Acutol Characteristics

[steve_patterson]

A friend with a curious sense of humor sent me several bottles of

Paterson Acutol for Christmas (Paterson...Patterson...whatever).

From Paterson's website, the stuff sounds a bit like Rodinal and is

better suited to conventional films (rather than T-Max/Deltas).

Anybody have experience with this soup? Any suggestions for films it

flatters or potential horror combinations? I shoot a good deal of

Delta 100s and 400s along with a bit of Pan-F and HP-5+; my usual

developers are ID-11 or DD-X, though I've tried Rodinal a time or two.

 

Steve

[kaiyen]

I think someone has mentioned it working well with FP4 in the past. :-) Might want to give that a try.

 

allan

 

ps - if you don't get the :-) reference, just asking anyone about a certain HB, who was formerly known as MS...

[chris_waller]

I used to use it in the past and it worked well with all the films I used, i.e. FP4, HP5, Tri-X etc. By the time the Delta series of films arrived I had moved on to Rodinal. Acutol is an excellent developer with no vices, but I preferred the keeping qualities of Rodinal. Acutol, once opened, needs to be used fairly quickly.

[jim_appleyard]

Just where is Hans when you need him? Apparently, this is a very good film/dev combo!

 

Never tried Acutol, but I can say that I've gotten very good results with Pan-F and APX 100 in Rodinal. ID-11/D-76 is always good too.

[patrick_gainer]

I had a discussion via email with MS and did a comparison of Acutol and PC-TEA for him. There is very little difference between them when they are developed to the same contast index. The curve for PC-TEA does not bend over at the top of the curve as Acutol does, but that happens beyond most SBR's. I sent him a sample of PC-TEA, but have heard no more about it.

[joe_k.]

Coincidence that this comes up... Finally finished our first roll of Neopan SS, and we'll be trying it in same this afternoon. (After a round of phone calls and old-wives-tale testing to try to narrow down a time...)<BR><BR>I've been relying on <A HREF="http://www.pbase.com/crcherry/b_w&page=19">this guy's gallery</A> for some vague idea of how different combinations scan (easier route is to use that site's search feature for it); images.google.com for "Acutol" will pick up a few samples as well.<BR><BR>On the subject: Anyone have thoughts as to why most of the samples seem to have the tonality of a graycard?* Just some coincidence of the people who use it not doing as much postprocessing, or is this what to expect from a vaguely 'compensating' (except everyone-save-said-advocate claims it doesn't really) developer? Or a coincidence of the few people publishing results shooting on overcast days? :}<BR><BR>*Maybe I'm abusing 'tonality' there, but may as well abuse it instead of talking out of my posterior about gammas and curves.

[al_divenuti]

>>Just where is Hans when you need him?

 

I don't know and refuse to contemplate the question until the situation arises, which isn't now.

 

Hans (nee Scarpitti) was always fixated on any developer that created a film shoulder and seemed to pay no heed that outside of PanF+ and, possibly, some of the Efke emulsions, you'd be hard-pressed to find any film that showed evidence of a shoulder at a density that would fit within the useful exposure scale of an enlarging paper when developed to normal contrast. He used to wax poetic about Neopan 400's shoulder in Acutol oblivious to the fact that there is no 000 grade paper with an R of 250.

 

By all accounts Acutol is a very good accutance developer. It may be just the ticket for APX-100, FP4+, and Delta 100 in 35mm if you wish to do street shooting with these films with a hand-held camera as it appears to give very good speed (perhaps double the ISO) with slow and medium speed films. Except it to have just about the same grain as ID-11; maybe very slightly more.

 

Rodinal isn't really similar to Acutol. It actually reduces film speed slightly, is quite grainy, and though it has good sharpness its accutance is not a match for Acutol. Tonality is very different than Acutol in that Rodinal seems to depress the lower midtones and expand highlights. I very much like the look of APX100 in Rodinal (in 35mm and 120) when printed on Forte Polygrade V. Acutol's tonality is probably more in the vein of ID-11.

[joe_k.]

Hmm. I'll probably toss a scan up tonight or tomorrow, but the result of my Neopan SS experiment (shot at the DX-coded 100, 1+14, 8 minutes @ 20C) seems to be 'overexposed and underdeveloped.' Dunno who came up with the idea that "thin, reedy" negatives are better for scanning, or if "compensation" really took place, but my hunch is to take that claimed speed increase to heart (and perhaps add development time?) if you want something resembling a normal negative. (On the other hand, if you meter for highlights, maybe this isn't a problem... I'm starting to wonder if my approach there isn't a little weird.)<BR><BR>Also stumbled across <A HREF="http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Mortensen/mortensen.html">this article</A> that mentions a technique of bleaching before development... could that be a mechanism for the supposedly nonexistant compensation effect of this stuff?

[elek_ludvigh]

Hi Steve,

 

Acutol is one of my favorite developers along with Xtol, PMK and Formulary FX2. I shoot a lot of landscapes with extreme subject brightness range and find Acutol 1-14 gives nice copensation results.

It has excellent acutance and is way less grainy than Rodinal, but the shelf life is only about 4 or 5 months once opened.

 

About 70% of my 35 MM landscapes these days are shot on Acros 100 processed in Acutol 1-14 for 8.5 min.@ 68 degrees with 4 gentle inversions per minute. Delta 100 also works wonderfully but is a tad less sharp and a bit grainer. Fp4+ in Acutol 1-14 as per M.S. reports provides outstanding tonality and acutance with tight, unobtrusive grain.

 

To me the only films Acutol doesn't do an excellent job on are the over 125 ISO films and Patterson, if I recall correctly does not recomend it for such.

 

Regards

 

Jay Ludvigh