Agfa 120 brownton print developer; which time to follow?

October 20, 2006, from Lloyd Erlick,



On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 06:30:01 GMT,
"QueenAdelle via PhotoKB.com" u15922@uwe
wrote:

I've never used Agfa WA.

It's a nice developer. But it's not magic,
and it's easily replaced by a choice of who
knows how many formulae we can mix ourselves.

Also, any commercial developer will sit on
some seller's shelf for some time. How long
might that be?



It's a desert here when it comes to black and
white
photography supplies,


This could be looked upon as good fortune ...




so I mix most of my chemicals now from
scratch.


All kinds of advantages to this. I bought
commercial darkroom products for years, and
now I'm sorry I ever did. I started out as a
teenager, and I can see I was played for a
sucker many times. Kodak Hypo Clearing Agent
in official yellow overpriced packets, or two
per cent sodium sulfite mixed fresh each time
I use it? Seems clear to me now, I'm sorry we
can't reach all the young newcomers who are
going to get the impression that since big
companies no longer make developers, they
shouldn't bother starting up with the
darkroom.






I
don't mind as I'm a 'geek' that way. :O I like learning to mix my chemicals,
and have a hands-on involvement with the elements that I use, as much as
possible. It's more loving to create photographs that way.


Yes, I think that's well said. It's a pretty
good definition for the word geek, too, if
you ask me.

I'm really tired of the way our culture
sneers at intelligence and intellect.

regards,
--le
________________________________
Lloyd Erlick Portraits, Toronto.
website: www.heylloyd.com
telephone: 416-686-0326
email:
________________________________
--

Lloyd Erlick wrote:

'D-23 for prints'.


D-23 for prints and I mean without the carbonate.
I'd have to dig up my test results but do recall that the
results struck me as identical to Ansco 120. Some
additional exposure was needed and likely more
development time; maybe five minutes.
Which brings me to a Glycine only developer. I think
a carbonated Glycine developer may just work and
give same results as one with TSP. How's your
supply of Potassium carbonate? After all there
are carbonated Glycine film developers. Dan

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:46:45 -0400, Lloyd Erlick Lloyd at @the-wire.
dot com wrote:

I wish we could rename it.

Shoot ! Just make a slight variation in the formula and call it
anything you want ! It's not like Agfa, Kodak, et al have even looked
at one of the old formulas for some time. They're too busy trying to
save their butts from the Digital Debacle (tm).

==
John S. Douglas
Photographer & Webmaster
Legacy-photo.com - Xs750.net

October 28, 2006, from Lloyd Erlick,


Here is the url for an interesting book of
Agfa formulas. Agfa 120 is listed as a
Metol-only formula, similar to Ansco 120.



http://pictorialists.com/assets/appl...a_formulas.pdf



regards,
--le
________________________________
Lloyd Erlick Portraits, Toronto.
website: www.heylloyd.com
telephone: 416-686-0326
email:
________________________________
--

October 28, 2006, from Lloyd Erlick,

The following url is a page of Agfa formulas.
It lists Agfa 120 as a hydroquinone-only
paper developer.


http://bjornburton.org/agfa.html.gz


regards,
--le
________________________________
Lloyd Erlick Portraits, Toronto.
website: www.heylloyd.com
telephone: 416-686-0326
email:
________________________________
--

On Sat, 28 Oct 2006 15:09:43 -0400, Lloyd Erlick Lloyd at @the-wire.
dot com wrote:

October 28, 2006, from Lloyd Erlick,


Here is the url for an interesting book of
Agfa formulas. Agfa 120 is listed as a
Metol-only formula, similar to Ansco 120.


http://pictorialists.com/assets/appl...a_formulas.pdf

LOL ! More and more confusion. No wonder Agfa (Actien-Gesellschaft für
Anilin-Fabrikation) went under. And when exactly did Geveart become
part of thier history anyway ? I happened to have the 1948 British
Photographic Journals Almanac at hand and looked for the Agfa 120
formula and the only mention of an Agfa formula is a Gevaert brew. Not
a single Agfa or Ansco formula in the entire book

==
John S. Douglas
Photographer & Webmaster
Legacy-photo.com - Xs750.net

On 20 Oct 2006 14:25:31 -0700, wrote:

After all there
are carbonated Glycine film developers. Dan

Or would one even need something as powerful as carbonate to use
Glycin ? I would think that metaborate would work as well without the
grain likelihood of grain clumping.

