Formulary Warm Tone Paper Developer 106 - REVIEW

I found a half liter mix of this obscure paper developer sitting in a box at our local camera shop.  Wanting to do some darkroom printing I thought it would be fun to give it shot.

The paperwork promises warm blacks to an engraving brown on bromide papers.  I had a box of Ilford 5x7 pearl finish that worked nicely.

I mixed the developer per the enclosed instructions.  I have always had great results and found Formulary products easy to use and very consistent.  You can get this developer from Freestyle here.

The developer is dark muddy brown when mixed and smells similar to Caffenol. (more on caffenol in a later post).  The instructions recommend a 1:7 or 1:15 mixing ratio; the latter for greater brown tone. I opted for the 1:15 and the suggested per print developing time is 5-8 minutes.  I ran some tests with a projection print scale as to not waste paper.  The brown tone is quite nice and stains the white base as well.  These are 6x6 negatives shot on Acros 100 and printed on an Omega C700 which is only intended for 35mm, so hence the sloppy border.  I used a #3 polycontrast filter to punch it up a bit as this is a lower contrast developer.