I ran out of Ilford ID-11 this week. I have lots of Perceptol, but looking both on the box and on the Ilford website, Perceptol isn’t rated for developing Kodak 320TXP. I knew that ID-11 was Ilford’s formulation of Kodak D-76 so I ran to my local Henry’s store to see if I could find either – and found two 1-litre envelopes of D-76. Cheap.
Now the question was: what developer times to use? While Ilford makes some attempt to document how their chemistry works with films from other manufacturers, Kodak does not, and I was pondering on using D-76 for some 120 rolls of HP5+. After searching the APUG site I found an article that points to the Digital Truth Developer Chart, which is a compilation of recommendations from a plethora of black-and-white photographers. For the 320TXP in 120 format, Digital Truth’s charts recommended 12.75 minutes, just as it says on the D-76 package.
It’s a pity that fixer times are not charted as well – I’ve found that different films do indeed require different fixing times in order to clear the emulsion dye. 4 minutes with 320TXP still left a tinge of dye (but not bad), 5 minutes gave great results.