Digital BW, The Print

Thanks Kip,

It's hard to beat TriX. I used to use PanX in with Zone VI developer in 
my RB67. The results would rival a 4x5 when printed to the same size 
print. Of course Kodak in their infinite wisdom discontinued PanX.

But I still always liked something about a TriX image produced by a 4x5. 
I just had a difficult time dealing with HC110.

I tried Rodinal but that was not all that great either. The TMax, I 
don't know, there is something that doesn't "light my fire."  I'm still 
playing around with these new (and old)  films. The problem I have with 
Kodak is they seem - they always have - to muck with their film and not 
tell us. That's one reason I started to use Ilford films at one time. 
They seem to be a bit more honest. What speeds and development times 
were you seeing with HP5?  Thanks for sharing your experience.

Truman

Kip Babington wrote:

>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.
>
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