Vitamin enriched D-23??

John Hicks suggested D-23 1+3 with 4g/liter sodium ascorbate (not ascorbic acid itself) makes a finer grain in processing Delta 3200.

Interesting. Did anyone try that?

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To John: is your favourite dev for Delta 3200 changed again?

Is this also good for some other films too??

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Yeah, I know, no real input on my side this time. I just found this his idea interesting, or even surprising, and wanted to make it more visible.

I've never tried it, but it makes good sense. I'd like to try the

same combo with Delta 3200.

OK, here goes:

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D3200 in D-23 1:3 w 4g/L sodium ascorbate, "NutriBiotic" brand from the local health-food store. I tried a couple of those mall chain stores but they didn't have a clue.

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At first I tried plain D-23 (curious about John Douglas' recommendations) and while that worked ok it didn't show me anything. For EI 1600, D-23 1:3 20'/75F rotary agitation.

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The addition of sodium ascorbate required a reduction in development time to 15'/75F and yielded identical curve shape and EI. Graininess, though, is easily visibly decreased.

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The "real" speed, .10DU above fb&f for Zone I, is EI 1000.

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These negs are pretty hot; since it's a push the rating may really need to be EI 2400 or so. DD-X 1:4 gives more shadow density and less contrast for the same EI.

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What I'll need to do is shoot some direct-comparison negs. I haven't shot much D3200 lately; I've been more into D400 at EI 800 at f2 in 35mm rather than D3200 at f2.8 EI 1600 in 120.

Thanks for the detail. I said that idea is surprising because if one

believes that ascorbates are pretty inactive in low pH environment

then we would not expect the behavior of D-23 to change by adding s.a.

But John Hicks reported faster process and finer grain...

I'm more curious about the general potential of

D-23 with s.a. than particular application to d3200, so maybe I'll

try it with HP5+ or something.

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Pat Gainer also suggested to replace hydroquinone in D-76 with s.a.

It's more like a vitamin enriched D-76H (let's name it something like

D-76HC) or D-23C with borax. It may be interesting to change the base

while the reductants (2g metol + 4g s.a. in 1 liter) are held fixed

and see what happens. Well, too many things to think about for now.

> replace hydroquinone in D-76

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Anchell & Troop recommend 1.8X the hydroquinone amount.

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I made a few D3200 prints last night; it's not bad. Pretty contrasty but dense highlights burned ok; I think contrastwise it wants EI 3200 but otoh that might turn sufficient shadow density into insufficient. Nice and sharp with reasonably fine grain.

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The bottom line is that it works, and that "improved" D-23 is an improvement over ordinary D-23 for D3200.

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I too have been wondering about popping a little s.a. into my D-76H.

The inactivity of ascorbates in low pH does not apply to superadditive

mixtures. The ascorbates are superaditive with phenidone,

p-aminophenol, metol and some others but not with hydroquinone.

While sodium ascorbate alone needs pH like hydroquinone to ve active,

it's a terrible developer by itself. At least, the isomer we can

easily get is.

Generally, the result of using ascorbate is a better combination of

grain, speed and acutance, though any one of those things may not be

so good. I have had HP5+ come out looking like FP4 + and I have had

TMY come out with coarser grain than I am accustomed to, but with very

nice gradations and plenty of speed, so its great for pictures of

people doing things.

One frustrating thing about trying ascorbic acid developers is that

I can't find a reliable source about the developer kinetics especially

of superadditivity. With hydroquinone the reaction by-product was

alkaline and that itself accelerated further development, but this

doesn't seem to happen with ascorbates. Then how ascorbate formulae

can attain improved accutance? etc. In Gainer

metol-ascorbate-carbonate formula, I guess the pH is quite a bit

higher than D-23C. Does the s.a. give the same kind of benefit in

these two formulae??? I know, my questions never end and I never go to

bed, but it would be nice if anyone could share experimental

result/theoretical consideration. Thanks.

You can use borax in a phenidone-C developer If you use ascorbic acid,

you will have to neutralize it first with about 1/2 gram of baking

soda per gram of ascorbic acid.

The first oxidation product of ascorbic acid (or sodium ascorbate) is

desoxyascorbic acid and is biologically active, according to my

encyclopedia. Whether that means it continues to act as a developer, I

do not know. It's a matter for experiment anyway. Even the Kodak

Research Laboratories had to experiment and were quite surprised to

find how superadditive the isomers of ascorbic acid were with

phenidone. This was in the early 70's, so it's nothing new.

Ordinary Vitamin C requires pH around 12 to do any developing, and a

lot of bromide to keep it from generating mostly fog. You can make a

fairly good lith developer with 1/2 tbs sodium ascorbate, 1 tsp

potassium bromide and 10 grams of lye in 500 ml of water. It doesn't

last long, but neither does the hydroquinone version with sulfite.

All these things are instructive, whether you ever want to use them

for real pictures or not. I do. Suit yourself. That's what we're

supposed to do. But when you find out something photographic, even if

it's just an interesting fact, go ahead and share it. Maybe someone

else can add to it and really get somewhere.

Reality check:

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I got curious about John Douglas' recommendation of D-23 for Delta 3200; it worked, nothing spectacular, pretty grainy but more "real" speed than D-76 while less than Xtol, Microphen etc.

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Then Patrick Gainer got me to thinking about vitamin c, so I added some sodium ascorbate, fiddled around and came up with a _greatly improved_ version of D-23 for Delta 3200.

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But then last night I made some more negs using the "standard" of DD-X 1:4 for a fresh comparison...well, that's the end of the D-23 experiment.

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However, this has been a very interesting project and worthwhile exercise.

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Patrick, we really appreciate your participation here in this forum.

You can make a

fairly good lith developer with 1/2 tbs sodium ascorbate, 1 tsp

potassium bromide and 10 grams of lye in 500 ml of water.

I did try this today, worked very well indeed.

IME sodium ascorbate (ascorbic acid neutralised with sodium hydroxide) is a very weak developer on its own. For normal contrast it works best in conjunction with phenidone, replacing the hydroquinone in most M-Q or P-Q formulae to advantage.

Ascorbate shows the same super-additivity effect with phenidone as hydroquinone does.

WRT Delta 3200: I found that a Phenidone-Ascorbate formulation actually gave some of the coarsest grain. Finer grain was even got from Rodinal, and that was bettered by Microphen.

IMO, no developer is ever going to make the grain from Delta 3200 'fine', or even acceptable.

I just noticed the measures in the formula above - A tablespoon of ascorbate! That's a lot. That lith recipe just substitutes ascorbate for hydroquinone in an age old formula.