Print Developer for brown tones with modern materials
GVPX1 is a highly experimental/”special” print developer which produces notably warm blacks on nearly all papers, specifically trending more toward brown rather than the olive colors that many warmtone developers give on modern papers. It does this by incorporating a lot of silver solvents in the developer, which effectively eat away at the grains on the paper, making it finer and with the end result of a brown tonation. The exact colors highly depend on the paper as usual, but with most neutral tone papers it will give cold highlights, somewhat olive midtones, and brown shadows. On warmer tone papers, the highights will appear more olive tone and the brown creeps into the midtones some, but unfortunately contrast can suffer due to blacks not being greatly deep. On colder tone papers, it may only appear to have olive colored shadows with no real brown. Basically it depends on the starting grain size of the paper.
Read MoreSome controversial thoughts on film developer contrast
So there has been a number of things I consider myths propagated in the modern film community. There’s also been a number of modern things not properly explored by the photographers of old. I’d like to propose counter theories to these, and give some understanding of how each component in an analog workflow actually relates to the final end result, ie, the print.
Read MoreEXG3, A special use expanded range film developer
This post is a reference post for the custom developer EXG3. EXG3 is a special purpose high contrast and expanded range developer. It gives full speed, but is not ideal for pushing typically. The results it gives are quite unique, though with careful metering required for ideal results. Specifically EXG3 when used properly with slower traditional grain films, will give subtle low contrast shadows, brilliant high contrast highlights, and a very long density range for midtones. The developer also produces moderately fine grain and sometimes exhibits some minor sharpness enhancing edge effects.
Read MoreMore EXG1 Results
So I’ve now used EXG1 with a stock pile of well preserved but ancient Kodak Plus-X (expiration 1966) that came out with excellent results. I wouldn’t really say it’s an ideal developer for this fogged film due to quite a bit of grain, but I do really enjoy the tonality of it, and the grain isn’t too bad since I’m using it in 6x4.5 format.
The Plus-X was developed at 70F for 8m30s. Overall density seemed like it could’ve used just a slight bit less time, and there was some base fogging naturally from the age of the film. However, the base fog was about comparable to a test roll that was processed in D-76.
Now finally, I also made my first prints from EXG1 processed film. The film used was FP4+ in 35mm processed for 11m in EXG1. Overall wasn’t too difficult to print, but I did have to burn in the sky quite a bit in the high contrast scene on the final print (which I neglected to scan before framing). I used Ilford MGV RC paper developed in Ansco 130 and exposed at f/8 11s with contrast grade 2 filtration.
Anyway, so the developer could use a bit more highlight compensation, but other than some clipped highlights I had no problem translating the film onto paper for darkroom printing. It definitely is quite grainy for 35mm FP4+ at box speed, but I tend to like grain anyway and especially like the tonality here. It can be a bit contrasty for portraits, but is great for my other work.
Prototype Update #10 (brown warmtone developer, EXI series)
I’ve been taking a break from lith developers due to general frustration, but I haven’t been giving up on other new interesting paper developer formulas. EXI is a series of experiments with the aim of creating a very warmtone developer that works properly with modern papers. Every warmtone developer formula I’ve tried with modern papers either skews to green/olive, or can’t produce convincing blacks.. or in general looks minimally warmer than Liquidol etc. This developer is being formulated primarily with convincing warmtones on the paper I’ve had a ton of trouble with, Ilford Warmtone RC. There are a few ideas being tried. The theory behind a warmtone print is that the grain size of the prints is fairly small. Grain size correlates with color and from smallest to largest goes: yellow -> red -> green -> brown -> purple -> black… of course with some weirdness and exceptions on different emulsion designs.
The break through I found in keeping the color more toward brown, rather than the more typical black/purple/green spectrum is sodium oxalate (though potassium oxalate should work better). I don’t entirely understand how it works, but it seems to function as a unique restrainer and potential silver solvent. It helps to intensify blacks in some ways and in other ways makes shadows skip from olive green to sepia and brown colors. It seems to have minimal effect on highlight tonation.
The following is “EXI4”. Note that this is definitely a prototype developer that I’m still optimizing and eventually plan to make a stock solution version so that I don’t go insane
Part A:
10ml of Glycin-TEA 10% (can be substituted with 1g of glycin, and 10ml of triethanolamine, added last)
1ml of Phenidone-glycol 1% (can be substituted with 0.01g phenidone)
30ml of triethanolamine (clear 99% grade)
3.1g sodium oxalate (can be mixed into a % water solution, potassium oxalate should also work better as a substitute)
8g sodium sulfite
0.6g potassium bromide
to 500ml water
Part B:
hydroquinone-glycol or TEA 10% can be used (in the future an HQ metabisulfite solution can probably be formulated like Adam’s variant of Ansco 130)
Add up to 5ml of part B to the final solution for deeper blacks and more overall contrast. Without any part B blacks will be rather brown.
