Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/03/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]A few old tech things from recent threads I thought I'd comment on. Anyone who misses Rodinal can can make their own easily. If you use the potassium salts instead of the sodium ones (as is/was the common practice in Germany) you can make a developer so close to the original as to provide indistinguishable results. It's quite amazing. The Formulary substitute is also very, very close. Be careful with chemicals; read the MSDS sheets for all the chemicals. Get someone who is experienced with working with chemicals to do it for you if you're really nervous or inexperienced. Potassium hydroxide is kind of nasty. I personally think there are much better, modern developers available. I have come to the conclusion that all films are sufficiently different that while some similarities can be observed between individual products, if an old favourite vanishes, then you need to find an acceptable substitute and work to optimise it, but accept that it will never look exactly the same as the old favourite. Acros, FP4+ and Plus-X are really nice cubic-grain films in the same speed range as APX100 and there are plenty of 400 speed films to experiment with as an APX 400 substitute. The main characteristic of the APX films that I will miss is their ability to retain good edge sharpness even when processed in very heavily aged, seasoned replenishment systems that contain high concentrations of sulfite and bisulfite. someone commented about Fomapan 200: >> I do like the rich grays in that film. I'll get a few rolls when I >> order some Rodinal. What did you develop your FOMA film in? >9 minutes in HC-110 dilution F (1:79) @ 20C/68F will do ok with 1 >minute of prewashing. >I'm testing this film (fomapan 200), but still need to shoot at least >one more roll to end an early field testing . Anyway they are T-grain >films, close to TMaX 100. I will rate it more or less like ISO 160, >but again, it's just an informed guessing :) I became a Fomaphile in the Czech Republic about 10 years ago. I've shot and processed several hundred rolls of all kinds of their films. Whether a film is t-grain or not is not a cut and dried issue. Film emulsions don't contain only monosize (and I include 't-grain' or flat, epitaxial and other single size silver crystal technologies) or only traditional mixed size cubic grain but a mix of the two. Manufacturers usually use their own designation when about 80% or more of all grains are monosize (of whatever type), but there is no standard. Fomapan 200 is not a flat-grain / 't-grain' film. It is not a monosize emulsion either, but a traditional cubic grain film, albeit with some very clever dopants incorporated in the emulsion that accelerate developer activity and minimise grain. I have electron microscopy and mass spectroscopy data to support this somewhere. Foma 200 is a very nice film and has lovely tonality. All Foma films work very well in D76, either straight or dilute depending on the look you prefer. A significant confusing factor in this is that when first marketed, Fomapan 200 was sold as `Foma T 200`, a move which succeeded in doing nothing but forcing Foma's US distributor to withdraw product from the US market for a time because of threatening legal stuff from Kodak, who felt that the product name infringed Kodak's copyright over the use of T* as a name for film. There also used to be T 800 - a great, now also gone film. It had some QA problems, which may have led to its demise. The Foma T films were (maybe still is in the case of the 200) repackaged and sold as Paterson Acupan. Later, Marty