Response to Neopan: Best results....? Acutance/Tonality

I think you really need to buy the book.

FX-2 contains a little sodium sulfite, not enough to mess with.

I'd suggest this line of experiments to see the effects of adding sodium sulfite.

Get a bottle of Rodinal and work up development specs for it for one film at a 1:50 dilution. If you don't have any idea, try HP5+ in Rodinal 1:50 7'15"/75F EI 250.

Shoot a test neg, develop and print it.

Next, do the same but add 25g sodium sulfite to a liter of working solution. The amount isn't critical; half a plastic film cannister is around 25g.

Next, do it with 50g/L.

Next, do it with 100g/L.

I'm not suggesting that you routinely add gobs of sodium sulfite to Rodinal, but that series of tests will show you exactly what happens to a high-acutance but grainy developer with the addition of sodium sulfite.

Remember, you can't get something for nothing. If you consider the characteristics of speed, grain and "real" sharpness to be a triangle, if you emphasize one of those characteristics you'll lose something in one or both the others.

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