Which B&W film developer do you use?

thefizz

For those of you who develop your own B&W films, can you please tell me which developer you use mostly?

When I opened www.thephotoshop.ie, I initially decided to stock some of the common developers such as Rodinal, Rodinal Special, Tmax, Xtol as well as some staining and two-bath contrast compensating developers. I am now planning to increase the number of developers I will stock so I’m interested to hear what you are using.

Thanks,
Peter

DaireQuinlan

Rodinal, DDX, and Diafine are my main three. Diafine for doing tri-x, DDX for practically everything else, and Rodinal here and there and for stand dev.
What's that 2 bath developer you stock actually ? I meant to PM you about it. I can't really find much information about it online. My diafine solution A volume is getting critically low :-O

DaireQuinlan

Oh forgot, just looking over your colour chems there. I always reckoned those tetenal kits were a rip off, and the rollei digibase is, afaik, just repackaged fuji hunt chems. Does that rollei kit make up 1L or 5L of each solution ? It'd be good if you could get the fuji Hunt C-41 and E-6 kits though.

thefizz

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Rodinal, DDX, and Diafine are my main three. Diafine for doing tri-x, DDX for practically everything else, and Rodinal here and there and for stand dev.
What's that 2 bath developer you stock actually ? I meant to PM you about it. I can't really find much information about it online. My diafine solution A volume is getting critically low :-O

Hi Daire,

Not sure if you saw the description here: http://www.thephotoshop.ie/index.php?route=product/product&path=69_89&product_id=204

Moersch MZB is a newer type of two-bath contrast compensating developer than Diafine and probably the only one of its type on the market. The advantage it has over Diafine is that it is more tailor made for each film as Moersch list all the common films with recommended film speeds and individual development times to suit. The only downside is that different films cannot be developed together as in Diafine, unless they have similar listed dev times.

If you want to pm me with your email address, I'll scan the info supplied with the developer for you to read through.

thefizz

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Oh forgot, just looking over your colour chems there. I always reckoned those tetenal kits were a rip off, and the rollei digibase is, afaik, just repackaged fuji hunt chems. Does that rollei kit make up 1L or 5L of each solution ? It'd be good if you could get the fuji Hunt C-41 and E-6 kits though.

As far as I know the Rollei Digibase C41 kits are not repackaged Fuji kits but I could be wrong. Labor in Germany make a lot of B&W photo chemistry for Rollei but I'm not sure if they do colour also. The Digibase kit I stock will develop 20 to 24 films. I'm not sure how many liters of working solution that is though.

I did look into Fuji C41 and E6 kits before but they were seriously over priced so I didn't pursue them any further. I can check again though but wouldn't be very hopeful.

ThOnda

I usually use sineadw as the developer of my BW films. Usually works well, and is reasonably cheap

Heebie

I used to like Kodak D76.. came in a powder so it could be kept for decades if the package was sealed, and you could mix up just what you needed at a time.. and did a pretty good job. There are probably much better developers out there, but it worked very well for me. Kodak TMax was another one I used, but I preferred the D76.

thefizz

ThOnda wrote: »

I usually use sineadw as the developer of my BW films. Usually works well, and is reasonably cheap

Hmm, not sure if I could sell Sinead

thefizz

Heebie wrote: »

I used to like Kodak D76.. came in a powder so it could be kept for decades if the package was sealed, and you could mix up just what you needed at a time.. and did a pretty good job. There are probably much better developers out there, but it worked very well for me. Kodak TMax was another one I used, but I preferred the D76.

You should definitely give Xtol a try.

thefizz

Following feedback received here and elsewhere, I now have ID11 and Microphen in stock.

okmqaz42

I have and use Kodak HC110, I use this a lot for stand development and I recently open a bottle of Rodinal.

Fat Robot

I use Kodak D76.
Up to my opinion Rodinal gives excessive grain with Kodak bw emulsions.

thefizz

Fat Robot wrote: »

I use Kodak D76.
Up to my opinion Rodinal gives excessive grain with Kodak bw emulsions.

I now have Ilford ID11 in stock which is identical to D76.