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Two Bath Developers (Film)
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Been reading a bit on two bath developers of late, and wondered if anyone here has any experience of using such.
From what I can see there are not too many commercial 2 bath developers available, but with their claimed ability to tame mixed contrast rolls of film (by delivering just adequate development to the shadows and just enough development to the highlights), it makes me wonder that the method is not more popular. A best kept secret perhaps ?
Reading a little of the book ‘Beyond Monochrome’ and ‘The Darkroom Cookbook’ introduced me to the concept, and has stoked my curiosity.
I’m still reading up on it, and see there are a few schools of thought at play, so would be quite interested if anyone has any hands on experience of using such a method..
Hmm.. not the most popular of subjects around here I guess.
It would seem two bath developers are a great option to process mixed exposure roll film, especially 35mm which is likely to have a greater mixture of exposures (from low to high dynamic range) due to the number of images per roll
I have never used any two bath film developers but I got some Diafine recently for P.I. member eunified61, so maybe he can inform you of his experiences.
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.Damien,
just came across this post – late reply, sorry :) How did you get on? I’m using e.g. Diafine a lot and can tell you that it is superb for certain films and not so good with others. It also increases nominal film speed, so you need to take that into account. Yes, compensating developers do help taming difficult (high) contrast subjects and can in fact make low contrast subjects look a bit too flat, but it is a very good option for many “mixed contrast” rolls of film and high contrast films nevertheless. It is also cheap, the processing temperature is not important and it also keeps for years. 3+3 minutes for all emulsions throughout its recommended temperature range is a good starting point. It is my most used developer next to HC110 (and perhaps DDX).Lol, its funny what a difference a year can make :) At the moment, its been a while since I’ve shot and developed anything on film, and after a sojourn from most things photographic towards the end of last year, and the start of this year, I’ve spent my photographic time dabbling with most things digital, after starting to shoot more digital for a few gigs that came my way.
So, my experience of 2 bath developing has been restricted solely to Diafine, when I used it for some TriX I’d been shooting 1600 handheld at night last year. Have to say night shooting, diafine and TriX seem to be an ideal combination, and found the Diafine tamed the high contrast scenes wonderfully. If I shot film at night these days, I think it would definitely be my developer of choice, as it plays quite well with Acros too, giving you two ideal nighttime combos; one for static, tripod shooting, and another for handheld shooting.
Ha, totally agree with you there Damien. I love both Tri-X and Acros in Diafine esp. for night shooting.
I’m doing both digital and film and strangely perhaps, film is becoming more dominant again in my photographic pursuits. All depends on personal taste and photographing needs and styles, I guess.
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