> the negs were really grainy and when printed on VC paper the stain made the lighter tones way too flat.(posted 8065 days ago)"Lighter tones way too flat" implies that the developer does more than enough compensation action... If you get excessive compensation then it is probably easier to tweak the formula to reverse some. Same on granularity.
> low sulfite formulas may be a factor in limiting streaking with severely reduced agitation.
I don't think so. Sulfite-poor developers have nothing to balance out bromide ions adsorbed onto silver halide by disturbing it by mild solvent action. When bromide adsorbs, other negatively charged molecules like hydroquinone and catechol can't get close to the silver halide particles unless they are already partially developed. para-phenylenediamine is not charged so it's not disturbed by bromide barrier. On the other hand, agents like metol like to adsorb there. In this case dilution does not help much, because no matter how you dilute it, metol sticks to the silver halide particles. Then you'll lose something before getting compensation.
For tanning formulae, low sulfite is really a necessity, but other than that, I see no reason to avoid some sulfite. Hydroquinone developers for continuous tone purpose tend to go out of control without sulfite, and ascorbate developers tend to lose speed and require longer induction time without sulfite. These are well documented in literature with some good explanations. Basically, sulfite is there for a number of reasons, regenerating developer oxdation products, minimizing gelatin swelling and making sure developers go through gelatin easily (because gelatin tends to be positively charged at pH above 5), preservative, mild solvent, etc. People think solvent effect loses resolution, but this is not so in the case of moderate sulfite. Solvent effect is not as important as others, and sulfite is not a strong solvent anyway.
Ted's N-6 sounds interesting, but I'd have to think about a way that can be applied to roll films because most of films I use are 120/220.
> I wish Ryuji could refine and clarify his original post a bit,
Refining part takes some off-like editing because I hate editing in this tiny box, but if there are further questions I can try my best. (Most stuff, you can just go to library and read though.)