==
John S. Douglas
Photographer & Webmaster
Legacy-photo.com - Xs750.net

"Lloyd Erlick" Lloyd at @the-wire. dot com wrote in
message ...
On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:15:42 +0100, "lofty"
wrote:

Where does one buy Agfa 120 brownprint from?
Nice to know there are lots more darkroom workers out
there



October 19, 2006, from Lloyd Erlick,

Over the eons many manufacturers in
photography have come and gone. Some of them
published the formulas for various products.

Agfa published many developer formulas, for
which they thoughtfully provided numbers.
Agfa 120 is a print developer containing a
single developing agent, hydroquinone. Agfa
120 is reputed to yield warm image tone.

As the years passed and corporate changes
came and went, the formula numbers became a
little scrambled and hard to follow. Agfa
became involved with Ansco, which also
published a lot of numbered formulas. So some
confusion exists - e.g., Ansco 120 and Agfa
120. There were times when they were two
separate companies and times when they were
one outfit. (Sometimes the nomenclature will
be 'Ansco-Agfa' or 'Agfa-Ansco', just to
confuse it more.)

In any case, the published formulas are no
source of profit to any of the manufacturers
any more, so no support exists. Agfa and
Ansco don't exist, either. Even Kodak is
brushing off anything to do with black and
white print making.

But as long as plain bulk chemicals still
exist, many interesting developers can be
made easily and cheaply by the individual
darkroom worker. I'm glad there are plenty of
us left, too!

Richard Knoppow neatly solved the
nomenclature problem by adding the word 'old'
to certain formula names. Here is the formula
he posted in this newsgroup for Agfa 120, a
Hydroquinone-only warm tone print developer:


Old Agfa 120 Brown Black Developer

Water 1.0 liter
Hydroquinone 24.0 grams
Sodium sulfite, anhydrous 60.0 grams
Potassium Carbonate 80.0 grams
Potassium bromide 2.0 grams

Directions are to dilute from 1 to 2 to 1 to
8 for different papers.



Personally, I prefer to mix a print developer
straight to a working solution. I don't like
to store bottles of liquid concentrate. I
find the much more dilute working solution
quick and easy to prepare in most cases. I
don't want to worry about how the developer
changes in storage. For the above formula,
which may be diluted over such a wide range,
I'd find out which one suits me best and
simply weigh out the chemicals needed for
that working solution when I wanted to use
it.


I've actually used the above formula to make
prints. I never really got used to it,
though. I did not use it often enough.

Recently I ran out of Metol, which somehow
prompted me to try other developing agents.
For some reason I seem to gravitate to print
developers that contain only a single
developing agent, and I've just finished off
250 grams of Glycin. I have a ten year old
container of Hydroquinone I think I might get
into. I like warm tone prints, and supposedly
Hydroquinone is good for that.

Incidentally, in photography there is a bit
of confusion over nomenclature for dilution.
The Agfa 120 formula above specifies a rather
broad range of dilution for the concentrate,
so dilution nomenclature is important.

Normal chemists' practice is to use the colon
to denote a ratio, for example 1:3. In
chemistry, the second number represents the
*total* amount or volume of the *solution*,
so the first number would represent one-third
of the total. It would mean one part diluted
until the total (perhaps 'final' would be a
better word) volume came to three parts.

In darkroom circles, thanks to the kind folks
at Kodak many moons ago, the second number
has come to mean the amount or volume of
water added to dilute the first. Thus, 1:3
would mean a total of four parts, of which
the first number represents one-quarter.

Ilford at least clarified, if not solved, the
problem by replacing the colon with a
plus-sign, e.g., 1+3. This denotes one part
concentrate plus three parts water for four
parts of solution in total. Darkroom work
always follows this Idiot's Guide
nomenclature, unless, perhaps, a chemist is
working in the darkroom...

