Air Evac Bottles

<p>I want to start developing my own color negatives. I have been looking around on various online photo stores at storage for my chemicals to make them last as long as possible. <br>

So my question is, for what chemicals do I need air evac bottles for? Developer, Blix and Stabilizer are the 3 that come in the kit. <br>

At 6.99 a piece for 1 liter bottles, I want to minimize my costs. </p>

<p>thanks</p>

<p>Squeezable 1 and 2 liter water or soft drink bottles work just fine. Cheap, so I'd use them for all three, esp the dev and blix.</p>

<p> </p>

<p >The developer is most susceptible followed by blix. These chemicals are also susceptible to light damage so we use brown or green bottles. To prevent aerial oxidation we squeeze the sides of a plastic bottle and then cap tight. Glass bottles, we use marbles. They are inert and they displace fluid reducing the trapped air in the bottle. Some blow in the bottle believing the carbon dioxide in the exhaled breath will displace oxygen. Over the years, many schemes have been used. In large mouth bottles paraffin wax sold in the grocery store, poured, hot into the jar with water temporally replacing the chemical. The paraffin forms a floating lid that greatly adds shelf life. </p>

<p>I use the 2 liter mylar bladders used to for box wines and party sized Starbucks coffee. These are cheap, not gas permeable, chemically non-reactive, and easy to evacuate of air as the liquid is used.</p>

<p>Forget the air-evac accordion style bottles. They're more hype than they are useful. Plenty of other solutions to the storage problem, empty soda pop bottles being one of them. Use small bottles that you can keep full to the brim, and you're good to go.</p>

<p>Accordion bottles are not a good idea. They are polyethylene (not a good oxygen barrier) and the folds trap lots of air. All the other suggestions are great. I personally use glass and 20oz soda bottles, but aluminized mylar would probably pretty good too!</p>