PC-TEA dev times

I finally mixed this developer, and looking for development times for:

 

Neopan 1600 at 1600.

Neopan 400 at 400 and 1600.

Tri-X at 400.

HP5+ at 400 and 100(Ouch!)

FP4+ at 125.

 

I hope this isn't too long of a list :). Also what's the minimum

amount of the concentrate required to develop one roll? How toxic is

TEA? Thanks!

 

P.S. Wouldn't it be a great idea to have a centralized dev. times

resource for this developer such as digitaltruth?

Hi Dan.

 

Can't help you with the Fuji films.

 

HP5+ 9min/70F

 

FP4+ 7min/70F

 

TX 10min/70F

 

Tea is used in many beauty products, including facial lotions. Not very toxic.

 

Jay

I'm not sure why but my developing times are very different from Jay's. I dilute PC-TEA 1:50 and develop at 68F. My time for PF4+ at 125 is about 13 minutes. My time for HP5+ is about 18 minutes. I don't add sulfite to reduce grain or speed things up and I don't add any restrainer to reduce fog. Jay, what dilution are you using?

My Tri-X time for 1+50 matches Jay's. I've checked with a densitometer.

Hi Jeff. Those times are for 1:50 dilution, sorry for leaving that very important detail out. Your times seem very long to me. Are you sure your ascorbic acid is good?

 

Jay

Is potassium iodide a good restrainer for this one?

PC-TEA doesn't really need a restrainer, unless you're printing with a UV/alt process that cannot tolerate any fog whatsoever, in which case, I'd use benzotriazole which dissolves readily in TEA.

 

 

Jay

Sometimes I need to push film to 3200 or 6400. Is fog going to be an issue with extended development?

Also, what's the minimum amount of concentrate do you think is required to process one roll?

The ascorbic acid was purchased at the same time as the phenidone and the TEA and from the same place. My times with FP4+ have been very consistent. This is true whether I used it in 35mm or 120 size. I only did a few rolls of HP5+. As soon as I have a chance I will mix up a new batch. I recently moved and everything is in boxes. If I remember correctly I used 10 mg of ascorbic acid rather than 9. It was easier to measure 10 with the equipment I had. I have an old Mettler P1000 lab scale which I nought from an eBay seller a few years ago. The manufacturer, in Switzerland, e-maile dme calibration instructions. That will be another project.

 

When I mixed the PC-TEA I dissolved the phenidone first. I should have dissolved the ascorbic acid first. Even with a few minutes of stirring not everything dissolved but it did dissolve on standing a few hours after I put it in a bottle. Could the phenidone have lost some of its activity by being dissolved forst?

I hope you meant 10 grams, not 10 milligrams! 10 grams of ascorbic acid in 100 ml of TEA + 1/4 gram phenidone. I have found that dissolving the ascorbic acid in a very small amount, 10 or 15 ml, of hot water will help it dissolve in warm TEA without affecting the storage life. TEA darkens considerably when heated above 140 F. I have some pretty black stock solutions that still work, but it bothers me nevertheless.

 

You can keep a 1% solution of phenidone in just about any glycol or alcohol for quite a while. It is easier to dissolve just the amount you want to use immediately in alcohol and then in TEA. 1/4 gram is about 1/8 teaspoon. The things that make phenidone hard to dissolve is it's not very soluble to begin with, and it is hard to wet, like talcum powder, to boot. Alcohol wets it better than water. That's all I can think of right now.

Sorry Patrick! I meant 10 grams of course. Please excuse me if I am repeating myslef here from older posts. I didn't want to heat the TEA in a microwave so I used a different method. I poured 100ml of TEA into a stainless steel measuring cup. The cup was out into an aluminum pan and boiling water was poured into the pan, around the measuring cut. If boiling water is 212F then I can only guess that I might have heated the TEA up to about 180F, if that. I would say that the phenidone, which I stirred in first, only partially dissolved. After a few minutes of stirring I added the ascorbic acid. A few minutes after that I poured the mixture into an 8 oz. clear glass swing top bottle. It was a very pale tan color and everything dissolved after a few hours in the bottle. Over time (it has been quite a few months) it got darker and darker. Once I settled on my time for PF4+ it worked just fine even with the color change.

