Fast Film Developer

robhooley167

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Hello

Im looking to get a developer for faster films, i use rodinal for slow films (up to 200 ASA) but i cant really use it on anything faster due to the grain. I used to use ID-11 but cant really store the stock solution.

Ideally i would like a fine grain liquid developer, any reccomendations?

Thanks
 
I use Xtol. About £7 from Calumet for five litres. One shot stock or 1+1 gave decent grain at iso800.
 
T-Max Dev? Formulated for T-Grain film and grain is very fine, and it's in liquid form.
 
Thanks for the input, what are these chems like for push and pull developing? i like to use HP5+ at ISO 1600 because i have access to it at low prices and it performs quite well
 
robhooley167 said:
Thanks for the input, what are these chems like for push and pull developing? i like to use HP5+ at ISO 1600 because i have access to it at low prices and it performs quite well

I would stick with ilfosol for hp5+. They have developing times for it shot at 1600 in the packaging. Mind you you must have some crazy big grain from shooting hp5 at 1600!
 
Mind you you must have some crazy big grain from shooting hp5 at 1600!

its not too bad tbh, considering what its like at 400, 1600 isnt much worse
 
Just out of interest, have you actually tried using the Rodinal on faster film?

I havent tried it at 1600, i did a roll of FP4+ pushed to 400 and it came out like sandpaper. For the neopan 1600, its being shot and developed at box speed, whereas my HP5+ would be pushed by 2 stops, and would be grainier anyway
 
Oh, what you really want is a developer that excels at pushing really...! Besides, as FruitFlakes correctly says, it's not actually box speed, and same goes for Delta 3200 and T-Max 3200 - they are just formulated for pushing.
 
Have you tried stand developing with rodinal? I remember some people getting good results on Flickr with it.

I have a roll of Tri-X 400 rated at 3200 just for fun, I'll post what happens when I develop it in ID11. :lol:
 
Well, it's not a liquid, but I had some results with LegacyPro 400 (read Neopan) pushed to 1600 in Microphen last year. It was less grainy than the results I typically get from the same film semi-stand developed at box speed in Rodinal 1:100. It took me about 5 months to use the stock after I'd mixed it, and didn't notice any great decline in quality, so you could probably use it over 6 months.

It's a developer designed for pushing and can be reused as stock or diluted 1:1 or 1:3 for one shot use. I generally used it diluted and kept it in a washing-up liquid bottle so I could squeeze the air out as it emptied.

For some reason it's the only developer my camera shop ever has in, but I've bought another pack ready for darker days.
 
What's the problem with storing ID-11? I normally had a concentina bottle with stock in it and used stock strength for devving, it lasted ages before I had to lengthen dev times a bit and replace.

ped
 
What's the problem with storing ID-11? I normally had a concentina bottle with stock in it and used stock strength for devving, it lasted ages before I had to lengthen dev times a bit and replace.

ped

I had a couple of bottles of the stock solution stored under my desk and the chems obviously went bad and caused the bottles to expand and blow holes in the lids and wasted a couple of litres of it :'( so im a little reluctant to use it again

what you really want is a developer that excels at pushing really

Pretty much yeah
 
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