Development Test - Pictorial Negatives - 510 Pyro

Back on March 2nd I wrote a blog post called "Darkroom Work".  This basically described the process of mixing up a developer from raw chemicals and then exposing test negatives and measuring the density of those processed negatives to establish development times.  Since then I have been shooting a number of test negatives to be processed in this scratch made developer.  I have actually been shooting duplicates of these negatives so that I can compare the test shots to some processed in my standard developer.  I have been shooting Kodak T-Max 100 and Kodak T-Max 400.  I have been shooting triplicates of the T-Max 100 negatives with the intention of giving one my standard development in Ilford Perceptol developer, one processed in this new scratch-mixed developer [510 Pyro] and a third given less than standard exposure and developed in X-Tol developer.  This third combination is based on the recommendations of a friend.  With the Kodak T-Max 400 I shot duplicates, one to be processed in the new 510 Pyro developer, and a comparative negative to processed to my previous standard in Kodak T-Max developer.

I processed this first batch of negatives back in mid-April, just before we left to Utah.  Now that we are back home I have taken the time to scan them and post the first stage of my findings.  These negatives are mostly shot on T-Max 100 and all developed in the 510 Pyro formula.  Initially I thought that the negatives might be a touch thin and that perhaps a little more exposure or a little longer development time might be in order.  But, once I scanned these images I found that I am quite pleased with the tonal scale.  I will use this as a starting point and fine tune my routine form here.  None of these are particularly great images and I doubt that I will make a fine print of any of them, but they give a good idea to me as to how this developer performs.  In the coming weeks as I find time to process the duplicate negatives and compare them I will draw some conclusions as to what combination I would like to move forward with.