Acuspecial FX-21 formula (Better than Rodinal!)

[Doug A]

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2 hours ago, Ornello said:

That's what the Paterson ads claimed, and it's one of the weaknesses of Rodinal.

Easily managed with the Gamma slider using Affinity Photo to set the Levels of a scan of a Rodinal developed negative with a digital camera. Few people denigrating Rodinal have experimented with it enough to understand how versatile it can be. 

Edited April 10, 2022 by Doug A

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[Ornello]

15 hours ago, Doug A said:

Easily managed with the Gamma slider using Affinity Photo to set the Levels of a scan of a Rodinal developed negative with a digital camera. Few people denigrating Rodinal have experimented with it enough to understand how versatile it can be. 

As compared to what? And who's scanning? I use a darkroom! 

[Ornello]

16 hours ago, 250swb said:

Why would Rodinal be 'weak' if somebody wanted a negative with compressed mid-tones? There are plenty of photographers who like a more graphic image.

FX-21 gives reduced highlight density without compressing the mid-tones. Reducing development lowers overall contrast; the compensating action of FX-21 does not do that.

[Ornello]

16 hours ago, Doug A said:

Easily managed with the Gamma slider using Affinity Photo to set the Levels of a scan of a Rodinal developed negative with a digital camera. Few people denigrating Rodinal have experimented with it enough to understand how versatile it can be. 

See:

https://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Paterson/Chemistry/AcutolS_APtest_Jan64.pdf

[BillT]

As I recall it, Crawley's criticism of Rodinal was not that it compressed midtones, and I don't think, in context, that it does, at least not at dilutions of 1:50 to 1:25. His criticism was that it did not exploit film speed to the extent possible with modern formulations. FX 1 and FX 2 increased speed by a practical stop, by comparison. WHEN used with conventional grain slow and medium films.

It is important to emphasize that Crawley recommended high acutance developers only for conventional grain slow and medium speed films. Such developers might well not make a great difference with modern high-iodide emulsions. An unresolved question is how well these developers would work with the Tri-X of today. A second unresolved question is how well these developers would work with any tabular grain film. My tentative answer is, they would work as well as anything else, but the extreme acutance-enhancing effects which were seen with conventional grain films, would not be seen with tabular grain films. The reason is that the technology of the newest films tends to deliver high acutance regardless of the developer. (See Ron Mowrey's tentative explanation of this phenomenon in FDC2.) 

Going back to the question of speed with high acutance developers, Crawley thought that sulfite levels in Rodinal could be _slightly_ too low to gain maximum possible speed. For Crawley, the ideal amount of sulfite in a high acutance developer was 3.5 to 5 grams per litre of working solution. Could adding a pinch of sulfite to a Rodinal working solution increase speed? Well, we don't know yet. And we would need a very conventional slow to medium emulsion to test this with.  

[Ornello]

17 minutes ago, BillT said:

As I recall it, Crawley's criticism of Rodinal was not that it compressed midtones, and I don't think, in context, that it does, at least not at dilutions of 1:50 to 1:25. His criticism was that it did not exploit film speed to the extent possible with modern formulations. FX 1 and FX 2 increased speed by a practical stop, by comparison. WHEN used with conventional grain slow and medium films.

It is important to emphasize that Crawley recommended high acutance developers only for conventional grain slow and medium speed films. Such developers might well not make a great difference with modern high-iodide emulsions. An unresolved question is how well these developers would work with the Tri-X of today. A second unresolved question is how well these developers would work with any tabular grain film. My tentative answer is, they would work as well as anything else, but the extreme acutance-enhancing effects which were seen with conventional grain films, would not be seen with tabular grain films. The reason is that the technology of the newest films tends to deliver high acutance regardless of the developer. (See Ron Mowrey's tentative explanation of this phenomenon in FDC2.) 

Going back to the question of speed with high acutance developers, Crawley thought that sulfite levels in Rodinal could be _slightly_ too low to gain maximum possible speed. For Crawley, the ideal amount of sulfite in a high acutance developer was 3.5 to 5 grams per litre of working solution. Could adding a pinch of sulfite to a Rodinal working solution increase speed? Well, we don't know yet. And we would need a very conventional slow to medium emulsion to test this with.  

I don't think that he was referring to Rodinal either. He was referring to reducing development time and increasing dilution (of developers such as D-76), both of which tend to cause mid-tones to 'sag'. See the 1969 BJP Annual.

[BillT]

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In the 50s and 60s, you had Crawley doing independent reserarch with his Joyce-Loebl microdensitometer, and in the 80s Richard Henry worked with a Perkins-Elmer if I recall correctly. And of course at Kodak, Dickerson and Zawadzki commissioned a machine that would automate testing. But it's been 20 years since techniques for using scanners as microdensitometers were published, yet nobody in pictorial photography seems to have taken up the amazing opportunities we now have for scientific evaluation of photographic results. 

[250swb]

6 hours ago, Ornello said:

FX-21 gives reduced highlight density without compressing the mid-tones. Reducing development lowers overall contrast; the compensating action of FX-21 does not do that.