The solution lasts in a tray at least a few hours, and should have fairly “normal” tray life otherwise. Develop for 3-5 minutes, 4 minutes is typical. Imagine will come up fairly linearly, image should appear pretty much “done” at 2 minutes under safelight, but blacks will continue to intensify and pulling early can result in some streaking in blacks. Over expose print by 1-2 stops compared to most other developers.
Results are overall brownish warmtone, especially in the shadows. Works best with warmtone papers, but will also give subtle warm brown tones to some neutral papers.
EXG1 for pushing film
I developed some more film, including test strips and actual film, in EXG1. This time I was aimed primarily at pushing HP5+ to 1600 or 3200, but included in it test strips of several other films. Overall conclusion is that this is a great developer for pushing. It gives what I’d refer to as “honest” grain. ie, extending development time significantly doesn’t seem to really make the grain bigger, though it might be more obvious just due to contrast differences. It’s definitely not fine grain, especially when pushing. The tonality though is what I really like. It behaves somewhat like an extreme compensating developer while still giving normal-high contrast midtones.
Read MoreEXG1, a bare bones glycin film developer
Ever since mixing up a TEA-glycin solution for lith development experiments, I’ve been curious of other ways to use this. I noticed Glycin will continue working for over 24 hours with no sulfite in a simple test with paper strips. In this I describe a dead simple developer with this that gives rodinal-like grain, but with much softer highlight gradation yet still keeping a higher contrast look.
Read MoreLith Printing Experiment Report Nov 17, 2019
Tonight I ended up doing some second-pass lith development where you basically make a normal print and then bleach it and then lith print that. It can produce really unique results with some modern RC papers, though it’s definitely more tricky as it in my experience it can easily break the “golden rule” of lith printing, ie, that less exposure = more contrast.
I’m also preparing for a write up of The Ultimate Homebrew Lith Developer. TUHLD for short, heh. Basically the biggest problem with lith developers is that either they contain a relatively high amount of sulfite, the lith developer (part A) has practically no shelf-life nor tray life, or the lith developer contains formaldehyde and kills you slowly when you’re messing around in an enclosed room with 120F heated developer. The only real way of preserving hydroquinone in solution is to either add formaldehyde, put it into a very acidic solution and put a smaller amount of sulfite (but still absolutely some is required), or to never add water to it.
The solution I stumbled upon is to dissolve hydroquinone into TEA with absolutely no water added. Dissolving HQ into TEA is definitely not pleasant nor fast, but once it is mixed you have a somewhat easily mixed (well, as easily as HC-110) solution of HQ that keeps forever before adding water to it. It does involve adding several more “parts” to the lith developer, but actually makes it incredibly flexible for experimentation, since you can carefully vary the amount of sulfite, alkali, and restrainer. You can even try adding no sulfite at all and watch your developer quickly turn blood red with a weird film of oxidized HQ byproducts.
So, I’ll break down kinda the things learned a bit here in two parts. First, the TEA+HQ lith developer:
TEA can be heated to.. pretty hot (hot enough to burn but not scar you maybe) and at this point some HQ can be dissolved into it. I was able to somewhat easily dissolve 2.5g of HQ into 120ml of TEA, heated to around 80C/190F with a magnetic stirrer and constant stirring over about 20 minutes. The clear (photographic grade) TEA quickly went to yellow upon addition of HQ and basically looked pretty much exactly like HC-110 once it had sat for a day. I think more HQ could be dissolved, maybe 3g or even 3.5g into the same volume, but I don’t have a precise heating setup for stuff like this and I really didn’t want to get it insanely hot, and after 2g it really took a long time to dissolve the remaining 0.5g. If you want an easier time I’d aim for just 2g or 1.5g into 100ml
I didn’t mix a very large amount because I wasn’t sure it would work, but it worked great kept in a mostly empty bottle for ~5 days, no sign of difference between day 1 and day 5.
At least some amount of sulfite is absolutely required. In my experience around 0.2g sulfite is required for every 0.4g of HQ. Without sulfite, not only will it die in the tray quickly, but a tiny amount is needed for lith development to work properly. Infectious development is basically a cycle of which sulfite is a part of. If you do try adding no sulfite, your developer will quickly die and likely won’t even finish a single print, but you can save it by adding some sulfite to it. This basically turns the oxidation products (the red film that floats on top) back into usable HQ.
