Re: Divided D-76 Style Film Developer

Jean-David Beyer wrote:

>> I have been reading about divided developers for film.  Never tried it;
>> looks promising though!  Do any of you in this group have any
experience
>> with this approach?  The reason for my interest is the fact that i live
>> in the country and that my house disposes of waste water via a septic
>> tank system.  Hence, i want to minimise the amounts of photographic
>> chemicals entering the tank in case they kill the microbes.

> I used several divided developers in the past for 4147 Plus-X and 4164
> Tri-X. I used D-23 or D-25 for Bath 1 and a solution of 2% Sodium
MetaBorate
> and 2% Sodium Sulfite for Bath 2. I used up to 7 minutes in bath 1 and 3
> minutes in bath 2.
> 
> The good part was the measured film speed went up one stop.
> 
> The bad part is that it worked the opposite of what people said. They
said
> it would lower the highlight contrast while maintaining the contrast
> elsewhere. What I got was that it lowered the shadow contrast (even
though
> it increased the film speed). The only way to control the highlight
contrast
> was to reduce the time in bath 1, and that lowered the contrast
everywhere.
> 
> When I switched films to the TMax series, it was even worse because all
the
> sulfite made the sharpness very mushy. So I gave it up entirely.
_____
Jean-David,

Thanks, that is excellent feedback.  I was hoping for a universal long 
life developer solution.  I found a 30 m bulk roll of ILFORD FP4, 
probably purchased around 1987, and stored in the freezer all this time. 
  The price was C$28.69.  I was planning to test the divided developer 
formula with this film.

I am getting back to wet, analog photography after 20 years.  In the 
past i used a lot of Beutler and Acufine style developers.  These 
formulations always gave my very consistent results.  I wonder how well 
the Diafine formula would work?  The latter is also supposed to be a 
divided developer.

/ John
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