A couple of years ago I decided that one of my standard film and developer combinations would be Kodak Tri-X Pan in Hutchings PMK Developer. I had done some testing and experimentation for a number of years with various films and developers and really liked the look of this combination. I find that many of my favorite prints were made from negatives shot with this combination. PMK is a pyro based developer. The pyrogallic acid that is used as one of the developing agents, stains the film. The stain is proportionate to the amount of silver in the negative in a given area and as a result the stain adds to the density of the image. This is not simply an overall masking stain but one that adds its own image density, contrast and tonal range to the image. This is a finicky developer to work with as it requires very vigorous, uniform agitation in order to not develop unevenly. I find it works best if I process it in my Jobo processor. I just don't get around to setting up this piece of equipment very often and when I do I tend to have a big backlog of film to process. This time around is no exception as I have nearly 100 sheets of Tri-X to be processed. In addition to this, all of my color negative and color transparency film needs to be processed with this piece of equipment and I have quite a backlog of that to get to as well.
Last week, just before we went travelling to the mountains, I found time to process a batch of 20 sheets of Tri-X in 4x5. There are a handful of good images in here and I have scanned and posted some of the better ones. Most of these date back to 2011, with a few from 2012. This includes images from some trips to the badlands, as well as the mountains...
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