The TEA component is an alkali, but at the small amounts added for lith development, it’s not basic enough to make the developer work well. I recommend supplementing with a secondary alkali, HOWEVER, a significantly smaller amount will be required. Many part A lith developers are acidic, so you’re working against that with the part B alkali. In this case, the part A is already basic. I’d recommend adding 5 parts A (HQ+TEA), to 1 part B (base) to begin with.
I’ve tried using TEA as the part B alkali, but it requires a considerable amount. It does produce somewhat unique and slightly more colorful results with significantly better tray life of the part B component since TEA will form a lower but stable pH buffer compared to carbonate and hydroxide. However, I don’t really think it’s worth the extra expense. TEA isn’t that expensive, but it’s not cheap when you’re using 100ml for every lith printing session.
You can not mix most components into TEA. Specifically, neither bromide nor sulfite will go into TEA with no water present.
Mixing a developer like this will produce somewhat different results than a formaldehyde containing developer. The formaldehyde actually forms a sulfite like component which will shape the grains and such. Don’t expect any lith developer (commercial or homebrew) without formaldehyde to give exactly the same colors etc as a formaldehyde containing developer. The results can definitely be great, but your favorite paper may not look like what you want.. but your least favorite paper may look significantly improved. It just required testing.
Less sulfite is required for second-pass lith development. Sulfite helps to prevent fog and mottle and these basically aren’t a problem for second-pass lith, since there is no unexposed silver to fog. In addition less actual development happens in second-pass which means that your developer will die less quickly from development action.
You can surprisingly use this stuff until it’s really deep brown and it’ll still work for second-pass lith. It got a lot slower, but also a lot more colorful in its results.
Ok, with that out of the way. Next just some musings on second pass lith and my love hate relationship with it.
Most papers “work” to some extent with second pass lith, unlike with first pass lith. However, not all will produce the radically different results you’re looking for without a lot of testing. The primary papers I’ve tested are Ilford MGV RC and Ilford Cooltone RC
Cooltone RC can produce really nice split tones if you only partially bleach it. MGV is less colorful after drying, but partial bleaching can be a good way of keeping the brilliant blacks but getting some subtle colors in the highlights and better gradation from midtones to highlights
Second pass lith really breaks the golden rule that “less exposure and more development = more contrast”. For second pass lith contrast tends to be “fixed” without partial bleaching. I recommend printing a grade higher contrast level than you think you want if you intend to use partial bleaching to keep the blacks.
If you want maximum color, extremely slow lith developer should be used, ie, with little base and a lot of bromide. With this, you will NOT get proper blacks. If you do get proper blacks somehow, it’ll have little color and a lower amount of contrast than the original print. To get maximum color, you need to truly only partially develop it, removing some of the highlights. Thus, you need probably ~1/2 stop more exposure and partial bleach to keep the blacks, and then develop until you have the amount of highlight detail you want, and then quickly pull it before it reverts back to being over exposed.
Be extremely careful with bleaching. With RC it can quickly be rinsed to remove fixer using the standard 1m recommendation, but make sure that there is no residual fixer on your hands. With all handling, try to handle by the borders and highlights such as the sky. Any uncleanliness will be very obvious in shadows and blacks. Make sure to keep the same cleanliness standards when rinsing the bleach off the print.
Partial bleaching RC prints just doesn’t work well with all subjects. Large areas of black will bleach unevenly and then develop unevenly and can produce unattractive results after development
Prints can of course be gold toned afterwards. Be careful if trying to achieve a split tone though, as the “one-shot” gold toner I use (I’ll provide a recipe in a later post) can be fairly fast, and will change color slightly more after sitting in water. Gold toner can quickly destroy warm tones, but if done carefully can produce beautiful split tones with blue highlights and warm shadows.
First developer choice does matter, unlike much recommendations I’ve seen to settle on a neutral tone first developer, such as Dektol. I don’t have enough experience with this yet to talk in depth, but if doing partial bleaching, the shadows etc will mostly be set by the first developer. However, it also seems the first developer can somewhat change the results of bleached highlights and fully bleached prints. I need to do proper control tests, but for Ansco 130 vs Liquidol for first developer, it seems like Ansco 130 can produce especially warmer bleached highlights, while retaining it’s standard cold tone shadows with Cooltone RC paper. I experimented a lot and could not replicate the same look using Liquidol
Ilford RC papers will lose a lot of color upon drying. Some additional color can be revealed by rinsing after fixing in very hot water, but I’m unsure how much of this color actually sticks after drying
Ortho Litho Film Processing Reference
Ortho Litho film is an easily available and incredibly film. It is normally extremely slow and extremely high contrast and thus difficult to use for pictorial results. In this reference guide, I cover what can be done to combat this and how to process it both for high speed and for low speed applications
Read More