Brian Ellis (beellis@gte.net)
Tue, 02 Feb 1999 21:17:34 -0500
Hi Liam - I've been following the pyro discussion with interest. I've never
tried pyro, in large part because I devoted quite a lot of time and effort to
testing T Max 100 and HP5+ in 120 and 4x5 formats in D 76 1-1 that I haven't
wanted to have to go through that again (I hate testing). However, I've always
had a problem when printing sky and clouds. The negative can look great, the
contact sheet can look great, but as soon as I enlarge even to 8x10 the clouds
and sky disappear into almost blank white and I end up having to do a lot of
burning in to bring them back to anything like what the contact sheet looked
like. So, my question (which I hope isn't too stupid) is whether you think pyro
might be of some help with this problem. I ask it partly because I remember
reading an article by Gordon Hutchings in "View Camera" a few years ago, in
which I believe he said that he first became interested in pyro because of some
wonderful cloud effects that he was able to get with no other developer. Anyhow,
if you have any thoughts on this I'd like to hear them. Thanks. Brian
Liam Lawless wrote:
> Hi Gary,
>
> I'm sure you'll shortly be inundated wth messages, none of them brief, but
> I'd like to mention what I consider to be one huge benefit of PMK, but which
> no-one else seems to have picked up on.
>
> As well as being clumsy (see my glyoxal message), I'm absolutely hopeless
> with a paintbrush and therefore do not bother to spot silver prints - if it
> don't come out right, it goes straight in the bin. I always had terrible
> trouble with spots on prints despite taking every reasonable precaution; not
> polka dots exactly, just tiny little specks, but if there's a speck in the
> sky I'll find it, and having found it the print is ruined for me. (Funny
> thing, though, I'm not nearly as critical when looking at other people's
> work.) Anyway, I finally concluded that it was something to do with the
> water (very hard round here).
>
> This might be right or wrong, but pyro, being a tanning developer, hardens
> film as it develops, and in fact hardens in proportion to the developed
> silver densities. Now the trouble I had with spots on prints was due to
> dirt, dust or other crud - whatever the source might have been - getting
> onto my wet films. (Since I used filtered water and a filtered drying
> cabinet, I believe it must have been the water; in certain circumstances I
> think the calcium in hard water can agglomerate to form particles big enough
> to cause problems.) Now in normal developers the gelatin of the emulsion
> layer swells considerably during development, and contracts again as it
> dries after the final wash, and any foreign bodies that find their way onto
> a swollen wet emulsion tend to become trapped as the gelatin contracts,
> whereafter they are all but impossible to remove.
>
> Since a tanning developer hardens the film as it develops, the emulsion
> layer does not swell during processing and all the rubbish that used to get
> stuck to my films now flies away with a couple of puffs of the blower brush.
> A spot on one of my prints is now the exception rather than the rule, and
> I'm eternally grateful to Monsieur Hutchings for bringing pyro to my notice.
>
> As a matter of interest, someone mentioned pyrocatechin (a.k.a.
> pyrocatechol, or just catechol) the other day. I tried this probably 8-10
> years before I'd even heard of PMK: it produces a weaker stain than pyro,
> but also tans and gives the same sharpness, but the fog level of the first
> film I developed seemed so high (which I now know to be due to staining)
> that I thought something had gone wrong and didn't even bother to print the
> film, or try it again. Wasn't that silly?
>
> Liam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gary Miller <gmphotos@earthlink.net>
> To: Alternative Photo Group <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
> Date: 02 February 1999 20:03
> Subject: Pyro & Ag negs
>
> >Could someone from the 'pyro group' please tell me briefly the advantages
> of
> >using Pyro to develop negatives that will be used for making silver prints
> >and also enlarged to 8x10 for alternative printing.
> >Thanks.
> >
> >Gary Miller
> >
> >
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