Ilford FP-4 in Acutol was an excellent film-and-developer combination in the 1960s. Geoffrey Crawley, the inventor of Acutol, died on October 29.
Pixel peeping—the feverish search for and suppression of noise in digital images—is nothing new.
Today’s photographer searches for the ideal noise-reduction and sharpening settings; photographers in the film era were always looking for the ideal combination of film and developer chemistry.
Photographers who understood photochemistry set about brewing their own ideal developer formulas. Leading British photographic scientist Geoffrey Crawley invented Acutol, a black-and-white film developer that produced remarkably high sharpness.
Edge Sharpness
Color development processes are standardized, but when developing black-and-white film —nothing is fixed. You can try any combination of film and developer.
You can choose a film developer that extracts the maximum sensitivity from your film or, for example, a combination that produces the finest grain. Acutol, developed by Crawley in 1963 and marketed by Paterson, offered neither increased sensitivity nor the finest grain, but it delivered excellent edge sharpness (acutance, hence the name).
It works best with medium-speed black-and-white films such as Ilford FP-4. The original Acutol is no longer available, but its distant successor, Acu FX39, still is.
Geoffrey Crawley had originally planned to become a concert pianist, but medical setbacks led him down a different path. He established himself as an expert in photographic technology, contributed to publications such as Amateur Photographer, served as editor-in-chief and technical contributor at the British Journal of Photography, and wrote several books about photography.
He was 83. More information is available about the Acu developers.
