This may be of interest to only a few, but I pass it along anyway... If you want a "Master's Class" in B&W film developers, you have to get a copy of the 1998 "The Film Developing Cookbook". WOW. Just received my copy and it is a well-organized, easy read on the various families of developers, what they are best at as well as the formulas to make your own. There are also chapters on Films (obviously dated), Developer ingredients, Development Procedures, and After Development Processes: Stop Baths, Fixers, Washing.
The book has "three special emphases: how to use different developers to achieve a wide range of pictorial effects, how to mix and use solutions from scratch (and how to create new ones), and how to process film for maximum archival permanance." "Much of the information in this book have never been published before." A quick perusal allows me to say that this includes a formula for HC-110 gleaned from its 1971 Patent information. (However, convenient, versatile and economical as HC-110 may be "it produces coarser grain than D-76, and is not as sharp as many high acutance developers." Page 67 contains Edwal formulas, including Edwal Super 20: "The official formula for Super 20 has never before been published, though several popular authors have (incorrectly) claimed to know it." The book was begun as a response to difficulty people had getting good images from Kodak's Tmax film. (I have about 13 36-exposure rolls of Tmax 100 in inventory.) If you are interested in B&W film developing, I can't recommend it highly enough. -- “The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness ” ― Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Earth from Above -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
