[ChrisPlatt]

What is the useful life of a partially filled open bottle of Clayton F76 Plus developer?

Chris

[pres589]

I've been working through a gallon of the stuff that I opened six months ago. No signs of problems with it. What I've read online (grain of salt there) says that this stuff should be good for a few years opened if not messed with too much. I refill a quart bottle as needed, otherwise I leave the gallon jug alone.

EDIT: In experience gained working with a jug that had been open for a year, don't try that. The company recommends 6 months and I think that's the right way to go. Posts about this later in this thread.

[pres589]

First an image and then some thoughts.



That's F76+ and Fomapan 400. I took that shot weeks ago and cannot remember exact camera/lens settings. I think f8, probably a two second exposure, maybe four. Taken with my M 50 1.7 and Ricoh XR7. Took five shots like that and liked this one the most; the others don't have trailing lights from a car in them like this one does, and I thought this was the most fun. Developing time of 24 minutes to try and achieve a push.

About that; I don't think F76 is a useful developer for pushing. I'm not sure how much of a push is really being accomplished with these long development times. They are nice and contrasty, sort of like old newspaper photos, if that makes sense. But I'm not able to summon added speed out of these films really from everything I've seen and learned through this process.

I've still got a lot of F76 here and I think it's a great developer when working either with decent light OR a tripod and I have plenty of exposure time. It seems to be lasting fine while I slowly go through the stuff. But these pushes aren't really netting me what I was hoping for. I can see myself trying some other developer to attempt some stand development and pushing that way.

[stevierose]

Thanks for posting. I have found that Xtol is excellent for push processing. I have used F76+ mainly for developing films near their rated speeds and have not tried it for push processing myself. However, I will note that F76+ is used by a number of high quality professional labs as their BW developer for all processing including push processing so it may be worth contacting them to ask about it. I know these labs use it:
Old School Photo Lab (Photosmith) in Dover, NH oldschoolphotolab.com
PhotoVision Prints in Salem, OR Not Your Ordinary Film Lab ? PhotoVision
PAIP lab in Hattiesburg, MS. PhotoArts Imaging Professionals, film, photo, A-V conservators

Kim Dubois at PAIP and Steve at Old School are both very knowledgeable about F76+ and would be worth contacting for advice about F76+

I will ping Kim and see what she says.

[pres589]

I don't feel like I have a great method for determining if a push really took place or not. I probably need to learn more about zones and using a grey gradient card and the rest of it. It's kind of exciting to have new things to learn which would help me become a better photographer while it's also an odd challenge that I don't really want to start right now. This is definitely more involved that playing with the exposure slider in Lightroom to boost a RAW file that was underexposed.

I would be interested in what they have to say. When I look back at some of the images in this thread, especially from the early stuff, it's like... why wasn't that scene brighter if this stuff is really supposed to be acting like it's ISO 1600? To me it really feels like I should just set the ISO on the camera to 400 or maybe 600 and add developer time to increase contrast with F76.

The developer that has me interested lately is HC-110 for pushing and stand development. Also Dektol but I don't know if I'll play with that stuff or not. It seems even less mentioned online than F76.

[pres589]

Ever shot Ultrafine Extreme 400? Ever developed it... in Clayton F76+??

I believe these were both metered to ISO 800. They were developed with a roll that was metered to multiple speeds. 1+9 dilution, 16.5 minutes total soup time, 45 seconds initial agitation and two inversions every 30 seconds after initial. I really like the way these came out. Why this film isn't talked about more, I do not know, but here we are;





I'd like to shoot the daylights out of this combination for a while but I'm about to move across the country and I need to stop developing film basically today so that will have to wait a while. There were other shots on the roll that I metered to EI 1600 and they came out great. I feel like this is one of those times where the film and F76 could actually push to EI 3200.

[disconnekt]

Never tried Xtreme 400, but I did recently got the Xtreme 100 bulk roll to shoot with. Still waiting for B&H to ship my order I put on the 22nd 😡

[pres589]

This was the first time I played with the stuff. I basically treated it like Tri-X 400 from a dev standpoint. I would really like to have more time with it, in different settings, but so far this role looks really good to me. Good contrast vs. tonality compromise, just enough grain to look like film, seems pretty push-able, etc. Curious how it would do with some extreme pushing stand development in HC-110. I'm optimistic that it would respond nearly as well as Tri-X 400.

[disconnekt]

This was the first time I played with the stuff. I basically treated it like Tri-X 400 from a dev standpoint. I would really like to have more time with it, in different settings, but so far this role looks really good to me. Good contrast vs. tonality compromise, just enough grain to look like film, seems pretty push-able, etc. Curious how it would do with some extreme pushing stand development in HC-110. I'm optimistic that it would respond nearly as well as Tri-X 400.

From what I've read online, alot of people who have shot Ultrafine Xtreme (both 100 & 400) have said that it's very similiar to Ilford's Kentmere-branded film's, especially on how both brands dry very flat, have low-ish contrast, and have very similar development times.

Funny how you mentioned HC-110, I ordered the LegacyPro L-110 film developer (their "version" of Hc110) and am planning to use that to develop the UE 100 film.

