how long does a tray of dev last left out

ok here is a very lazy question.
lazy as i can hardly be bothered asking, but oh ok i will.

no no, its lazy as i have not bothered searching!

so i ask; if you have one litre of dev and one litre of stop and one litre of fix and one litre of wash aid

how long do they last left out in the open?

also

how many 8x10 prints does one litre of dev, dev?


sorry if you are horrified by my lazy wastefull habbit, but i just got into it. maybe its just that after a days shoot, i get home relax and i dev a few sheets and then go to bed, cleaning up, barhumbug!


ps i am just about to build a propper dark room in a new studio and also get my jobo into service
so i am looking for jobo instructions if any one has em, please pm me ( this may save the environment somewhat)

also is it safe to pour down sink?

thans a trillion

andrewski

all of your questions depends on the formula. how do you like that, lazy guy?

put a lid, or plastic wrap directly on the liquid.

I doubt the dev will still be good after 24 hours. When it turns brown, it's bad.

The others should last for a long time.

- Leigh

Well I just started using fomapan powder dev.
Before I was using ilford concentrait.

Out in open means in trays.

Clearly I have as much to learn as a grasshopper

You know it's bad when your prints look crappy.

get 3 pieces of plexi. label them stop, fix and hypoclear.

dump the developer every time.
cover the others.


Indicating stop bath turns purple when its bad.
Hypocheck will give you an idea of if the fix has gone bad. (or for film, if a test strip doesn't clear in 1/2 the total fix time its bad.)
Sprint makes an indicating hypoclear that starts out blue and turns clear when its bad. I'm sure there's a way to check it but really that stuff is so cheap that I just replace it once a printing/developing session.

it depends on the developer
ansco 130 lasts for over a year as a mixed stock solution
and is still good after 30 days uncovered and unused

I found that if you came back the next morning it was ok, but longer than that and the deep blacks get harder to find. I used to keep 3 big plastic orange juice jugs with wide mouths available to pour the trays if I only did a few prints and wanted to preserve the working mixture. Others use saran wrap placed over the trays to slow the oxidation. There's a deposit that forms on the trays also, when you leave the developer in.