6x4.5 1960s Kodak Plus-X shot at 50 ISO (small amount of age fog). GVM1, dilution A, 71F, 12.5m dev time. Probably used an orange filter

GVM1 - A unique film developer for pushing, portraits, and landscapes

Ashley <3 December 15, 2021

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

GVK1, a moderate grain, high definition, push capable metol-glycin film developer

Ashley <3 September 5, 2020

GVK1 is a new film developer formulation of a type I’ve never tried before. It was designed with the principles of a high definition developer for high sharpness, while also incorporating enough silver solvent that the grain will not be ugly and outright coarse. It has grain of comparable smoothness to D-76 stock, but to my eye behaves as a speed increasing developer, potentially even providing a speed increase of 1 to 1/2 stop for medium and slow speed films. Contrast is fairly normal with rich shadow detail and slightly compensated highlight detail. Overall shadow and midtone separation is great, but highlights are sometimes at risk of running away, especially if darkroom printing. This developer is especially great for exposure latitude on traditional grain films, with reasonable results coming from box speed processing and between +2 or -2 exposure, though of course more ideal printing density and grain will come with proper pull/push processing. The overall appearance of the developer is extremely sharp, but without the ugly grain that sometimes comes with this, IFF properly developed. Grain specifically here is a very gentle and smooth type where it tends to still be visible but works very well to stay out of the way or even enhance the image. Skies on high speed films can sometimes be a bit much in grain, but that’s pretty par for the coarse. I’d say it can be comparable to the distinct grain that EXG1 gives but quite a bit smoother. It is formulated as a two part recipe for very long shelf life and stability. The significant amount of TEA in solution makes sulfite less soluble so I doubt that this would be suitable as a single part developer.

6x4.5 Plus-X (expired 1964, but somewhat well preserved) with orange filter processed for 13m in EXG3

EXG3, A special use expanded range film developer

Ashley <3 July 8, 2020

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.

Fomapan 100 processed in EXG3 prototype v2

Two EXG3 Film Developer Prototypes

Ashley <3 June 23, 2020

Here I write a status update with prototype developer results in making EXG3, an ascorbic acid+glycin film developer designed for expanded range and higher contrast.

EXG1 for pushing film

Ashley <3 January 4, 2020

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.

EXG1, a bare bones glycin film developer

Ashley <3 December 30, 2019

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.