Pictorial Planet
Peter Hogan's
PrescysolTM
Check out: Choosing your developer
Prescysol™ is a general purpose pyro staining developer with fine grain and wonderful rendering of highlights. Useful for all film types, It utilises three developing agents.
- Phenidone to maintain full film speed.
- Metol for good tonality, especially in the highlights.
- Pyrocatechin for acutance, stain, and highlight control.
These three developing agents have been carefully balanced to create a developer for both classic grain films, such as FP4 Plus or Pan F Plus, or tabular grain (T-Grain) films such as Ilford's Delta or Kodak's TMax. It's an extremely tolerant developer; films of different makes and speeds can be developed together for the same time.
For example, HP5 Plus 400 (120 roll film) and Delta 100 (35mm) despite being of totally different grain structure, can be developed together in the same tank for the same time.
Modern tabular grain films such as Ilford Delta or Kodak TMax (which require closer control of times and temperatures in normal developers and are more susceptible to burned highlights and blocked shadows) will benefit enormously from being developed in Prescysol™, yielding the fine grain, tone and acutance of which these films are capable.