the end of d76 for hybrid?

[pierods]

Hi,

after reading Sandy King's article:

http://www.viewcamera.com/documents/pages48-55.pdf

I wonder:

- are we all to buy gallons of diafine and toss our gallons of d76 and perceptol?
- how does pyrocat hd compare to diafine for scanning?

I was rather surprised to see Sany King advocate diafine, considered he's the inventor of pyrocat hd.

Or maybe diafine vs pyrocat hd is the subject of another article?

[MikeSeb]

I wonder:

- are we all to buy gallons of diafine and toss our gallons of d76 and perceptol?

Have D76 and Perceptol been doing what you want? Is there some specific problem you think--after reviewing all the information you have--Diafine can solve for you?

If so, go for it. Otherwise, why change to chase after the latest recommendation? There is *no* perfect developer or film or anything. The classic advice is always the best: pick one or two films and one developer. Learn everything you can about them, use them extensively, keep good notes. Get it locked before you discard it as inadequate or useless.

Speaking from experience here: you can waste a lot of time and effort chasing the latest and greatest. No disrespect intended to Mr King, whose contributions to this craft are gratefully acknowledged. But one must learn how to apply them to his/her own work.

[pierods]

All right, great.

But what do you think of diafine for hybrid?

[MikeSeb]

I don't think it offers me much beyond what I can achieve with careful exposure and processing using more-conventional single-bath developers.

[jd callow]

The classic advice is always the best: pick one or two films and one developer. Learn everything you can about them, use them extensively, keep good notes. Get it locked before you discard it as inadequate or useless.

On the other hand I prefer the advice of: Experiment like crazy and see where that takes you. Some things immediately turn out to be a touch stone and others can prove to be a dead end. Why not be cyclical in your personal development. Investigate a lot of things superficially, discard what doesn't fit and repeat. If art is about discovery than I see no reason to pursue it like a journeyman.


Sorry I have nothing to offer regarding Sandy's article. As much as I like Sandy I wouldn't read VC if I was paid to do so. Since we are repeating or making up bromides: Why reinvent the wheel? When someone who knows their stuff says "do this" and you need or want to do "this" better than you might want to at least try it.

[Bruce Watson]

I wonder:

- are we all to buy gallons of diafine and toss our gallons of d76 and perceptol?
- how does pyrocat hd compare to diafine for scanning?

I was rather surprised to see Sany King advocate diafine, considered he's the inventor of pyrocat hd.

Sandy makes some excellent points in his article. But as always there are many paths to the waterfall. Some people like one, some another, some another still.

The neat thing about scanning to me is that, if the operator sets up the scanning software / hardware correctly, the scanner applies its full digital range to whatever density range is on the film. For example, assuming 8 bit, the scanner gives you a range of 0-255 if your density range is 3.0 or 0.3.

What this means to me in practice is that it's "safe" to develop your film to a lower density. For exampe, in Zone System terms, you can make your "N" development less, say what a darkroom photographer would call "N-1" or so. This compresses the tones on film slightly but the scanner then decompresses the tones into the full digital range. As long as you don't push it too hard it's perfectly safe.

Now, why would you want to do that anyway? Because graininess is directly related to density. If you lower your density, you lower your graininess.

Also, density is made up of metallic silver, which means that density is also directly related to Callier Effect. Less density, less silver, less light scatter. Less Callier Effect means a scan file with less highlight compression due to the light scatter. Which means you have to do less work in Photoshop to get the beautiful highlight separation most of us want.

So... if you are *ever* going to print your film in the darkroom, optimize for the darkroom. If you are sure you will never print in the darkroom, you can optimize your film for scanning. This typically means developing a little less density (enough less that it would be really painful to print in the darkroom). How much less depends on your scanner, software, workflow, etc. So you have to experiement to find out where your optimum is.

The joy of a two part developer like diafine is that it limits density automatically -- it exhausts before you can build up too much density. It should work just like Sandy describes.

[sanking]

When I began to prepare the article for View Camera my intention was to include a two-bath version of Pyrocat-HD but it proved to be a bit more complicated than I anticipated so in the end I had to leave it out. I still plan to work out the procedure to use Pyrocat-HD this way but just have not gotten around to it yet.

The main appeal of two-bath development is that it eliminates record keeping in the field and you can develop all of your negatives together in the same bath without fear of too much contrast because the mechanics of two-bath development assures that no matter how long you develop the average gradient will be limited to a known CI. I did not say that it gave better results than one bath developers, only that it simplifies exposure and development if you plan to scan because all you really need to do is to develop all of your negatives to a fairly low CI and then do the rest in Photoshop.

It would be a mistake to believe that I no longer recommend Pyrocat-HD because I wrote an article on two-bath development. Depending on the circumstances I might do the full BTZS routine with LF film and Pyrocat-HD or I might just expose for the shadows and develop in a two bath developer.

Sandy King

Hi,

after reading Sandy King's article:

http://www.viewcamera.com/documents/pages48-55.pdf

I wonder:

- are we all to buy gallons of diafine and toss our gallons of d76 and perceptol?
- how does pyrocat hd compare to diafine for scanning?

I was rather surprised to see Sany King advocate diafine, considered he's the inventor of pyrocat hd.

Or maybe diafine vs pyrocat hd is the subject of another article?

[pierods]

My ignorance wins here: less density = less time in developer so fixer takes away more silver right?

[lenny]

My ignorance wins here: less density = less time in developer so fixer takes away more silver right?

Almost. yes, sort of. The way it works is this... Light photons change the state of the very top layer of molecules. It's a very small tracing on the top... Then developer comes thru and like a roto rooter develops everything in its path. The thing that makes photography happen is that it follows the tracing that was originally set down by the photons.

It's basically an reduction/oxidation, or redox, reaction. It's been a lot of years since I had to explain this to anyone so I will consult the book before I say any more.... lest I put my foot in it.

The fixer then washes away undeveloped silver bromide. It's not a controllable factor, unless you use one that is too strong, etc.

I hope this answers a thing for two for you...

Lenny
EigerStudios

[sanking]

BTW, I was hardly involved in anything revolutionary in the article on two-bath development in View Camera. To the contrary, I established in the article that two-bath development is historically a very old method, even pre-dating the demands of the miniature camera, which made it much more popular. Ansel Adams used two-bath development for negatives that needed compensation, and in addition to Diafine I tested a version of D23 that goes by his name, the Ansel Adams divided D-23 formula.

The point of the article, which is suggested in the title, is that two-bath development can be a very practical system of exposure and development that obviates the need for record keeping in the field, *when* the resulting negative will be scanned and the file adjusted in Photoshop.

Sandy King