510 Pyro and HP5

This combination of Ilford HP5+ film, developed in 510 Pyro developer, is quickly becoming one of my favorites.  HP5 used to be one of my least favorite films.  Perhaps because most of my early attempts yielded really flat and dull negatives.  Then I tried developing in 510 Pyro developer.  The results were a huge improvement, and I have started to refine this even further.

This is much the same situation that I experienced with Kodak T-Max 100 a few years back.  I gave up on that film several times, and kept circling back to it.  I never got results that I was really happy with until I tried it with 510 Pyro.

510 Pyro Developer was created by American Photographer Jay DeFehr.  I'm really grateful that he chose to share his success, and published the formula to make the developer.  I understand that the developer is now available commercially from a couple of suppliers, but I continue to make mine from scratch.  It consists of 5 grams of ascorbic acid, 10 grams of pyrogallol and 1/4 gram of phenidone, in a base of 100ml of triethanolamine.  It is a very economical developer, and is mixed 1:100 for use.  The shelf life of the stock solution is a couple of years.

This is a staining pyro developer that yields a brown stained negative.  The stain is a little different from that of the PMK developer, which is another formula that I also really like, and use extensively.  The stain is proportionate to the amount of exposed silver in the emulsion and does not add an overall density, but rather proportional density, resulting in increased contrast.  The stain also holds printable values even in extreme highlights, though they do have to be burned in during printing.  All in all a great discovery and I'm glad I have been able to make it work.

Here is a selection of images that resulted from this combination.  Some of these images have been posted here on my blog in the past, and others have not.  All were taken in 2022 and 2023 and are the result of experimentation with this film and developer.