D76: Which Working Solution?

[boris_riabov1]

Hello,

 

It's my first time in the darkroom and I've heard many people say different things about this developer. I already mixed 1G batch. Some

people suggest 1+0 working solution, but others suggest 1+1? Which one should I choose if I want my prints to be less grainy?

[ronald_moravec1]

For least grain, just use the stock. 1:1 picks up some grain and a bit of sharpness. 1:3 gets grain like Rodinal and is sharper yet.

 

All work nicely depending on what you want. That is why I am heading to my darkroom now to mix a liter.

 

Don`t let air get to it in a partial bottle and it will stay perfect for 6 months if well sealed. I put the liter in eight 4oz glass bottles for one shot use. A week in a partial bottle changes it, first more active, then it crashes in an unpredictable manner.

[big toys are better]

A few things to remember about all developing solutions:

 

1. The more dilute the developer, the more likely you will have some compensation in contrast range, where the highlights develop proportionally less and the shadows and mid-tones more. This is the reason Rodinal is much loved by those that seek to carefully control such things. Rodinal has other nice features, but read on.

 

2. Solvent developers like D-76 soften the grain by actually dissolving the silver, and dilution will reduce this effect. Choose you dilution of D-76 is this effect in mind, as Tro-X, HP-5 and other fast films in the 35mm format in particular will benefit from that softening.

 

3. Different developers have different characteristics, although some are essentially copies or slight variations/improvements of others.. If you are working in 35mm, then keeping your grain size down is usually a significant concern (this is bet accomplished by choice of film and the developer), but in larger formats, especially sheet films, controlling the image characteristics is usually more important to the user than the actual grain size and even its sharpness. Scanning of negatives for digital printing is an area I can't address with any expertise, but I would expect that there is a relationship in final image quality to be found between scanner resolution and film sharpness.

 

To answer your question precisely, the straight strength D-76 will definitely give "finer" but also softer grain. If your film is not a 400 ISO class film, then grain size is less important and 1:1 might be a better choice.

 

IF you begin to shoot slow fine grained films such as those in the 25 to 50 ISO class films, use a different developer, such as well diluted Rodinal or HC-110. The latter is a good choice for a 35mm darkroom since it is an excellent liquid solvent type developer that is quite stable in its full strength stock concentration, plus offers very nice qualities for general developing efforts as well as more technically oriented contrast control. Rodinal is also a very stable liquid but it is also not a solvent developer, and should mostly be used only for fine grained films where its contrast control capabilities are legendary.