Kodatol, Microdol and Microdol-X were never general purpose go to fine grain developers, they were all specialist super/extra fine grain developers and as such reduced the inherent film speed of a film by around a stop in comparison to normal fine grain developers like ID-11/D76. A hybrid extra fine...

In my experience Phenidone has a very long shelf life, I have some Ilford Phenidone from the early 1960's that's still as good as new.

Ian

I had a discussion with a senior Ilford research manager over lunch on a visit to Mobberley back in the early 1980s and we touched on Paterson chemistry, what he had to say was quite an eye-opener. He'd been involved in the manufacture of Paterson chemistry as it was originally manufactered by Ilfor...

It's just one of Ilford's PQ variants of ID-11. It may well have been the formula for a powdered version of Autophen. It was quite common to use Metabisulphite as a preservative to prevent oxidisation of the developing agents (usually Part A) in the packaging, both Ilford & Kodak have done this with...

The Formula for Autophen an Ilford photo-finishing developer itself a variant of ID-11 is:

Sodium Sulphite 100 g
Hydroquinone 5 g
Borax 3 g
Boric Acid 3.5 g
Phenidone 0.2 g
Potassium Bromide 1 g
Water to 1 litre

This has been mistakenly listed as Microphen in many US publications.

Ian

There are a number of other variants of this formulae which was first published in 1954 with simpler buffering, essentially it's Ilford's PQ version of ID-11/D76, which became known as the Axford-Kedall Fine Grain film developer and was designed for large scale photofinishing use where it's stabilit...