Is this a spotty residue, or kind of blanket-all? What color is it?
Is this a spotty residue, or kind of blanket-all? What color is it?
Matt, in a word, they look "salty", and all over too - literally like the Massachusetts Turnpike in January. But it's ok now, because with help from you all, I've decided I will no longer let my negatives come in contact with my hard tap water. Simple as that. Thanks. Andre
Andre: How about you staying home to work on the negative problem and I will shoot the England and Ireland stuff for you? What a neat trip. Enjoy.
Regards,
From what I have read and researched, the use of a water-softener device at the building main will solve a lot of problems, including this sediment-on-negative situation. I get the same thing on my film and it can be wiped away, but with great difficulty. Every region is different, and I have not installed anything yet so I can't say.
Our toilets, shower heads, taps, etc. calcify and have to be replaced more frequently than "normal". I've done three toilets in the 7 years I've been here. I went to Home Depot to buy a filter system and was just about to purchase a whole mess of them when a particularly helpful and knowledgeable guy asked what it was for and showed me the system for softening. I'm still looking into it but a single $500 shot seems to be the answer for my processing and house infrastructure problems.
We've got pretty hard water in western KS but I've never had consistent problems as you describe. I usually develop in d-76 and fix in Kodak rapid fix mixed in tap water. I only mix in distilled water when I use PMK pyro chemistry. However I did note a similar problem to yours when I mixed Photoflo in tapwater OR failed to use FRESH Photoflo each time I processed.
Thank you all for your knowledgeable input on the potential irreversible adverse effects of high levels of "water hardness" on film emulsion during the wet process. I learned alot from this post, which will advance my developing techniques a fair bit. Thanks again. Andre
Andre...let us know how it works out...
I have switched over to using distilled (rather than hard tap) water in all chemistries and processed a small initial batch of sheet film today in it.
I want to report that the problem I was having previously of heavy, unremoveable water calcium carbonate spotting inside the emulsion after negative drying has disappeared. The improved surface quality was visible even as negs lie in the fixer and wash trays.
There remained a very slight amount of water spotting after drying, to be sure, but this could be due to some residual calcium carbonate which solubilized from the walls of the old storage containers in which I mixed the fresh chemistries (despite a brief rinsing with distilled water to avoid such). Andre
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