Eco-friendly developer and fixer?

Alan,

 

I made up some fixer this afternoon per your "recipe" and I just have a few questions.

 

First of all, is this a working strength solution?

 

Second, I didn't have a hypo solution. I made a 240g/1L solution of sodium thiosulfate and used your prescribed 360mL of that solution. Does this sound reasonable to you?

 

Thanks.

Should be OK -- this is a working solution.

That must be an extremely old recipe - too archaic to really call it a formula.

 

Why would you mix sodium thiosulphate and ammonium chloride to get ammonium thiosulphate + sodium chloride in solution? That's got to be more expensive and less efficient than just using straight ammonium thiosulphate, surely?

 

If you want a formula for rapid fixer, I have several of them Ben. Old copies (pre-1965) of the "British Journal of Photography Almanac" are a good source of formulae.

 

240gm/litre of hypo sounds about right for a working strength fixer.

Why would you mix sodium thiosulphate and ammonium chloride to get ammonium thiosulphate + sodium chloride in solution? That's got to be more expensive and less efficient than just using straight ammonium thiosulphate, surely?

 

One works with one has, and both sodium thiosulfate and ammonium chloride have MANY other uses(to the point of buying them a few kilograms at a time-a quantity where they become quite inexpensive). That's in contrast with ammonium thiosulfate, which I consider a specialty chemical.

 

If we're talking about archaic formulae, though, perhaps it's worth mentioning that both using "ph" instead of "f" in the context of a compound containing sulfur as well as using "gm" as the abbreviation for grams and "litre" for "liter" are all fairly archaic spellings. None are IUPAC-recognized.

Apparently ammonium thiosulphate is a useful fertiliser. It is sold generally as a 60% solution, but I have never been able to find any in less than bulk quantities.

With reference to the above post, I wrote thiosulphate, not because it is archaic but because that is how it is spelt in British English. Sulphur is also correct, as is litre.

PS If you don't like "spelt" either get a good British English dictionary.

Edited May 12, 2018 by Martin Rickards

There's Geoffery Crawley's FX-55 developer formula - he released it for free back in 2008, as long as credit was given to Amateur Photographer. IIRC, it's pretty inexpensive to make, It's an ascorbate developer, and before you combine it the shelf life is pretty long.

 

FX-55 | Pictorial Planet

Let's go the whole hog and change archaic chloride to kloride as well!

 

And why not do the same with the rest of the hallowjen solts?

 

It was quite common practise in ye olden dayes, to throw a slack handful of ammonium chloride into a 'slow' fixer to turn it into a rapid one. That was before ammonium thiosulphate was readily available.

 

How many 'i's are there in aluminium? And how many 'u's in nuclear?

Edited May 13, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

Well, like I said, I had sodium thiosulfate and ammonium chloride. I didn't have ammonium thiosulfate.

 

Both of those compounds have hundreds of uses in a chemistry lab. Sometimes, being a good chemist is making what you need out of what you have.

 

My comments on spelling were to the fact that the IUPAC does now officially recognize "Sulfur" as the correct spelling of that element, and all compounds that contain a sulfur and are named as such follow suit. Similarly, "g" is now the internationally recognized abbreviation for "gram." I only commented because I was criticized for "archaic" methodology and pointing out similarly archaic uses in this thread.

 

BTW, the IUPAC does recognize "aluminium" as the correct spelling.

From "Kodak Processing Chemical and Formulas" (1970 printing)

 

Kodak Rapid Fixing bath F-7 has sodium thiosulfate (360 g/L) and ammonium chloride (50 g/L)

(along with a few other chemicals).

 

Kodak Rapid Fixing Bath F-9 uses ammonium sulfate instead.

 

For comparison, the more normal F-5 has sodium thiosulfate 240g/L.

 

I used to believe that it was the sodium that slowed it down, but in this case there

will be plenty of sodium ions in solution.

 

As far as I remember, though, the commercial rapid fixers use ammonium thiosulfate,

though maybe with other sodium compounds, such as sulfite.

 

And yes, in the book Kodak calls it sulfate and not sulphate.

I don't think that you can get more eco-friendly than Caffenol C development, a vinegar stop bath and something like a hypo fix. The quality will be lesser than with using proper chemicals, but it will get the job done and is really cheap.

In order to make my photography hobby more earth friendly, I've switched to using pure rain water for my developer, stop bath and fixer. Of course it doesn't work, but it has saved me a fortune in printing paper, frames, all that stuff.

In order to make my photography hobby more earth friendly, I've switched to using pure rain water for my developer, stop bath and fixer. Of course it doesn't work, but it has saved me a fortune in printing paper, frames, all that stuff.

Very Funny Steve. Perhaps staying after class today, and cleaning the chalk boards, will teach you not be a smarty-pants.......:)

It's a moot point, now that the OP has found a solution, but Sodium Thiosulfate is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system, which ought to be enough to allow for it's importation to pretty much anywhere. Just sayin'.