ilford stop low odour ?????

[mitch brown]

hi
i just finished developing some film and useing ilford stop in the process for the first time . i develop my 4 x 5 hp5+ in xtol 1:1 for 11:30 in a slosh tray after developing i placed the tray in the ilford stop and and the odour caused my eyes to water so bad i pulled it right out , this is a low oder stop ? did i do something wrong ? oh stop diluted 1 :19 any thoughts.

[Ian Grant]

The current Ilford IlfoStop is low odour and Citric acid based, but the older Ilfostop was Acetic acid based and it's possible that's what you actually have. It has a very long shelf life.

Ian

[mitch brown]

thanks Ian , but the bottle states low odour.

[mitch brown]

hi all today i put a samall amout of ilfostop in a glass and added a little xtol and the smell was terrible ok then i put a little ilfodstop in another glass and added a few deops of dektol again terrible smell. how can ilford say it odourless?
mitch

[ghost]

Do you feel you really need to use an acid stop bath?

(I have found water to be remarkably odorless )

[Joe VanCleave]

Or you could try white vinegar, diluted with water appropriately.

~Joe

[Lowell Huff]

We make ODORLESS STOP BATH CONCENTRATE (1+19) and ODORLESS FIXER.

[Martin Aislabie]

I too have had problems with "odourless" stop baths

The odour may not be strong but I am very sensitive to it.

I have had some success by doubling the dilution - instead of 1:19 I use 1:39 – for me it reduced the odour levels considerably

1:39 obviously has a much shorter capacity but keep an eye on the colour during the session and throw it away at the end of each days developing or printing

Also make sure your working conditions are as well ventilated as possible and you spend as little time in its presence as possible (mix it last, throw it away first and plenty of fresh air in between sessions of using it)

I also found trying to keep it at arms length made a big difference – realised that I was inadvertently standing quite close to it from time to time.

Martin

[manfromh]

I've never had problems with the odor of ilfostop. I can barely smell anything from it. Strange... (maybe it has something to do with age)

[dancqu]

... something wrong ? oh stop diluted 1 :19 any thoughts.

You could drop the stop. I don't bother with it. First determine
the amount of fixer needed to thoroughly fix so much film.
Prepare that amount when ready to process. The fix can
be discarded with one-use; one-shot fix.

For myself the same for paper. Fresh fix each session.
Do you use developer one-shot? Dan