That didn't answer the question, I asked why is it wrong to want a compressed mid-tone range? 

[Ornello]

2 hours ago, 250swb said:

That didn't answer the question, I asked why is it wrong to want a compressed mid-tone range? 

Mid-tones are the most important of all, and images with low-contrast mid-tones look flat and dull.

[250swb]

8 hours ago, Ornello said:

Mid-tones are the most important of all, and images with low-contrast mid-tones look flat and dull.

Only if you print them that way. I'm just wondering what element of the photograph you are so concerned about to constantly attack people if they like to use Rodinal, calling them 'Rodent-All' for example. If people make Rodinal work, but you can't, shouldn't you just let them get on with it and let them make their own photographs rather coerce then to copy your photographs (and nobody knows what they look like anyway, they could be fantastic, or awful)?

[Ornello]

6 hours ago, 250swb said:

Only if you print them that way. I'm just wondering what element of the photograph you are so concerned about to constantly attack people if they like to use Rodinal, calling them 'Rodent-All' for example. If people make Rodinal work, but you can't, shouldn't you just let them get on with it and let them make their own photographs rather coerce then to copy your photographs (and nobody knows what they look like anyway, they could be fantastic, or awful)?

What do you mean, 'make it work'? It is a primitive developer, and in anyone's hands it is suitable only for very slow films that can tolerate its harsh alkalinity. When used with faster films it does not exploit their full speed, and causes excessive graininess.  R's popularity is all out of proportion to its quality.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Ornello

[250swb]

1 hour ago, Ornello said:

What do you mean, 'make it work'? It is a primitive developer, and in anyone's hands it is suitable only for very slow films that can tolerate its harsh alkalinity. When used with faster films it does not exploit their full speed, and causes excessive graininess.  R's popularity is all out of proportion to its quality.

But a photographer such as Ralph Gibson (a well known exponent of Leica cameras) used Rodinal , so he was wrong was he? He processed his Tri-X in Rodinal because it gave him the look (grain, tone, and contrast) and the density he wanted. It's curious that a world renowned photographer didn't know what he was doing, according to you.

http://www.ralphgibson.com/1971-2000-chiaroscuro.html

His process was Tri- rated from 100 - 400 ASA, Rodinal 1+25 at 68F for 11 minutes, agitation 10 seconds every one and 1 1/2 minutes. Even nowadays with a different formulation of Tri-X his recipe still produces similar negatives, but he did prefer dense negatives, not something everybody would want to copy, but the prints do show a lot of rich mid-tones.

 

[Ornello]

31 minutes ago, 250swb said:

But a photographer such as Ralph Gibson (a well known exponent of Leica cameras) used Rodinal , so he was wrong was he? He processed his Tri-X in Rodinal because it gave him the look (grain, tone, and contrast) and the density he wanted. It's curious that a world renowned photographer didn't know what he was doing, according to you.

http://www.ralphgibson.com/1971-2000-chiaroscuro.html

His process was Tri- rated from 100 - 400 ASA, Rodinal 1+25 at 68F for 11 minutes, agitation 10 seconds every one and 1 1/2 minutes. Even nowadays with a different formulation of Tri-X his recipe still produces similar negatives, but he did prefer dense negatives, not something everybody would want to copy, but the prints do show a lot of rich mid-tones.

 

Gibson's work is fashion-oriented, where such dramatic distortions are accepted. But one should, I argue, master 'straight' technique before going off in other directions. I'm not particularly impressed with his work, though some of his images are provocative and stylistically unusual. But...there is a certain sameness to the photos, caused by the limited focal lengths available to the RF camera. 

I am much more impressed by Sebastião Salgado's work. 

One of my favorites:

https://publicdelivery.org/sebastiao-salgado-salt-of-the-earth/

You can tell the faces were dodged...

Edited April 12, 2022 by Ornello

[BillT]

>But a photographer such as Ralph Gibson (a well known exponent of Leica cameras) used Rodinal , so he was wrong was he? He processed his Tri-X in Rodinal because it gave him the look (grain, tone, and contrast) and the density he wanted. It's curious that a world renowned photographer didn't know what he was doing, according to you.<

Could we be at cross purposes here? The discussion here implicitly refers to 35mm film. Aren't Gibson's best known photos 4x5? (Or am I confusing him with someone else? Ralph Steiner maybe?) Regarding the question about what is wrong with compressing midtones, I am sympathetic. If you want to compress midtones, go ahead! Nobody did this better than Tony Ray-Jones, for example. I can't prove it, but I believe most of his famous work was done on medium speed film with FX-1. Printing is also a part of this aesthetic. For example, in his late prints of earlier work, Bill Brandt tended to compress the midtones. So called soot and chalk can be devastatingly effective. 

