Hi Mark, I'm familiar with the good folks at Photographers' Formulary, and have recently been in touch with them. Great outfit with a broader range or products and services than their name suggests.
Yep, Rodinal's been around a l-o-n-g time, and it seems that the formula has changed over the past hundred years or so. There are several different Rodinal formulas floating around and I think I'm going to try R09 in addition to the current stuff that's now in the darkroom. The technique of high dilution and long development times is especially appealing. For the most part I've used it @ 1:100 with five seconds of very gentle agitation once per minute. I'd like to try about half that agitation cycle at some point. Thanks so much for the HC-110 site. It looks like a great place to get some good information. I'll be dropping back in and spending some more time there ... I've rethought the D23 choice, at least for the time being. The D76/ID-ll, Rodinal, HC-110 choices seem like the way to go for now. Long ago I gave up on Dektol for my negs unless looking for a very specific effect. Thanks again for the pointers ;-)) Shel > [Original Message] > From: Mark Cassino > > Photographers' Formulary sells D23 mixes - generic, not the Kodak. They have > a large selection of old formula B&W chemistry. > > www.photoformulary.com > > Rodinal is billed as the oldest continuously produced commercial developer, > orginally patented in 1891. People argue that the current Agfa Rodinal is > not the same as the original 19th century forumla. You can buy the original > Rodinal from JandCphoto.com . > > I think D23 or D76 diluted would be good choices. For an old fashioned, > high contrast, 'press' look (probably not what you want) you can try the > paper developer Dektol, which is extremely close to D72 which was widely > used for both film an dpaper in newsrooms in the early XX century. It is a > very high contrast developer - much like D19. > > HC110 is a very versatile developer. This site > http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/hc110/ has a ton of info on it. > > HC110 and Rodinal have become my mainstays - by varying the dilutions and > agitation process, you can fine tune the contrast a lot. A high dilution of > HC110 with low agitation brings out the compensating effect which helps with > shadow detail. > > In terms of resources, the Morgan & Morgan Darkroom Guide to be a very handy > reference.