 

The earliest B&W prints I made on my own were from 35mm Tri-X negatives. My first enlarger was a Federal with a 3" Fedar Anastigmat lens and a 6X9 glass carrier. I made cut-outs for 35mm and 16mm (Minolta 16) from black construction paper. The final indignity was Kodabromide F #2 single weight paper. The Federal was a diffusion enlarger and this combination was not good for getting any kind of decent contrast. Later I graduated to a Bogen 22A Special enlarger, which I still have, and I started to print on Agfa Brovira double weight and Kodabrome. To this day I am disappointed by thin negatives. I know that some people like their negatives on the thin side and feel that grain is impoved that way but I just don't like them. Eventually I will upgrade my computer so I can show samples in this forum. When I mix up my next batch of PC-TEA I will see if the times I am now using are still right.

My development times are also different. For FP4 at iso 125 - 30min in 1:100 at 68F.

Luben: 30 minutes? I hope you are using a Jobo. Why that high dilution?

Yes, I use JOBO inversion tank. I forgot to mention that it is 30 min semi-stand development - 2 inversions on 10th and 20th minute. And there is a little Postasium Bromide added (reduces the base fog). This times are OK for me. I prefer longer times and higher dilusutions in order to reduce contrast (I print mostly on FB paper of grade around 3 that was local production and is dirthy cheap here).

 

Lately I have switched to a modified PCQ-TEA formula (less VitC) that gives me more pronounced compensation, edge effects, increased accutance and even longer times.

Luben, do you have a scan to show? Is there really a great difference between your semi-stand developed FP4 and regularly developed?

Here are some pictures of an abandoned house I shot on Foma 100 (I realy like how it renders highlights and the halos) Developped in PC-TEA 1:100 semi-stand development: <br>

 

<a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/20/72487982_700cc2ad61_t.jpg"/></a>

<br/>

 

<a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/20/72497295_ece5f9ad2b_t.jpg"/></a>

<br/>

<a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/20/72513049_e323c58755_t.jpg"/></a>

<br/>

 

PC-TEA does not have pronounced edge effect that increase percieved sharpness but semi-stand development gives compensation - wider scene dynamic could be recorder and compressed in the negative dynamic range. This works well on high contrast scenes as these.

<br>

On another hand PCQ-TEA has the above mentioned edge effects. Here are some shot on FP4 semi-stand developped for 1 hour in 1:50 PCQ-TEA with half amount of VitC (these are my girlfriend's photos) :

 

<a href="http://photo-forum.net/index.php?APP_ACTION=GALLERY_IMAGE&IMAGE_ID=252363&USER_ID=586">here</a> and

<a href="http://photo-forum.net/index.php?APP_ACTION=GALLERY_IMAGE&IMAGE_ID=252362&USER_ID=586">here</a>

<br>

There is no digital sharpening applied nor any other correction - just scanning the negatives and resizing.

<br><br>

Hope this helps<br>

 

luben

 

I

In the above links click "all sizes" button above the image to see the bigger ones

Thanks! I don't care for edge effects, but compensation would be nice for high contrast light. I think that's what I was getting from Xtol 1:3, and especially from Xtol mixed with about 1/3 of contents from packet B. I have some Neopan 400 shot in contrasty light. The usual development time for it is about 12 minutes in 1:50 at 68 fahrenheit. What would be the semi-stand development time? Thanks.

Don, for semi-stand development multiply the development time by 1.4. That works for me with lots of developers.

How do you agitate for semi-stand? The whole first minute and then two inversions every 10 minutes or so? Thanks.

I agitate 10 inversions the first minute and 2 inversions every thirth of development time (2 times) or on the half of development time (1 time). It depends, if there is no uneven development I agitate one time (PCQ-TEA). For Rodinal and PC-TEA I agitate 2 times.

I did a little experimentation this weekend using PC-TEA (my version is equivalent to 10 g ascorbic acid, 0.2 g phenidone in 100 ml triethanolamine).

 

Neopan 1600 looks good at EI 800 for 7 minutes at 22C. Fomapan 200 seems to need around the same time for EI 200.

 

Seems like 9 minutes at 22C would be about right for Neopan 1600 at EI 1600.

 

YMMV, of course.