water rinsing?

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Hi guys, I am just wondering how many times of water rinsing you use through the whole develop process? I only rinse with water before adding developer (pre-wash) but I have seen a few people doing things very different. Is there any advantage of rinsing with water?
thank you
 
My first film developing exercise since forever last Saturday night went like this:

Film: Ilford HP5+, 6 4x5 sheets
Developer: D-76 1:1 (500ml each of D-76 & tap water)
Tank: Jobo Expert 3010

Pre-Rinse: 5-6 minutes, tap water
Drain
D-76 11 minutes
Drain
Stop: Tap water, about 1 minute+
Drain
Fix: 5 minutes, Kodak Rapid Fixer, no hardener
Drain
Wash: Filled, rotated & drained Jobo tank several times, Running water in the open tank for a few minutes.
Drain
Final rinse: Kodak PhotFlo
Drain
Hang to dry

Total time from loading tank to hanging: maybe 90 pleasurable minutes.

Hope this helps.
 
In a small tank:
pre-soak - optional
as stop bath - fill, agitate 30 seconds, empty tank, repeat once
post fixer - depends on whether you are a user of hypo eliminator.
if using perma wash or the like: rinse for one minute, drain, fill with permawash solution agitate 30 sec to one minute, drain, rinse for one to a few minutes.

If not using hypo eliminator, rinse for at least 15 min.

I understand Ilford has some good recommendations about this that involves several filling and draining cycles. I haven't looked at the site, but the above works for me.
 
Developer
Short stop (optional -- increases fixer life)
Fix
Wash

All other washes/rinses are at best harmless, and at worst disadvantageous. Why else do you think that the major manufacturers don't recommend 'em? Because most of their employees know what they're talking about...

Hypo eliminator or similar is completely unnecessary with films: do the tests for yourself.

Addition (Edit): Ilford wash cycle, using water at processing temperature and a NON-HARDENING fixer. Fill. Invert 5x. Drain. Fill. Invert 10x. Drain. Fill. Invert 20x. Drain. ANSI archival washing. Again, try it. Do the tests if you like.

Further edit: in hard water areas, do extra steps in distilled/deionized water to reduce the risk of drying marks. I normally do 10x inversions in distilled/deionized water then 30-60 seconds in distilled/deionized water with wetting agent at 50-100% of manufacturers' recommended concentration. Too little wetting solution is useless; too much causes streaks in its own right.

(Hard water washes better/faster than distilled/deionized).

Cheers,

R.
 
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I usually do a pre-soak, unless it's not recommended (ie. w/Diafine).

After developing, I use filtered (brita pitcher) water as a stop bath for 30 seconds with agitation, drain, and repeat for 30 more seconds.

Then after fixing, I rinse again with filtered water for 30 seconds with agitation.

Then I use hypo-clear for the recomended times, before doing a ~10 minute tap water rinse.

Then I rinse with filtered water once (to rinse out the tap water) before filling the tank with filtered water again so I can add the photo-flo wetting agent.

It's probably overkill, but I'm very much a "better safe than sorry" kind of person when it comes to my film.

Paul
 
In defense of pre-soaking: Jobo says do it. Ilford says do it for Jobo tanks.

All my chemicals, including Photoflo at 50% of Kodak dilution, are mixed with distilled water.
 
Thank you all for the info. I still have some questions:
1. so stopbath is not necessary? in another word, I can use water instead?
2. is photoflo harmful? since it didn't say to wash off the photoflo after the rinse
3. I do use the hypo cleaning sometimes and I haven't seen any difference, plus weighing the powder and mixing it are very bothersome. So, neglect this step and using longer water rinse instead, correct?
4. one last question. Can I dump all the chemicals into sewer? It's NOT public sewer system and we do have our own sewer tanks and stuff. Will this be a problem to the sewer tanks? I do reuse the stopbath and fixer.

Thank you.
 
1) water is an effective stopbath, IMHO. I fill the tank two or three times with tap water before pouring in the fixer.

2) Photoflo or other types of rinse are intended to help prevent drying spots, so they ARE the last rinse.

3) Hypo clearing is used to clear "hypo" fixer, which is sodium hyposulfate. Most fixers these days are acetic acid and ammonium thiosulfate, as I understand it. For paper, it's more important to get all the fix out of it as it can cause degradation of the image over time. For film, I don't see it as an issue, since the base doesn't absorb liquid, and it's only the small volume of fixer that gets absorbed by the emulsion - easily rinsed completely even with the short and efficient Ilford method. And all this is rather moot since your fixer likely doesn't contain hypothiosulfate anyway.

