David Shoots Film

Black Slim Devil (22mm lens, fixed shutter) and Arista Premium 400 (Tri-X) developed in APH 09

Our friend at Cooking Film turned me on to Adox’s APH 09 developer via some forgotten post. Supposedly it’s the “old” formulation of Rodinal, thought it’s thought to have been tweaked a couple of years ago so that the old standard dilution of 1+40 is now 1+50. I assume that’s so you can reference contemporary Rodinal development times more easily, as the standards are in multiples of 25.

Yashica T4 Super (35mm lens) and Arista Premium 100 (Plus-X) developed in APH 09

Anyway, we had a family vacation that gave me occasion to take quite a few rolls of film, and I developed two rolls of Tri-X and one roll of Plus-X (actually Arista Premium 400 and 100, respectively, which is rebadged Kodak film) in APH 09 to see what’s what.

Yashica T4 Super (35mm lens) and Arista Premium 100 (Plus-X) developed in APH 09

I liked what I saw, but then again, I’m easy. I really need to do more of a controlled shoot-out between my standards and some outliers: Diafine, Rodinal, HC-110, and maybe throw in Dektol, D-76, Atomal 49 (note to self).

Ricoh GR1 (28mm lens) and Arista Premium 400 (Tri-X) developed in APH 09

Adox recommends the developer for sheet films for accutance and edge effects, fine-grain miniature and roll film for the same, and for zone system work. So my use wasn’t the developer’s strong suit (according to the manufacturer) anyway. Oh well. Dektol’s a paper developer, and I’ve used that to develop Tri-X.

Yashica T4 Super (35mm lens) and Arista Premium 100 (Plus-X) developed in APH 09

I’ve got whole bottle of this stuff, so I’ll do some more work with this. My initial results are promising, but I would love to print some of this in a darkroom as well to really see what these negatives can do. Adox APH 09 Arista Premium 100 & 400 developed together, using Rodinal times 1+50 dilution at 68F and 13 minutes 30 seconds initial agitation 4 inversions per minute subsequent agitation 1 minute water rinse (instead of stop bath) Photographer’s Formulary TF-5  fixer, 5 minutes (based on strip test clearing in 2 minutes) 15 minute water rinse 1 minute Kodak Photo-Flo stir agitation Hang to dry 2 hours, then scan I bought the chemistry and film from this recipe from Freestyle Photographic. I don’t get any compensation from them, but if you can recommend this blog to one million of your closest friends, maybe someday they’ll give me a discount. In all seriousness, they support film photography, and I support them back.