Developer: ADOX FX-39II

Welcome to my very first review on the site!

I recently started to process at home, rather than the community darkroom in Inverness, and my initial chemical selection was somewhat random as I picked what was available and would seem to work with the Vintage Visual AGO Processor… more on which later as I am still getting to grips with it! I will also look at cameras, lenses, film and other anciliiary equipment that makes up my set up as we go along!

Anyway - FX-39 was a bit of an odd choice in some ways as I have been using Rodinal for the last year - and I have largely grown to love it. The reviews suggested it wasn’t the best option in a rotary processor though as it would over cook the grain, a bit of hunting suggested that FX-39 II may be the solution (no pun intended) so I threw it in the box along with some fairly generic ADOX stop bath and fixer. So far I have only processed one film in this chemical and the results are pretty appealing! A roll of Ilford Delta 400, 35mm, shot on the Olympus OM-2n. The negatives have come out looking pretty good, they are a touch thin - but that is just part of the learning curve with a new camera and finding my feet with different film stocks, but they are detailed with a pretty fine grain!

My negative scanning chops are needing refined further to really showcase the analogue process - a first attempt at print and process in the AGO was mixed due to, again, technique and a learning curve! But the grain was super fine and the contrast was good over the whole of each frame.

This is as much an “initial thoughts” type of a post - I hope to get more in depth with more examples - including scanned prints rather than scanned negatives as that is really what the analogue process is all about! I am more interested in the quality of the physical end print than a scan on a screen!