Regarding Rodinal, the degree of midtone compression you will get will depend on the degree of dilution. 1:10 to 1:25, no compression; 1:50 very slight compression; 1:75 and up, compression. Crawley's objection to Rodinal was that, for the image quality it delivered, it unnecessarily gave up an entire stop in film speed. On the other hand, Rodinal is (now that HC-110 has been reformulated as a conventional developer, see FDC2 for discussion) the only long-lived liquid concentrate developer available. Crawley never approached that level of reliability in his liquid formulations. And neither did anyone else in the entire history of photography. 

Finally, Crawley NEVER recommended either FX-14 of FX-21 for Tri-X. 

[Ornello]

55 minutes ago, BillT said:

>But a photographer such as Ralph Gibson (a well known exponent of Leica cameras) used Rodinal , so he was wrong was he? He processed his Tri-X in Rodinal because it gave him the look (grain, tone, and contrast) and the density he wanted. It's curious that a world renowned photographer didn't know what he was doing, according to you.<

Could we be at cross purposes here? The discussion here implicitly refers to 35mm film. Aren't Gibson's best known photos 4x5? (Or am I confusing him with someone else? Ralph Steiner maybe?) Regarding the question about what is wrong with compressing midtones, I am sympathetic. If you want to compress midtones, go ahead! Nobody did this better than Tony Ray-Jones, for example. I can't prove it, but I believe most of his famous work was done on medium speed film with FX-1. Printing is also a part of this aesthetic. For example, in his late prints of earlier work, Bill Brandt tended to compress the midtones. So called soot and chalk can be devastatingly effective. 

Regarding Rodinal, the degree of midtone compression you will get will depend on the degree of dilution. 1:10 to 1:25, no compression; 1:50 very slight compression; 1:75 and up, compression. Crawley's objection to Rodinal was that, for the image quality it delivered, it unnecessarily gave up an entire stop in film speed. On the other hand, Rodinal is (now that HC-110 has been reformulated as a conventional developer, see FDC2 for discussion) the only long-lived liquid concentrate developer available. Crawley never approached that level of reliability in his liquid formulations. And neither did anyone else in the entire history of photography. 

Finally, Crawley NEVER recommended either FX-14 of FX-21 for Tri-X. 

But I am sure he would not recommend Rodinal for Tri-X either. I found Acutol and 400 speed films (at least Tri-X and Neopan 400) to be very good together. Grain was not objectionable at all! As far as longevity is concerned, the dry chemicals used to prepare developers are very stable. I have some metol from 30 years ago (at least) that is just fine, and it takes only about 10 minutes to make up most MQ or PMQ developers.

 

 

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by Ornello

[250swb]

2 hours ago, BillT said:

 

Could we be at cross purposes here? The discussion here implicitly refers to 35mm film. Aren't Gibson's best known photos 4x5? (Or am I confusing him with someone else? Ralph Steiner maybe?

You are most definitely mistaking him for somebody else. Possibly in the same way that being technician is being confused with being an artist. Some people will just not let it go that great art can be made by making a film and development regime your own, and not having to conform to the rigid dogma of people who think a pippete and a smidgeon of this or that is what makes a great negative. Give the mind control a rest, it's art that most people on the form want, not indoctrination.

[250swb]

2 hours ago, Ornello said:

But I am sure he would not recommend Rodinal for Tri-X either. I found Acutol and 400 speed films (at least Tri-X and Neopan 400) to be very good together. Grain was not objectionable at all! As far as longevity is concerned, the dry chemicals used to prepare developers are very stable. I have some metol from 30 years ago (at least) that is just fine, and it takes only about 10 minutes to make up most MQ or PMQ developers.

 

 

 

I've been on a workshop many years ago with Ralph Gibson, and he did have his bottle of Rodinal. But for information the book is 'Darkroom' published by Lustrum Press. Get it, it's about how artists use film and mould their own techniques.

Edited April 12, 2022 by 250swb

[BillT]

57 minutes ago, 250swb said:

how artists use film and mould their own techniques.

I agree that many photographers settle on a film and developer that works for them. It's important to be able to get what you want out of that, and to be able to focus on the picture rather than the processing. And to recognize that it's for you, but not necessarily for anyone else. That said, when there is going to be digital scanning of a negative, an infinite number of manipulations can take place such that the choice of film, developer, and processing, is not as important as it was in an all-analogue workflow. Finally, people have been arguing passionately about developers for over 150 years, so I guess it's OK to admit that it's fun. 

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[Ornello]

I finally received the chemicals needed to mix this formula. Although it is designed for very slow films, I am curious to see what it can do with T-Max 400, which has some of the characteristics of slow films.

I found a development time chart:

http://www.film-and-darkroom-user.org.uk/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1399&d=1337972966

Edited May 4, 2022 by Ornello

[250swb]

3 hours ago, Ornello said:

I finally received the chemicals needed to mix this formula. Although it is designed for very slow films, I am curious to see what it can do with T-Max 400, which has some of the characteristics of slow films.

I found a development time chart:

http://www.film-and-darkroom-user.org.uk/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1399&d=1337972966

Maybe instead of a constant and meaningless drip, drip, drip, you could summarise your results in one massive big and final reveal!