Experimenting With Pyrocat HD and Ultrafine Extreme 400 And some Thoughts on Processing.

 

Two things, I experimented with Pyrocat HD developer pioneered by Sandy King and belongs to the family of Pryro staining developers. My friend John Meadows gifted me a small stash of the two part developer to try out. I shot some Ultrafine Extreme 400 back in August while at my brother's place in the Beaches. Pyrocat HD is chemically a nasty developer to work with, only slightly less toxic and more stable than the older Pyro developers. I'm not planning on having kids at this point in my life, so lets give it a shot. Done properly when you pull out the the tank the negative loosks a lot like something developed in a conventional developer but it has a brown cast. I'm on the fence if I want to get some some and add Pyrocat HD into my workflow, If I did, I'll get the version made with glycol for further stabliity. Right now, I'm content with HC110 and D76/1D-11 and that covers the vast majority of films I process. 

Which leads me to the second part. I've swtiched up my scanning protocol in my workflow. to review, I use an Epson V600 coupled with Vuescan software and post processing in Lightroom. I used to use the generic black and white profile in Vuescan but my friends James Lee and Alex Luykx scan their black and white negs with the generic colour profile and then do a black and white conversion in Lightroom. I found doing this, I got much better scans. Granted I'm also scanning high resolution TIFF files. 

Camera: Rolleiflex 3.5 F Planar Twin Lens Reflex camera. 

Film: Ultrafine Extreme 400 processed at 200 ISO and Pyrocat HD 1+1+100. 



Before: 503 Kingston Road Car Before After: The 503 Kingston Road Car (After) Kew Beach Sewing Centre at the end of the Crosswalk Two Mini Vans and a Corner Store Overhead Tangled Wire Mess_ Bottom of Main St Bridge Over Glen Stewart Ravine Shaded White Bungalow House by Glen Stewart Ravine North of Queen St. Beaches House Wall Tag and Bixi Bikes

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