Pyro's Control Over Highlights

Pyrocatechin became my favorite developer for shooting scenics over time. The tonal range it encouraged was unsurpassed, as was its acutance and textural detail. Good qualities for a developer. Much of that success was the hydroxide I used in conjunction with Pyro. Being that hydroxide is the most volatile of the accelerators, as a caustic soda, and very alkaline, which necessitates increased sodium sulfite to hold back the natural oxidation of that mix. Potassium bromide isn't really needed as a restrainer because the Pyro level isn't sufficient to lose its selectivity for reducing just the latent image.

As I've noted before, I pushed my densities up onto the shoulder of the CI curve to maximize textural detail in the image, sacrificing the deeper pockets of black normally seen in Zone II and sometimes Zone III. My method was setting my ISO below normal; shooting ISO 125 at ISO 80, etc. I compensated for that in development, after, of course, a texture test to see where those textures lay and what development times gave me.

This image was taken using a British film, ISO 125 film rated ISO 80, developed in Pyro/OH (Windish Pyro) for 20 minutes. As can be seen, there is little deep shadow in the scene, mostly from the compensating action of Pyro. The bright foreground metered five stops from my Zone III reading, meaning it was a stop over normal. Being I wanted a hot negative to print right in silver, I shot for Zone III and developed normally, well, normally for salted silver printing, way too hot for projection enlargement. That foreground portion of the scene retained all the textural detail I had hoped for, although the scanned digital image is not equivalent to the original print.

Salted Silver Print ~ "Overlook Cougar Reservoir"
1987 ~ 5"x7" ~ Unique
Central Mountains, Oregon