I saw that Calbe developers made in the former East Germany are very cheap and are made of Agfa recipies. Has anyone here tried Calbe developers and could tell me more about them?

If they are good, maybe I will try them myself and order a few packets from Germany.

-- Patric (jenspatric@mail.bip.net), June 25, 2000

Answers

Hello Patric!

R09 is pretty similar to Rodinal, also in price here in Germany, so I did stick with Agfa.

A49 is said to be a universal fine grain developer, similar to Agfa Atomal (which is different from Atomal FF), although having different ingridients. Fotoimpex in Berlin said, it should work wonderfully with Fomapan T800, it did work better than ID 11 but not as good as Xtol. One small lab swears by them, well I do not.

So what do you mean by very cheap? A49, 2 litre is between 7.65 and 9.15 DM, while Atomal FF, 5 litre, is 13.50 and Xtol around 16 DM. R09 is 250 ml around 8 DM, with Rodinal 500 ml around 16 DM.

Regards,

Wolfram

-- Wolfram Kollig (kollig@ipfdd.de), June 26, 2000.

I use Calbe E102( 1 liter koncentrat ) 1:50 it's working perfect. In Slovakia you may buy for 200 Sk = 10 DM.

-- Ladislav Madar (madarl@contex.sk), January 07, 2002.