Amul Kumar, Photographer

B&W Photo - Film & Processing Forum: Any developing suggestions for these old Agfa films?

Every once in a while, I get these really cool moments where I prove that my life has not been spent in vain. The link above, for example. This guy’s got a tricky development problem, of the sort that pleases me immensely. I looked online for a bit, then hunted through my books to see if I had the answer he was looking for, only to realize that I knew the answer already!

It’s such a simple idea, all I had to do was step outside of the box.

For those of you who don’t understand, every black & white film is different. Unlike color film, which adheres strictly to the C41 process, black and white films all react slightly differently to D76, the standard developer of the photographic world. Without knowing the published practices of development, it takes quite a bit of film to determine the ideal development time & solution. Add to this a wide array of alternative developers, each with it’s own unique signature effect, and particular development times of their own, and finding a good combination for that windfall of obscure film you’ve found can be nightmare.

On the other hand, Diafine and DiXactol are unique in that they apply their standard development times to all films they encounter. It’s a total sidestepping of his issue. With Diafine, he doesn’t need to know what the characteristics of his film because the chemistry figures it out for him.

I have no idea if he’s interested in exploring that option, but damn, I’m feeling slick right now. I knew that answer. No need to look it up.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Online Strangeness, Progress!, Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.