Processing sheet film

[jimbobs]

Hi. Living in England and always been in an area with soft water. Bought a static home which I was going to put a Darkroom in but where I am is hard water. I am wondering if the hard water over time will affect the negative. Any answers to this? Ray

[koraks]

As long as you make sure there are no "water spots" left on your negatives, no. But with sheet film I never got them anyway, even before my water company started dehardening our water.

[Pere Casals]

You can easily remove the water factor. After all washing use deionized or distilled water to make the final rinse with Photo-Flo (or equivalent).

You can reuse the distilled water (with Photo-Flo) for the final rinse. Use the recommended dose of Photo-Flo or lower. This prevents any drying mark.

Also mix developer with deionized water if developer is sensitive to water kind, like xtol preservation with Fe water content).

Beyond that, use a cheap HEPA air purifier (those for allergies) to get rid of dust for drying, scanning etc. You'll get a perfect job.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Adding to Pere's excellent advice - hard water is very good for washing film because the water's minerals help carry away chemistry. A rinse after washing, as Pere mentioned, suffices.

[Peter Lewin]

Agree with the preceding comments, only throwing in a post because we have hard water where I live, and I have been developing with it for close to 30 years now. I rinse all my washed negatives in distilled water for a minute or two, I have even eliminated the PhotoFlo (and/or Ilford's equivalent). (Specifically I transfer the washed sheet film negatives to a small tray filled with distilled water, shuffle through the stack a couple of times, and then take them out one by one and hang them up by their corner. I pour the "used" distilled water back into the gallon container for re-use.) I also use distilled water to mix up my working solution of TF-4 fixer.

[Alan9940]

Hard water here, too. I use RO or distilled water for all chemical mixing, normal wash with the hard water, and a final soak/rinse in a PhotoFlo bath of distilled water. In nearly 40 years of using hard water, I've never had any issues with film or prints.

[Duolab123]

Hard water here, too. I use RO or distilled water for all chemical mixing, normal wash with the hard water, and a final soak/rinse in a PhotoFlo bath of distilled water. In nearly 40 years of using hard water, I've never had any issues with film or prints.

Same here.