chris_raney

I am thankful for your response, Mr. Mowrey. It is wonderful for me to rub shouldersﾗas it wereﾗwith one of experts of photographic chemistry. But it is sad that chemical photography is rapidly disappearing, and that expertise like your is wasted on most of the youthful photographers of today. Though I'm fairly new to photography, I'm no longer a youth! I'm a boomer with a love of the old ways, and I'm thrilled to have stumbled across this website a few months ago. The level of talent and expertise I find here is enormous. But of course, there are a few idiots and stumblers as well. I consider myself in the latter group.

Again, thank you for your response, and I'll read your archived comments with relish.

I need wiser heads to tell me about alternative stop baths for film.

I'm using scratch-made divided D-76 and off-the-shelf Kodak F-5

fixer. I know there are lots of complaints to the use of the latter,

but it works, I'm in no hurry and I always use hypo-clear before a

wash.

My concern is about my acetic acid stop bath. I now realize that

those funny little holes in my sheet film from years back weren't due

to poor production standards at the film manufacturer, but from my

own ineptitude with the chemicals. I suppose I was too heavy-handed

with the acetic acid in the stop bath.

Since I live in a hot climate, Iﾒve been adding sodium sulfate to my

developers and stop baths to prevent excessive swelling (but not in

the divided D-76 formula, of course). But as of late Iﾒve become a

thorough reader of Anchellﾒs books, and it appears as though the

acetic acid should go.

Anchell makes an anecdotal reference (an infuriating habit of his,

when really important information should be spelled out) to using 10

grams of sodium bisulfite per liter of water as a gentle stop bath.

Since Iﾒve been using the borax developer I know the instance of

pinhole producing carbon dioxide bubbles is less likely than with

other developers, but I would like to eliminate the danger entirely.

Iﾒm sticking with the Kodak fixer until I burn up all the packages.

But does anyone out there have any experience using sodium bisulfite,

or any other alternative to acetic acid?

I can assure you, Randall, that I?m not just adding chemicals willy-nilly. I add the sodium sulfate because I live in a tropical climate, and without central air conditioning, and with 75-80 degree water year-round it?s damned near impossible to control development temperature. I fear reticulation as much as Republicanism. So why fight nature? I?m a tropical developer, and divided D-76 apparently isn?t temperature sensitive. In fact, where in god?s name do they have 68-degree ambient water? North Dakota?

The other difficulty I?ve had is in whipping up the recommended number of grams of borax for solution B. If the water isn?t almost boiling the stuff won?t dissolve properly. And I was still getting precipitation: the next day you could pour out the solution and find a slurry of crystals that looked like ice. So, hell, I just cut borax it in half, and today I developed my first rolls of film in this solution. Worked like charm. In fact, I?ve even printed them and they look just fine.

But maybe I?m fudging just a bit. Today was also the first time for me to use my newly acquired, ancient, Omega cold light head. Love the damned thing.

I'm trying out divided D-76 to see if it will thin out my

chronically over-exposed 35mm negatives (my medium in the past was

large format). If I thin out my solution and go for N-3, my concern

will be for excessive grain. My first attempts at dividing still

resulted in thick emulsions, though I haven't gotten around to

printing them just yet. Any thoughts about reducing the Borax

solution to half-strength? As a general question, will the cutting of

the alkalizer result in excessive grain?

Oh, and since I live in a fairly tropical climate, I've always doped

my solutions with sodium sulfate. The propaganda suggests this isn't

necessary with a divided solution.

I fear excessive grain more than thick emulsions. I'm in need of

words from the wizened heads once again.