Fascinating

Photographers' formulary (http://www.photoformulary.com) helds an

amazingly wide line of developers which in their quantity almost makes the

whole line of Kodak and Ilford look poor. As I am not at all familiar with the

designation used I was wondering if someone has something good to say

about their product line. Is there something in there that it's worth trying out?

Simply tell me your opinion if you ever used it.

 

My comparison standards: I mostly use Tmx, Tmy, Tri-X, Neopan, Ilford FP4+

in Ilfotec HC, HC-110, DDX, Tmax and ID-11.

I use their ABC Pyro for developing HP5+ in 8x10 and love it. I also use their TD-3 Tech Pan developer and find it superior to Technidol. My next purchase will be their Pyrocat HD.

There are innumerable ways of getting to essentially the same result. Ilford (and others) sell as many developers as they think fit for achieving the various kinds of result (fine grain, acutance, speed, economy, etc) but there is ALWAYS another way of doing it -- and one that may work better for you, because there is as much alchemy in B+W as science.

 

Photographer's Formulary is an excellent company and you may well find something that suits you very well, but it is always worth asking yourself why people like Ilford sell the range they do. If something were definitely better for their films than the range they sell, they would be foolish not to sell it themselves unless it had some significant disadvantage such as being too expensive to make economically or too toxic or too short-lived.

 

Don't get me wrong. I compound my own developers, sometimes, from raw chemicals; I have nothing against weird developers. But equally, I am very sure that unless you have a particular end in mind, and know exactly what that end is, and a good idea of how to achieve it, you may find little or no advantage in trying some of the weird stuff.

Try to get hold of 'Developing' by Jacobson & Jacobson. It has dozens of formulae for developers which you can brew up yourself from raw chemicals.

If you're really into this kind of thing, check out 'The Film Developing Cookbook' by Steve Anchell. There's a wealth of information about many of the developers offered by the Formulary. My experiences with the company have been excellent.