Ilford ID11 Fresh VS Expired - Film Developer Comparison

[boredgrass]

Delighted you are back! The Grey suspension made me *wonder wether there are cases when one could improve very old developer with "little interventions". I am thinking along the lines of filtering persistent suspension of particles, slight lowering or raising of PH. *I happily accept having attributed that question to a lack of knowledge 😉

[berkeleygang]

Photographer's Formulary Divided D76 has a 2 month shelf life IIRC. I'm too chicken to see if that can be pushed out, but it has resulted in me doing my processing in larger batches. Your tests make me wonder...

Welcome back. I've missed your content. I hope all is well.

[rpdee]

3/9/23 A densitometer meter of the various negatives will give you pretty accurate info on how closely the negative high lite and shadows compare if you want to grain peak ( pixel peep for digital). Shooting a film like this, then varying the film exposure and film development time is Ansel Adam-like film processing for the zone system where you can pre-determine what the negatives will look like before exposed, controlling the tonal range expanding or compressing it, which can also be adjusted when printing with various multi-grade paper.

[Goodspeed]

Cool video!
ID-11 is my prefered divelopet as a 1+3.
Evan managed to divelop a 35yare old roll of Kodacrome Super-8 with ID-11 (1+3 for 20min) and I got images.
Anyway, I would recomend trying ID-11 at 1+3 dilution!

[Guairenito]

Nice experiment, I have a pack of ID11 that is about 1 year old. So, not much to worry about 😅

[TheMolch]

The biggest hurdle seems to be the old sticker

[petervanorsouw]

Hi Azriel
Both Ilford and Kodak have published the formula for ID11 & D76. They are the same ingredients, if you are looking to saving money then make up the formula your self, it's easy as and with practice you could vary the formula. Such as making Perceptol, it's basically D23 with salt (Pure sodium chloride)
Thanks for your contribution to Film.

[cdl]

Fascinating. Ilford FP4 was replaced by FP4 plus in about 1990, so the vintage developer has held up well. It would be interesting to see how the histograms of the scans compare.

[lloydgarland]

Azriel, none of that is a surprise to me - ID-11 is a great developer and comes in two parts so the product doesn't age as quickly as D76, which is the same stuff only all packaged together in a single powder. I've read stories and seen videos of people using military grade D76 from the war era that came in huge metal cans with perfectly acceptable results. That said, we have a mutual friend who seems to have a bad batch of D76 and is looking to experiment with longer times etc. Both myself and our mutual friend have had no issues with ID-11 though. As for cost - get some accurate digital scales and divide the contents of a 5 litre pack up and place in little baggies until it's time to mix them. People have warned against this in the past (I bet they all work for Ilford :D ) but I have never once had an issue in 20+ years. Welcome back by the way, I hope you've not been down with something nasty?

[tomislavmiletic_]

I still have an unused, unopened Perceptol for 600ml in the same paper package like yours, that I bought in 1995 or 1996, so it can't be much younger than that, course few years later Ilford started selling only packages for 1 liter, with plastic bags inside, there you go...

[lilianneschneider]

How do you divide your film for your test strips, I’m trying to imagine how to do it in the dark not knowing also where the frames are located to split the film

[goldenhourkodak]

Now I feel less nervous to use my 2005 expired D-76

[VelZiliuse]

Silly question: you mention that D76 has a higher contrast than you'd like. Why don't you just shorten the development time a bit to get a lower contrast?

[tizcxvb]

Kodak D76 is now made to much, much lower quality standards, in my own scientific testing I've found up to 1 stop variability in Kodak D76 strength since they are being made in China