In answering the question of whether you’d like your photos with less apparent grain or to be developed quickly, Kodak’s Mic(rodol)-X was firmly positioned on the “I have time for anything except for visible grain” side of the house. As the developer of choice for long-since-discontinued films like Panatomic-X and Technical Pan, especially if enlarging from 35mm to 16×20 was the goal, it’s no surprise that once those films disappeared, so too did Kodak’s desire to make Microdol-X and it was discontinued.

After reading Alex Luyckx’s review of LegacyPro’s sale of it as “Mic-X” a couple of years ago, I became curious and purchased a pouch of the powdered developer, mixed it up, and began using it. While I really liked the results I got with it (quite traditional and smooth midtones), the development times can be somewhat punitive at 15-30 minutes¹ on many of the films I like to use. I quickly reassessed whether or not it was worth it to me.²

As my supply of the developer was dwindling, I noticed that a few films have reasonable 1+1 times in Mic-X, including Fomapan 100 and Fomapan 200, which I use quite frequently. Especially 200. After seeing the results for the first time in December 2024, Mic-X quickly became my favourite developer for those two films and are the main reason I purchase Mic-X at all.

More recently, I was searching for other films that have a 1+1 time for Mic-X and found that Ilford Delta 400 does, so long as you overexpose and use the developer to pull. The Massive Dev Chart has times for EI200 (1-stop pull: 14½ minutes at 20°C) and EI320 (⅓-stop pull: 16½ minutes at 20°C), and with six rolls in the fridge, I decided that I would perform a little experiment and expose one roll of each.

The gallery above contains those photos for which I metered at 200 (a 1-stop pull), and…

the gallery below contains those photos for which I metered at 320 (a ⅓-stop pull).

Since I did not set it up as a more formal experiment, but it was a punitively cloudy day, the maximum benefits to pulling a film aren’t readily apparent (keeping a sense of order, balance, and detail in very bright sun), so now I am curious about the results I would get by developing HP5 metered at 50 (a 3-stop pull) in Mic-X 1+1.

I will leave that one for later ☺️

1. At one-shot dilutions, the most common of which is 1+3. Stock solution would reduce times and maximize grain-smoothing, but if there’s one thing I have a hard time managing it’s babysitting most developer stock solutions. I like to know what I’m using is at the appropriate strength and my little brain neither manages at calculating an appropriate time to add nor making replenisher solutions. I realize this places me in the unskilled amateur camp, which is fair. I’m an Excel-Toucher for His Majesty the King in Right of Canada and not a working photographer or artist. ↩︎
2. The answer was “no” at the time. Between having to stand at the sink for upwards of 40 minutes to develop a roll and losing ⅓ to ⅔ of effective film speed (unless I remembered to overexpose and use the development to pull), it was a case of “beautiful, but at what cost???” ↩︎