Just to stir things up a bit, and at the risk of being flamed, I respectfully disagree with the thesis that better developers than D- 76 and ID-11 haven't been invented. In my personal experience, staining developers such as PMK and W2D2 produce a longer printable scale than any conventional developer, with no pushing or pulling necessary.(posted 8163 days ago)Bob Herbst, in his article "Effects of Pyro Stain in Platinum Printing", concludes:
"Another observation from these tests is that my time and temperature combination for pyro development yielded a longer scale negative than D-76. As we saw in the print comparisons, pyro compresses the subject brightness range resulting in a print with 9 stops of subject brightness without overly compressing any one portion of the scale. Prior to running these tests, my experiences in photographing in cathedrals and the canyons of southern Utah showed this characteristic of pyro. I frequently exposed images with a brightness range from zone 2 to zone 11 and this range was accurately rendered in the resulting prints. I believe that adjustments to the development of a D-76 negative may be able to produce similar results although separation in the shadow values might be reduced. This area requires further investigation before any conclusions can be made."
Yes, the old stuff is very good, but the new stuff is even better.