regards,
--le
________________________________
Lloyd Erlick Portraits, Toronto.
website: www.heylloyd.com
telephone: 416-686-0326
email:
________________________________
--
As far as I can tell Agfa published different formulas in
its European literature than in U.S. literature. In the U.S.
literature formula 120 is a soft working developer with
Metol as the only developing agent. It is very similar to
Kodak Selectol Soft, for which there is no published formula
but the MSDS tells the tale. The European 120 is the
Hydroquinone direct brown-black formula referred to above. A
similar formula was published by Agfa/Ansco in the US as
Agfa 110.
The Hydroquinone formula evidently looses a lot of paper
speed and probably does not produce very good blacks. In any
case the instructions are for papers made by Agfa in the
1930's and may not be directly translatable to modern ones.
The instructions for Agfa 110 state that the stock should
be diluted one part stock with 5 parts water. Prints should
be given 3 to 4 times normal exposure and developed 5. to 7
minutes at 68F.
Developer temperature is not critical for print
developers, the paper just developes faster as the developer
becomes warmer. Unlike negatives, which are developed to
relatively low contrast and maximum density, prints are
developed about as far as they will go, that is enough to
get close to the maximum density of which the paper is
capable, and to about its maximum contrast. This usually can
be judged visually, in any case a couple of tests will
indicate the right time.
Very warm tone developers, like the one above, will
produce their warmest tones when diluted and when the paper
is exposed enough for relatively short development time. The
stronger the developer or the longer the development time
the cooler the image color will tend to be.
For reference here is Agfa/Ansco 110

Direct Brown Black Developer Agfa 110
Water (at 125F or 52C) 750.0 ml
Hydroquinone 22.5 grams
Sodium Sulfite, dessicated 57.0 grams
Sodium Carbonate, monohydrated 75.0 grams
Potassium Bromide 2.75 grams
Water to make 1.0 liter

Note that the use of Potassium Carbonate in the formula
posted is a good indication it comes from a European source.
Agfa made a lot of Potassium salts as a by-product of other
chemical manufacture and liked to specify it in their
formulas. There is some indication that the use of Potassium
salts rather than Sodium in warm tone developers results in
slightly warmer tones. However, I would not go out of my way
to obtain it.
Probably a a better warm tone developer is Agfa/Ansco 115
which contains Glycin as well as Hydroquinone. Glycin is
available although quite expensive. For reference I give the
formula below. It has the advantage of over developers like
Agfa 110 of producing pronounced brownish tones with minimum
speed loss.

Agfa/Ansco 115
Stock Solution
Water (at 125F or 52C) 750.0 ml
Sodium Sulfite, dessicated 90.0 grams
Sodium Carbonate, monohydrated 150.0 grams
Glycin 30.0 grams
Hydroquinone 9.5 grams
Potassium Bromide 4.0 grams
Water to make 1.0 liter

For use dilute one part stock with 3 parts water and develop
for 2.5 to 3 minutes at 68F. For very warm tones but low
contrast shadows dilute 1 part stock with 6 parts water and
give prints 3 to 4 times normal exposure, develop for 2.5 to
5 minutes. Tray life and capacity of the highly diluted
working solution is quite limited.


--
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA

L
I'm really tired of the way our culture
sneers at intelligence and intellect.

regards,
--le

Hi, Lloyd. Thanks for the links. That will be useful information for a lot
of photographers.

Calling a person on an intellectual pursuit a 'geek' is just society's way of
showing that majority wins. Not everyone is interested in intellectual stuff,
so society has to brand those who are and sneer at 'geekiness' to validate
their non-interest and continue thinking that it's the right thing. They're
just validating themselves, because if they don't, they'll wake up to the
fact that they are not utilizing the capacity of the human mind, that
they're becoming shallow; and that's disturbing.

As for the modern culture, I guess geekiness is creeping back into our times-
-in the form of techno geeks. Is that good or bad? So much for thoughts.

Thanks for your help.

--
+Shakti V.

Message posted via PhotoKB.com
http://www.photokb.com/Uwe/Forums.as...kroom/200610/1

L
I'm really tired of the way our culture
sneers at intelligence and intellect.

regards,
--le

Hi, Lloyd. Thanks for the links. That will be useful information for a lot
of photographers.

Calling a person on an intellectual pursuit a 'geek' is just society's way of
showing that majority wins. Not everyone is interested in intellectual stuff,
so society has to brand those who are and sneer at 'geekiness' to validate
their non-interest and continue thinking that it's the right thing. They're
just validating themselves, because if they don't, they'll wake up to the
fact that they are not utilizing the capacity of the human mind, that
they're becoming shallow; and that's disturbing.

As for the modern culture, I guess geekiness is creeping back into our times-
-in the form of techno geeks. Is that good or bad? So much for thoughts.

Thanks for your help.

--
Message posted via PhotoKB.com
http://www.photokb.com/Uwe/Forums.as...kroom/200610/1