In 1977, 43 years ago, photochemistry legend Patrick D. Dignan has issued a highly interesting paper, called
“150 Do-it-Yourself Black and White Popular Photographic Formulas”.
Some readers may be familiar with the equivalent “How to Compound… Simplified Color Processing Formulas“, which was published a year later and has been available here for some time.
Darkroom comrade Adrian C. from England was so nice and gave me his copy of this very rare document; Filmkorn now makes it available here, freshly scanned for the interested self-processors, for download as a searchable PDF!
The 111-page book is incredibly interesting and full of rare gems. How to effortlessly push Tri-X to 2500 ASA? How do you mix Diafine or Neofin Blue yourself? But you can also find absolute oscurities like a monobath reversal developer (!), which supposedly gets 1600 ASA out of a Plus-X. Or a one-bath recipe that produces SW negatives in 1.5 seconds at 77°C.
A lot of stuff to experiment with!
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