Digital BW, The Print

Although I have switched to digital capture in the past year, what proved 
to be one of my favorite developers in the 30+ years that I did wet 
darkroom work was PMK Pyro.  In addition to being fairly economical (comes 
in 2 parts, diluted 1:2:100 water) it works well (and faster) at higher 
temperatures.  As I recall, minimum recommended temperature was 70F, and 
time was reduced 3% for each degree F above that, to a maximum of about 90F 
or so (at which point you start to have emulsion stability problems.)  It's 
not a high contrast developer, and you lose a bit of film speed (I mostly 
used Ilford films, but the little bit of Tri-X that I tried worked best at 
200 or 250 - you don't push or pull with this stuff,) but in many 
situations it gave me absolutely gorgeous 35mm and 6x6 negatives.  It is a 
staining developer, so your negatives sometimes look a little brown or even 
greenish, but the stain also tends to minimize apparent grain.

I bought pre-mixed liquid concentrate from Photographer's Formulary, as 
this avoids handling one or more of the constituent chemicals that are 
particularly nasty in dry powder form.  Do a Google search for PMK Pyro if 
you're intrigued.

At 5/17/2003 09:32 PM -0400, Truman wrote, in part:

>I started back in photography after lay off - life got in the way. I
>primarly shoot 4x5. I used to use Tri-X but was not all that happy with
>the Tri-X/HC-110 combination I was using. Since I got back in I have
>been looking at other options. I do, however, like the "Tri-X" look.  <snip>
>
>My question is what is TriX like these days and how does it compair to
>TMax and what are the developer combinations/times that work well for
>TriX. I live in FL and it is difficult to get my water below 75 degrees
>and year round it is between 75 and 80 degrees so that somewhat limits
>the developer.