crystals in my Ilford DDX

[Dave H]

Hi,

As I opened up my new sealed bottle of DDX and poured it out i found lots of clear crystals in it. I figured the solution may be saturated and they had just come out with the cold in the darkroom. When it was diluted to 1:4 and brought to 20deg they were still there. Has anyone else had or heard of a problem like this? The film I processed developed OK but was a lot "flatter" than I was expecting! Any link do you think?

Dave

 

[Doug]

I have never used DDX but have encountered the same thing mixing other powdered developers. I used a filter and a funnel to filter out the undesolved solid particles, and then kept running the solution over the filter until most/all were in solution. Knowing this would happen, I later used hot water for the mix. Trouble with hot water is that it carries more dissolved air too, and that promotes oxidation of the developer, not a good thing. Given time, the crystals will probably dissolve on their own. It's a pain, and one reason I prefer to start with a liquid concentrate.

But not all the developers I like come as a liquid... D-76 and Diafine for instance. Diafine Solution B has some solids that are reluctant to dissolve. My latest mix was a gallon kit, and I started with two gallon jugs of distilled water, at room temp, and just slowly added the contents of the cans. As expected, there's stuff floating around in B. Still using the prevous quart kit, I've left the gallon jugs alone except for agitating the B jug every week or so. Gradually, it looks like the stuff is dissolving.... So, one suggestion is to mix your stock solution up well in advance, allowing time for it to "age". 🙂

 

[markinlondon]

Never seen this in a bottle of DDX, Dave. I can only assume that something came out of solution due to cold storage. I like DDX for its amazing shelf life, but hate the cost. Your results would suggest that the crystals were one of the developing agents, my guess would be the hydroquinone, have you tried warming the bottle and stirring to get this back into solution?

Doug, the fix for dissolved air in hot water is actually to boil it and then let it cool to the desired temperature. This loses most of the dissolved oxygen and has a side benefit of throwing down any solid matter. Filter it after boiling and cooling. (ref. 1953 Ilford manual of photography!)

Mark

 

[Doug]

This loses most of the dissolved oxygen and has a side benefit of throwing down any solid matter. Filter it after boiling and cooling.

Thanks, Mark! Interesting...

 

[AGN]

I have never used DDX but have encountered the same thing mixing other powdered developers. I used a filter and a funnel to filter out the undesolved solid particles, and then kept running the solution over the filter until most/all were in solution. Knowing this would happen, I later used hot water for the mix. Trouble with hot water is that it carries more dissolved air too, and that promotes oxidation of the developer, not a good thing. Given time, the crystals will probably dissolve on their own. It's a pain, and one reason I prefer to start with a liquid concentrate.
QUOTE

Hmmm, DDX is a liquid concentrate.

 

[Doug]

Hmmm, DDX is a liquid concentrate.

So it is! Well, all the more curious then to have crystals floating about! Back to that suggestion about application of heat... 🙂

 

[Dave H]

hi all,

I heated the whole bottle upto approx 50 deg cent. The crystals appear to of gone back into solution. Hope it was a one off and not a whole batch problem.

 

[markinlondon]

Glad to be of help, Dave, DD-X is far too expensive to waste.

Mark

 

[Doug]

Dave, that's good to hear... Hope your film is happy with the soup. I'd be inclined to keep it in reasonably warm storage. Given that it was wintertime, the stuff may have been subjected to a bout of cold, triggering the precipitate.