4) It probably depends most on volume. The silver content of the fixer is minimal for two rolls of 35mm. Regular household chemicals that nobody worries about going down the drain are far more toxic and potentially disrupt a septic system far more than a few rolls of film a month. If you are running a professional level of volume, you'd want off-site waste processing.

But hey, I'm no expert 🙂
 
If you have short times in developing it is better to use a stop bath...😉

I use destilated Water for all parts..

only washing with normal water and later destilated water for the last time not to have problems with "dust" (sorry for my english)...

regards,
Jan
 
Thank you 40oz and Jan.
I just notice one thing that I have been using kodak Hardening fixer for all my developing and I had no clue about hardening or non-hardening by the time I started developing myself (my teacher in school told me to use kodak for both film and paper,never mentioned anything about hardening).
Anyway, my question is that if im using the hardening fixer, do I HAVE to use hypo clearing for better result? If the hypo clearing is not gonna be a problem, how long should I rinse the film after fixing? 25 mins? I have half gallon of the fixer left and I guess I will just have to stick with it for now...
 
Kodak recommends 5 to 6 water changes using their fixer and clear. They suggest 20-30 minutes at a flow rate that equals one complete change of water in five minutes. The Ilford method would probably suffice, but one could easily modify it for two more fill-agitate-dump cycles if one was being conservative, and still not waste much more than a liter or so of water.

BTW, I use Kodak developer and Ilford Rapid Fix, which is non-hardening, but the Kodak fixer is probably more economical, and perhaps the hardener would have prevented some ill-fated scratches I now deal with in older negatives. I don't know. But it can't hurt. The next time I buy fixer, it will be Kodak for the hardener, but that's probably superstition and hope more than logic. I just know how crestfallen I was finding a long scratch across a favorite shot when I pulled it from the sleeve. If hardener helps, I'll take it.

I now use only distilled water for the final rinse with a PhotoFlo-type product. Lessons learned the hard way 🙂 (or rather, 🙁 ) I do have a Brita filter, but filtered water is not distilled, and even though my water is soft (taken from a river but treated for city water supply) the filtered water left spots galore on my negatives. Distilled is cheap, available at gas stations for less than a buck a gallon, and totally resolved the spotting issue. For the price, I now can't see using anything else for the final rinse.

I'm not sure distilled is necessary for the other steps, but everyone's water is different. Nothing is more frustrating than having everything else turn out wonderful, but seeing huge globs of residue ruining an otherwise great shot. You can rinse again to clear the spots, but it's a pain when you can do it right the first time so easily.
 
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I used to use Kodak Rapid Fixer (the hardening type) in the beginning but recently changed to Ilford's Hypam. Less smell and less washing time (non-hardening fixer).

My developing workflow:

Develop, Drain, water as stop-bath (5 inversions), Drain, Fixer (3 ~ 5 min), Drain, Water (5 inversions), Drain, Fuji QW (kind of washing agent like Hypo) 1.5 min, Drain, Water (5 inversions), Drain, Water (10 inversions), Drain, Water (20 inversions) Drain, Fuji's wetting agent, Drain, and Dry. I stopped using an acid stop-bath since the sudden change of pH can cause shrinking of the emusion, thus coarse grain. All solutions / rinsing by tap water and at 20 degrees +/- 0.5 degree. (As read from thermometer)
 
1. Presoak is not necessary for most modern films, but it is at least harmless (I was thaught to do it to avoid air bubbles in the film)
2. Stop with water is good enough, 2 quick rinses with water will help lengthening fixer life.
3. washing as Roger said is the best way.
4. A drop of photoflo [LFN is best] at the end helps avoiding water marks and should not be rinsed off. 2 quick washes/rinses in distilled water can also do the trick.

Else we should try to not waste water during film processing, not that it will aid the environment much but doing our 0.002 worth.
 
Kodak Rapid Fixer with Hardener comes in two containers. Concentrated fixer in one, Hardener in the other. Adding the hardener to the stock fixer solution is optional.
 
that's great to know Wayne. thank you
One more question about HCA. It seems kodak HCA is giving me good result by far but I see many ppl use perma wash. What's the difference? Anybody tried the heico brand one?
 
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