A high-definition, divided developer tuned for paper negatives. It is designed to avoid highlight block-up and to give as much shadow detail as possible. The shoulder on these negatives will generally be big and round. Highlight values will be flattened out, but still separated thanks to adjacency effects. Shadow values are present, but not endless.
There is no magic developer that will make paper look like film, but this one at least extends the dynamic range quite a bit compared to developing in Dektol.
Bath A, stock
Distilled water, warm: 800ml
Metol: 5g
Sodium sulfite: 25g
Thymol: 5 or 6 crystals
Distilled water to make: 1000mlMix in the order given. The thymol crystals are there to prevent mold growth. Feel free to omit it if you’ll be using the developer quickly.
Bath B
Distilled water, warm: 800ml
Borax: 5g
Distilled water to make: 1000mlTray setup
This is a divided developer, so bath A and B go in separate trays.
Dilute bath A 1 + 4 with distilled water. After developing, discard it. At tray strength, it’s too weak to be reused.
Bath B is used full strength and kept between sessions. Discard and mix a fresh bath B after developing 10 8×10 sheets or equivalent.
Developing Times
Bath A
Develop 6 to 9 minutes using intermittent agitation: 30 seconds initial continuous agitation, then 10 seconds every 3 minutes afterward.
Bath B
Develop 3 minutes with 30 seconds initial constant agitation to wash away any Bath A that’s still streaked across the surface. Then, let it be still for the rest of the time, keeping the emulsion surface under the solution at all times. Face-down is best, but watch out for trapped bubbles.
Notes
I developed this process for tray development on individual fiber-based negatives. It works okay with RC papers, but has a tendency towards streakiness in bath B and general weakness from not carrying as much developer over. I have no idea if it works using tanks or with multiple sheets in the tray simultaneously. If you try it that way, please let me know how it works.
Bath A is primarily developing the highlights in your negative. If you want a more dense negative, use a longer development time. If you want a less dense negative, one which may be better for scanning and a digital darkroom process, use a shorter time. You may want to experiment with even longer or shorter times than I’ve given here. There is a wide range of times that will give a usable negative. Feel free to experiment and find the time that works best for your images and your printing process.
In bath B, once you’ve agitated away the surface developer to avoid streaks, only the developer that’s soaked into the emulsion remains. This quickly exhausts in the dense hilight areas, but will keep going in the shadow areas, especially with the little kick-in-the-pants that the borax will give it. This is the compensating magic you may have read about in divided developers. It continues building density in the shadows until the developer is totally exhausted. Usually that takes about 3 minutes. Leaving the negative in bath B any longer than that won’t have any productive effect.
Do as little agitation as possible. Read Bill Troop’s explanation of minimal agitation on page 41 of The Film Developing Cookbook, 2nd edition. The key is to let the developer be still to encourage edge effects along high contrast edges. This increases contrast along the edge because exhausted developer will diffuse across the border and retard development of the shadow side, making it even darker. Simultaneously, fresher developer will diffuse from the shadow side across to the bright side, making the light side of the edge even lighter. If you agitate too much, the developer won’t sit in one place long enough to have any noticeable effect and your negatives will be flat and mushy.
Many thanks to Bill Troop and Steve Anchell. PND came directly from ideas in their books, The Film Developing Cookbook and The Darkroom Cookbook.
