When it's time to buy more fixer, consider switching to an alkaline fixer such as The Formulary's TF-4. Alkaline fixers are recommended by Ilford and Kodak, as they are more archival, wash out better, and require no hypo clearing agent. Use it one shot (chems are cheaper than the value of a roll of film containing irreplaceable images). Fix for 4-6 minutes for conventional emulsions, 6-8 minutes for Delta or T-Max. No magenta with this method.
I second TF-4. I love it. One thing that people also forget to mention a lot of times is that if you mix your solution with distilled water you get only a very faint smell of ammonia. I no longer have to worry about being knocked off my feet every time I go to fix my film.
TF-4 is great fixer, and it does wash out the magenta very effectively, if submerged a bit longer than the recommended time. It's all I use for negatives, and almost all I use for prints. Alkaline fixers are great, but just using non hardening fixer is also a step in the right direction, like Ilford Hypam, which is more likely to be available in stores around you. If you was your film effectively after the fixing stage, the remaining dyes should come out and color the water slightly pink. Since you can take the film out after it's fixed, you can inspect it and see how it's washing out. David Goldfarb's advice to use Permawash or Kodak Hypo Clearing Agent works great if the film is finicky to wash.
I don't understand the recommendation to use the fixer one-shot, however. If you test your fixer before you fix your film by submerging a piece of undeveloped film, in TF-4 it should clear within a minute. If it doesn't, then I'd definitely discard it. If it's borderline I'd definitely discard it. I'm not saying it's wrong to use it as one shot. It just seems like such a waste.
Stephanie, I agree that distilled water makes a huge difference in the odor. I got ventilation installed in my darkroom for fifty bucks. It's a good thing to do. I can even tone prints in there without getting the nasty sulphite odor of sepia, brown, etc...
Hi, recently I am having troubles with my developing of Tmax 400 in Pyrocat HD in a small Jobo Drum (1520). I would like to ask you for a help, but let me first describe the procedure and the results:
- I load 2 (two) 120 films in one real (and make sure that they do not overlap)
- temperature is about ~ 20 - 21 degrees centigrades.
Developement: (in this order)
- prewash - clean water for 4 minutes
- Pyrocat HD 1:1:100, 500ml , developement is semistand for 16 minutes with 90 seconds of agitation (inversions) at the beginning andcca 20 seconds agitation every 4th minute.
- clean water stop bath for 4 minutes (agitation every 1 minute)
- Ilford Ilfofix 1:4 - for 4 minutes (with some agitation)
- some more washing (agitation...)
- Kodak Hypo Clear 1:4 ~ 5 minutes (agitation...)
- some more washing (agitation...)
- 1 minute photo-flo
Now - this seems to work fine with 1 film at a time. As it is rather time consuming so I decided to try to develope 2 films at a time. For the first time I tried it with Delta 3200 and everything was fine, but my 2 attempts with TMax 400 resulted following problems:
1) Developement procedure as described above:
- along the center of the film some uneaven violet - like color remaining. The colored parts are transparent though. The film does not show signs of uneaven developement. So apart of the weak violet parts everything is fine.
- I guess the violet color is a remnant of the antihallation layer so I decided to give the film more washing in general next time so:
2) taken the results of (1) into account I prolonged the prewash and given the very strong color of the water that comes out - I do the prewash in 2 steps - 3 minutes each.
- I prolonged the washing of the film in the Kodak Hypo Clear bath to 10 minues.
=> The film is still not OK - I add 30 minutes more in the Kodak Hypo Clear, but it does not change anything.
results: The film still shows some strange uneaven areas but they are not so violet anymore - they even look orange-brownish when viewed on a light table of slightly blue when viewed against the window light. The main difference is that they are not anymiore fully transparent but are a bit milky. Again - no signs of uneaven developement can be seen.
Well - that's it. What do you think ?
I did develope several Tmax 400 films as described before without any problems - but that was only one film at a time.
It's not fixed fully, because of the dye used in the emulsion it needs a lot more fixing than other films, washing isn't the answer.
Re-fix and wash again and they may be fine, but it does sound as if you didn't fix long enough for even the emulsion to clear if it looks milky and you have orange brown stains.
In addition to Ian's observations, you say you fix "with some agitation". You can't agitate too much while fixing. Try the procedure in the Kodak B&W Darkroom Dataguide: Agitate for the first 30 seconds then 5 seconds every 30 seconds thereafter.
hmmm, so too short fixing you say - OK - I will give it a try. Would be nice to be able to "correct" my already developed films.
But now I am a bit puzzled - I was adviced to wash the TMax films in something like Kokad Hypo to was the antihallation layer off. But you spek of a "dye in the emulsion" - a different topic, right ?
- Neal -
I should not "overagitate" as my agitation is once a minute at most with just 2 inversions.
Matus, Tmax films use sensitising dyes, this is quite different to the anti-halation dyes used. These dyes have an adverse affect on fixation, so Tmax100 fixes far slower than say FP4 or APX100.
I use Iford Hypam and I fix until the dye disappears, which is sometime after the emulsion clears, I'd guess about 8 mins, it depends how fresh the fixer is. I think Kodak state in the datasheets that Tmax needs longer fixing,.
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