Dirty Dektol

In terms of developing film, I have used many different developers.  The list is long and includes products such as Rodinal, Perceptol, Microphen, T-Max, 510-Pyro, PMK, X-Tol, D-76, and more.  But, when it comes to paper developers, I have mostly just used one... good old Kodak Dektol.  I dabbled a little with a few others, but always came back to Dektol.  I'm not sure why this is the case...?  The choice of developer makes a fairly obvious difference to the look of the negative, but with paper, not so much so.  There are some differences, but they are not as pronounced.

Some months ago it was announced that Kodak was going out of the chemistry business and would no longer make any of the darkroom supplies.  But then a short time later it was announced that their chemical division had been sold and taken over by another company.  Rumour has it that the new owner is a Chinese company, but I'm not certain about that.

Dektol is supplied as a dry powder that is mixed with water to make a stock solution.  That stock solution is further diluted for use.  I recently bought some of the new material and mixed up a batch in advance of my printing session.

Much to my dismay a saw that the dry powder was tan colored, when in the past it had always been white.  And, when I mixed up the stock solution, it was a dark reddish brown.  In all the years that I have used this material it was always been a clear solution with a bit of a sort of pinkish tinge to it.

I checked with my colleague Arturo and asked if he had experienced the same thing.  He confirmed that he had, but that the material seemed to still work OK.  He recommended that I test mine before doing any serious work.  So, I ran a few small 8x10 test prints on some cheap RC paper that I had in stock.  It did in fact seem to work just fine.  So I set about using the stuff on my current printing work for the Apparitions project.

I'm still not sure that I totally trust this stuff and will make a point of using it quickly.  I will also limit the number of prints that I run through a tray full in one printing session.  I'm fairly concerned about this and will see if the next batch that I mix up is the same.  It may be time to consider switching to a different paper developer.