Poll: Do you use distilled water?

[Skip Roessel]

My water is pretty soft (nyc tap water) so I use it for everything except final rinse of negatives, where I go for distilled to minimize spots. Deionized water would be the same thing. Water through a Britta filter would have just as much calcium and magnesium as the water from the tap, just not as much chlorine or small particles.

When out of distilled water I have run rinse water through a coffee machine with several paper filters (letting it cool, natch) bout I doubt those paper filters go down to 5 microns. Negs okay, tho.

Skip Roessel

[BradS]

I do not use any distilled water. The stuff you can buy in the supermarket isn't really distilled anymore.

Some years ago, I switched to boiled and filtered tap water.

[evan clarke]

I have highly filtered water (four filter shstem) and most important it is dead neutral, pH 7...

[Lungeh]

Tap water on three continents... including rinse and surfactant stages. This is using B&W (lith and half tone), E-4 and -6, C41 and ranging from San Antonio also, Houston, New Mexico, wells in various countries. In Liberia in the dry season we had brackish tap water from backflow up the estuary (Mount Coffee reservoir, if you're really interested.) Never had problems with spots except when drying in dust season or when I was out of Photo-flo or when I substituted dilute laundry detergent. Routine chems are formulated rather robustly.

[Peter Gomena]

I use distilled or deionized water for film developer and wetting agent only. The tap water here (Portland, Oregon, USA) is fairly soft. I've never had trouble with spots or chemicals. I use it for developers because Pyrocat-HD and PMK are so dilute that I don't want to risk inconsistent results.

Peter Gomena

[Alan Gales]

I live in St. Louis and we drink from the mighty, muddy Mississippi river. Actually, they say we have some of the best drinking water in the whole country. Go figure!

Anyway, a long, long time ago.... in a galaxy far, far, just kidding! It was a long time ago, about 25 years ago that I used to do Cibachrome processing and I always used tap water with no problems at all.

[robby parkman]

Distilled water for final wash before drying. Tap water for everything else. Got too many water spots when I used tap water before drying

[neel111]

Distilled water is used at industries which require exceptionally high cleanliness of water. Vehicles also use distilled water to top off lead acid batteries as presence of other ions discovered in tap water can cause a drastic reduction in the automobile’s battery lifespan. Minerals discovered in tap water can also be harsh to internal engine components; hence, distilled water is preferred to tap water for use in automotive cooling systems.
How to make distilled water

[cosmicexplosion]

you know if you live in new zeland in the south, they flush their toilets with water better than Evian, so a good place to move if your worried...photo ops are also good.

[Roger Thoms]

Yes, for mixing LPD, Pyrocat HD, TF-4, TF-5, KRST, and with photo flow for a final rinse went processing film.

Roger