The Best Negatives are Surprisingly Easy!
Snowy Chairs
If you want a guaranteed method of making great negatives just reach for Barry Thornton’s two bath metol developer. The man was a master of simple formulations providing this and his pyrocatechin 2-bath for our pleasure. This metol 2-bath is like an updated Stoekler, sharper, and with great contrast. His pyrocatechin 2-bath is maybe the sharpest pictoral developer I’ve ever used - bar none. Just look at the photograph above. The detail in the snow is beautiful, something many developers cannot easily attain and this developer did it automatically.
Bath A Metol 6.5g Sodium sulphite 80g Water to 1 liter
Bath B Sodium metaborate 12g Water to 1 liter (To make the metaborate use 8.4g borax and 1.8g sodium hydroxide)
Develop FP4+ for 4.5 mins in A agitating for the first 30 seconds then 5 seconds each 30 seconds. Pour back and pour in bath B and agitate for the first 5 seconds, then 10 seconds every minute for 4.5 minutes.
Stop and fix. Gorgeous negatives every time!
- HP5+ needs 5 minutes A and the same for B
- PAN F+ needs 4 minutes.
- Unknown film? Give it 4.5 mins A and B.
- Don’t rinse between A and B.
- Don’t pre-wet
- Don’t throw away the developer but pour back A into its bottle for reuse, same for B.
- Develops 15 films