Richard Knoppow wrote:
"i dot hodge at tiscali dot co dot uk" "i dot hodge at
tiscali dot co dot uk" wrote in message
...

I am in the process of setting up a darkroom at home to

continue a hobby

I stopped ten years ago. The last film I developed was

using ILFOSOL S,

because it was what we used a university. I have been

looking into using

ID-11 but have no experience of using replenisher, so

using a dilution

as a one shot developer makes sense to me. I wondered

though if there is

any change in the qualities of the negatives when using a

1+1 or 1+3

dilution? There doesn't seem to be any mention of any

effect on the

ilford site.

Thanks

Ian


There is some. ID-11, and the very similar Kodak D-76,
produce about the same quality at 1:1 as they do at full
strength. There may be some increase in grain but I've never
observed it. 1:1 is useful as a economical way of obtaining
uniform results when small quantities of film are to be
processed and is necessary for some films which have very
short development time. At 1:3 both developers begin to have
noticable acutance effects. These are due to local
exhaustion, which has teh effect of increasing the contrast
at the edges between high and low density areas. The eye
interprets this as sharpness. At the same time there may be
some reduction of the contrast of highlights (compensation).
I don't particularly like the way D-76 looks at 1:3 but its
just fine at 1:1 as is ID-11. Both are very good general
purpose developers and work with most films. Somewhat finer
grain and somewhat greater speed can be gotten with Kodak
Xtol. Higher speed with some additional grain with Ilford
Microphen or Kodak T-Max developers.


Thanks for the advice. I was just looking through the ilford site to
find a film developer that matches more the kind of work I take now,
which is landscape and architecture and ID-11 look like it. I've just
never used a powder developer and only get through small amounts of
film. I've never used anyone elses chemistry, so are there are better
developers made by other manufactures?

Thanks.