Hi Carl;
My expereince with Pyro is very limited, but all of it is using the Jobo expert
drums, and I've not had the oxidation problem I have seen here and otehr places
addressed. My staining is always a nice sort of yellowish green, definitely not brown
or dark.
I may however do things a little differently, so I should explain my setup if
that is any help.
First off, I only use distilled water for the actuall developer. Our local
water supply is very hard, and I have noticed a great difference in improved quaility
with all B&W developers using distilled water over the local tap water. Bear in mind
that each city/county, etc, much less each country, has unique water in this reguard.
For example, my mother has a darkroom and on thier farm the well water has a high
quanitiy of minerals and a touch of sulfer in it, so I wonder how varying water quitly
from place to place affects Pyro.
Secondly, while I bought the drum, reels & loader, I had not the money fo the
complete system. My "solution" then was to buy a sheet of coated wood - the type used
in those white kitchen cabinets, screw down four large casters upside down, and rotate
my drum on top by hand, reversing every two minutes. I do not know at what speed I
rotate at, but surely I do not have the stamina to rotate it faster than the mechanized
system. Perhaps the rotation of the drum at a lower rate causes some change.
Finally, I mix my Pyro, parts A&B, just before it goes in the drum - well, I
dump int he two parts into the water, watch it change prety colours for 30 seconds or
so, stir, then in it goes. It comes out nice and dark after developing, and I dump it
right back in after fixing, without any rinse in between. For what it is worth, I never
use a hardening fixer - just never liked them. Ilford Hypam was always my favourite,
although I cannot find it lately, so I have been using Ilford rapid paper fixer on my
films. I do not know aobut pyro, but again, different fixers really react differently
with my tap water around here. I use plain tap water for my stop & mixing fix.
Products such as Kodak hardening fixer - I never liked how they reacted with the local
tap water.
My only complaint is I am still learning to adjust my film speed down for use
with Pyro, so even with the staining my first negatives have been thin. But the detail
comapred to negatives in Xtol is astounding. If it takes me 6 months to learn this
stuff, I am going to stick with it.
joe
-- http://www.multiboard.com/~joneil Astro, Infra-red, Large format, B&W,