Perceptol

A few years ago I was reading an exceptional photography book by the late English photographer, Barry Thornton.  He had high praise for Ilford Perceptol developer.  Unfortunately this developer, like so many other fine analog photographic materials, had been discontinued.  Things were looking quite bleak at the time as the English company Ilford was in bankruptcy protection.  From the WHMIS data sheets I was able to determine that the chemical ingredients of Perceptol were pMethylaminophenol Sulfate, Sodium sulfite, Sodium tripolyphosphate and Sodium Chloride.  So, I purchased all the ingredients and began to play around with the correct proportions.  Although my early attempts yielded printable negatives, the results were nowhere near my expectations.  Fortunately Ilford emerged from bankruptcy as Harman Technologies, a new company taken over by the senior management of Ilford.  Perceptol was back on the market!  I found that Thorntons praise of this developer was well founded and that it yielded excellent results, at least with certain films.  For years I had dabbled with Kodak T-Max 100 film and always been disappointed by the flat negatives.  Perceptol was the first developer to make this film sparkle.  I recently tried it on a batch of Foma Creative 200 film in 35mm format that I shot with my Russian panoramic camera, as well as on a roll of Kodak Tri-X Pan 400, also shot with the panoramic.  The initial results look good and I've scanned a few images to post.  There are some cool images in this batch, including one from last year of the ice bloom.  This is what I had hoped to try and capture, with better results, last weekend.