D-76 as Paper Developer?

[Scott Daniel Ullman]

Is it possible to use D-76 as a paper developer? If so, what dilution does
one use?

--
Scott Daniel Ullman

sdullman@i_hate_spam.stanford.ude

(Remove "i_hate_spam" and change "ude" to "edu" to send e-mail.)

[Richard Knoppow]

It can be used but is not very active compared to a paper developer
like Dektol. Use it full strength. It may take five minutes or more to
get a decent black. Because of the low activity it is probably going
to give you rather warm tones.
Also, D-76 has no restrainer in it and tends to fog slightly. On film
this makes no difference, yielding higher film speed. For paper it may
result in veiled highlights.
Its interesting to compare formulas for different developers,
especially if you normalize them for working dilutions. There are
surprizingly few variations.
One has a family of low activity, high salt content developers for
fine grain film developing, a group of mostly older active film
developers, many of which employ carbonate as the accelerator, and
quite high activity developers for paper and positive film which
contain more carbonate, less sulfite, and more bromide than the second
group but are otherwise not very different.
D-72, is the published formula for Dektol. This developer was
frequently used as a universal developer in newspaper offices where
the film was simply dunked in the same tray as used for paper. Since
most of the film was orthochromatic, the same red safelight could be
used for everything.
Dektol is a bit fast for modern film, times would be on the order of
a minute or two in developer diluted for paper. Its also very grainy.
Curiously, Rodinal at about 1:25 works just fine for paper, its just
expensive.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, Ca.
dick...@ix.netcom.com