A Cat in Pyrocat

With our current inability to source our standard black and white developer, Paterson FX-39, we have been forced to find an alternative. Below are the first pictures using our new developer, Pyrocat MC. Pyrocat is a staining developer which may posses certain advantages over conventional developers. One big advantage (for us) is that this developer may allow us to produce acceptable negatives for both traditional printing and scanning, as well as for contact printing our 8x10 black and white negatives. Palladium contact prints require very high density negatives. The slightly yellow stain of Pyrocat allows for sufficient contrast for us to pursue contact printing. Additionally, the pyrocat stain "fills in" between the silver halide clumps in the negative which allows for a perceptible reduction in grain, especially for 35mm film. We found this to be true in this initial test; Pyrocat producing less grain in these Tri-X negatives than our conventional FX-39, while preserving sharpness. Separation in highlight detail seemed particularly good. Shadow detail seemed slightly less with Pyrocat but we cannot make any determinations as our old scanner can't pick up much shadow detail anyway. We will probably shoot Tri-X at 320 with this developer. We will post further impressions as we gain more experience with this developer.

Pictures of Snowflake were taken with a Canon EOS 3 on center-weighted metering. Canon EF 50mm macro lens. Kodak Tri-X at its rated speed of 400. Her eyes are dark due to a combination of pupil dilation, no fill-flash, and a scanner that cannot pick up a lot of shadow detail. We suspect, however, that film speed is slightly reduced with this developer.





















- October 2006