I shot and developed these last night, using manufacturer recommended times. Developers I used were: Kodak D-76, Ilfotec DD-X and Ultrafin Plus. The film was TMax 100 which I shot at 64 ISO and 100 ISO.
This is obviously not a scientific test but wanted to see what, if any, practical differences could be seen using different developers.
I've not really come to any conclusions yet, with the exception of DD-X looking a bit sharper than D-76 (I didn't apply any sharpening to the scans). The DD-X negatives actually looked much thinner than they scanned in - D-76 and Ultrafin Plus negatives were far more "full". That said, DD-X seems to have a better/smoother (I'm looking for the word!) range of tones than perhaps Ultrafin does (again, this definitely not scientific!) - if you look at the apple and orange in the middle of the scene, to my eyes there are mid-tones in those pieces of fruit that don't appear in the Ultrafin scans.
I'd welcome any comments or insights if you have any! Or any suggestions on how I can improve my testing! It actually did me a lot of good to do this test. I've been some bad developing negatives recently (all Fomapan 100) and I wasn't sure if it was me, the film or the developing method. I used trays to develop these tests below and I was really pleased with how the negatives look. So, I know I'm able to develop a negative fine, I need to test my BTZS tube developing method and see if that was the cause of the poor Fomapan negatives or something else. In the meantime, I'll be sticking with my tray/slosher combination for anything important.
D-76, ISO 64
D-76, ISO 100
DD-X, ISO 64
DD-X, ISO 100
Ultrafin Plus, ISO 64
Ultrafin Plus, ISO 100