[pres589]

I think I've shot a single roll of Kentmere 400 and that was well before I was doing my own development. Therefore, I can't speak to UE 400 == Kentmere 400, although I have also noticed that equivalence discussed online. If Kentmere 400 is a flat-drying, low contrast film, then I don't think this is that. Mine dried curled *the long way*, like it came out of the cassette with a bend in it, vs. curled over the short way which makes some films harder to scan (Ultramax 400, I'm looking at you here). I don't think I would describe the UE 400 roll I developed as having high contrast, but I don't know if low contrast is where I would put it, either. Middle contrast? Is that a term?

I thought this was interesting; I like this guy's film reviews: Film Review Blog No. 34 – Ultrafine Extreme 400 – Alex Luyckx | Blog

I can take a photo of the edge markings if anyone is interested to try and determine if this is some rebranded stock. It says it's Ultrafine 400 from memory and nothing about Harman, Ilford, Kodak, etc etc.


I don't know how close L-110 really is to HC-110. It may be "close enough" but I'm really interested in HC-110 for pushing via stand development. That might take things well beyond the similarity of these two developers. Looking back, I should have done more reading about how to determine if a developer will be useful for stand development, and if F76 would have worked there as well, but there's a *ton* of information to sort through to figure this stuff out and it starts going over my head pretty badly.

[disconnekt]

Yeah, at times there's either alot on information or too little out there for a certain product that it's tough to know if it's true or people are just blowing smoke

[pres589]

After a move across the country, I'm back in business. This isn't the first roll I developed. That one seemed to have suffered from stop bath that isn't really stopping anymore; half of the roll came out basically full-on black with nothing showing, not even the edge markings of the film. So that was a drag. I'm using a water rinse in place of the stop bath and that seems to have fixed it. Still trying to get my workflow down again in a new space; I moved across the country since my last photo was posted to this thread.

Of note, I'm still using the same developer that I was before. This is a gallon jug of F76 that I opened a full year ago. It's half used. I think that's pretty cool.

And so, with that, Ultrafine eXtreme 400, EI 1600, developed for 19 minutes at 1+9 with Clayton F76+;



Gas prices are down in my neighborhood. This was shot with a lot of high level cloud cover so the sky was effectively very light grey.

[pres589]

I'm starting to really question my judgement when I thought that the jug of developer I have is still good. I've developed four rolls of film with it since getting set up to play around with film again. The first had been exposed last October, stored in a fridge, then a cooler in a shipping container (the cooler to try and keep the temperature swings slowed to make life easier for the film), then back into a fridge for a few months before developing. It came out really weird, grainy/foggy, a bunch of frames came out jet black, etc. I assumed the film was at fault as black frames = developer is functional. Next roll developed was fairly normal if a bit overly contrasty like the picture above. I assumed that it's a pushed roll, that's life, and moved on. Next roll was exposed last November/December time frame, spent most of its stored life in a fridge, but came out extremely grainy as well and a few frames had some kind of containment washed over them. Like there was some debris in the developer soup.

I scrubbed down everything with a toothbrush and some citrus degreaser, rinsed very well in tap water, and went out with a roll of Foma 400 in my MX. I set the ISO to 200; I pulled a roll of Foma 400 in F76 a while ago which is shown on page 3 of this thread. Same times used as before. The negative is hanging to dry; nearly all frames are extremely thin, almost uselessly, save for the first frame for some reason. The leader came out looking quite dark as it should be. I'm not sure what to blame here. I'm using water as a stop bath, doing three full exchanges of water through the tank with the last exchange getting 25 inversions to try and really flush the developer before moving on to fixer. I should probably go ahead and order new developer now and just have it over with. Which, if that's the case, I think I'm going to try some HC-110 for a while.

EDIT: After six hours drying time I inspected the developed roll. Hopelessly thin. I threw it away. Ordered six more rolls of Foma 400 and a fresh liter of F76. I would like to try branching out to a different developer but I have film I still want to develop and I want to use a developer I'm familiar with to get that done. HC-110, Ilfotec HC, or maybe TMax RS are all interesting to me right now. I also have some paper developer coming to play.

[pres589]

I'm back at it with Foma 400 and F76;



This was shot with the ISO dial on my Ricoh XR7 set to 200. I developed this for the normal amount of time for Foma 400 per the Massive Dev Chart at 8 minutes in 1:9 soup. Sunny day shooting with a Tamron 90mm f2.5 Adaptall pretty close to minimum focusing distance. A little bit of tweaking in Lightroom but nothing major. Could see trimming a bit of dev time off, like 30 seconds, or maybe a little less agitation just to get the grain down a little.

[pres589]

F76 time! That's right I'm back with a new bottle of Clayton F76+ and I fully intend to use it. Let's go... with Ilford FP4!




Sunny day shooting at box speed. No pushing this time. 9 minutes in some 1+9 soup. I really like this film.



This was an overcast day and I think FP4 was a good film for the scene. I don't have any idea why there were picnic tables out in the woods like this. I kind of want to go back with a wide angle lens. I think I took this with my M 50 f1.7. From the same roll as the above shot.