Peter Marshall (petermarshall@cix.co.uk)
Sat, 22 May 1999 13:19 +0100 (BST)
> FX-2 was not available in the late 1800's, and Atget certainly would not
> have fooled around with it. Crawley's FX formulas were created in the
> mid
> 1900's and published in the British Journal as well as the BJ
> Annuals.
Just to add a little to what Sil says. Crawley was for quite a long time
Editor of the BJP and still contributes regularly (I think he is described
as Technical Editor) mainly reviews of equipment and materials which are
notable for their thoroughness and practical testing - not just the
re-hashes of press packs that appear in so many publications.
His formulae are still published in the annual BJP 'The Big Book' which is
an essential reference for UK professional photographers, listing studios,
repairers, organisations, agencies etc.
The current edition includes his FX-1,1b,2,4,5,5b,11,15,19 and FX 37
formulae for b/w film along with other formulae including film and print
developers, fixers and toners (there is also a colour section).
Paterson market a number of his developers (they are available in the USA
as well) which I think generally have similar properties to the published
formulae but are all solutions generally used 1+9 or so, using added
components (alcohols?) to increase the solubility. The most interesting of
these to me is FX39 as this is specially formulated to get the best
results with TMax and Delta films. I tested this against T-Max, D76 and
Xtol for TMax 100 film and was amazed by its clearly superior sharpness
and also smoother grain. Although there wasn't any real difference in
grain size - it isn't a fine-grain developer- when I looked at high
degrees of enlargement so that the grain could clearly be seen the FX39
seemed to give less 'noise'. It also lets you rate the film at its ISO
speed or even slightly above.
FX37 (and I think I've posted the formula here before, but will dig it out
again if it isn't in the archive and anyone requests it) is I think a very
similar formula but for use at 1+3 only, but I haven't tried it.
Peter Marshall
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