Yes, that church again! I made another test! This time I have made up some FX55, the “Eco” (Vitamin C) developer created by the late, great, Geoffrey Crawley. It’s a two part developer, I found part A a doddle to mix, all the chemicals went into solution with ease. Part B was a different story, it’s part B that contains the actual developing agents, Phenidone and of course the Vit C. The base is propylene glycol, a slightly gloopy liquid, common in handwashes etc, and is neutral PH. What’s good about it, is that it doesn’t dissolve oxygen, and so the solution has a very very long shelf life – years. The Phenidone went into solution easy enough, but the Vit C took a lot of stirring and time – I got there in the end!
I made up 500ml of working solution which is 50ml Part A +450ml (1+9) water then 10ml of part B stirred in. Popped it into a bottle to stand in my 20 degree water bath ready to go. Cut another length of “Church FP4” and developed in my standard way. Then scanned the results in exactly the same way as the previous tests.
You may remember my disappointment at the performance of the “Rodinal Grain Reducer” and my pleasant surprise at the look of FP4 in “straight” Rodinal – this time the question was – “Wow! – where’s the grain gone?” !!!
Above are negs scanned in the same way as before, FX55 on the left and my “control” D23 on the right. I’ll be honest, just like last time, I was expecting the results to be reversed! I had assumed that the D23 would be the smoother, grain free image, and NOT the FX55 – how wrong was I?
I’ve stared at both and I’m not sure I can see much difference in sharpness between either, the D23 (right) may have a slight tiny bit more, certainly nothing major. The FX55 seems to win hands down in the grain department. These are from the very same roll of film! Compare this to the Rodinal tests:
My conclusions with this are:
- I’m amazed by FX55! I have enough replenisher for another 4 or 5 rolls use of D23, when that’s gone, I’m going to use FX55 for a while! (It may be a long while!).
- The results that I got from Rodinal 1+50 (straight) are in fact very close to D23, almost interchangeable – so I’m now, NOT dumping my Rodinal. The “Grain Reducer” didn’t work at all for me, so that I will be dumping!
- I understand that Rodinal Semi -Stand at 1+100 for an hour may improve the results further – I still have about 12 exposures of “church” left, so I’ll try it.
- In a similar vein, apparently FX55 diluted 1+1 improves the results too – I’ll try that too!
S.H.O.U.T. 