Ilford Rapid Fixer...uh oh...

My main concern is getting clean negatives that I can scan, and to that end, I have never failed. But I do need to get myself a fresh bottle of concentrate.
 
FWIW, a regular stop bath solution, 1-1/2 oz. of 28% acetic acid added to water to make 1 liter of working solution is rated to twenty 36-exposure rolls of film. A liter of fresh fixer will fix roughly the same number of rolls.

Using a stop bath within its limits will make the most effective use of the fixer.
 
A good while (15 years or so) ago I established how many films I could fix in my fixer before it was exhausted. I have checked periodically since and got the same results. I don't need to check anymore, unless I am testing a new film.

Marty
 
viridari said:
Does no one else besides JSU & I use an indicator to test their fixer before each use?
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I test mine by clipping the films leader & timing how long it takes to clear. Then multiply that time by 3 to get my total times. That way I have no doubt about my fixer what so ever!
 
Mabelsound Actually A Dude: According to Ilford's fact sheet, a working solution in a tightly capped full bottle will last 6 months. 7 days is for an open tray.
Also, from the same fact sheet:
"in order to avoid the risk of insufficient fixing,film should remain in the fixer for twice the time it takes the emulsion to clear."

If you're concerned about archival permanence, making sure the film is sufficiently washed is probably the bigger issue.
 
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"Originally Posted by viridari
Does no one else besides JSU & I use an indicator to test their fixer before each use?"

If this tests only for residual silver, not sure, it would not alert you to a problem of an acid fixer that had gone bad with contamination or age, not that that is likely to happen. But that is one reason I use the clip test. Also, the film and fixer are both already on hand.
 
My rapid fixer is about a year old at this point. It has probably seen a couple dozen rolls and it still seems to be working fine to me. :|
 
viridari said:
Does no one else besides JSU & I use an indicator to test their fixer before each use?
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I use hypo tester. I put about 1ml of the hypo in my smallest graduate cylinder, and drop in one drop of checker. If it turns white, the hypo is saturated with silver. I make it a habit to mix fresh hypo eliminator at the same time I change the hypo.

Whenever there is doubt as to whether film or paper has been adequately fixed, it can always be re-fixed in fresh hypo. At the end of a printing session, I will test the hypo. If the tester says it's exhausted, I do a final fix in fresh hypo. That, along with a good hypo eliminator bath and a good wash, is a good way to render film and prints archival.
 
Hi everybody,

I have just had a very strange experience yesterday with Ilford Rapid Fixer. I had never used this fixer before, that's why I don't know it. Mistakenly, because of an error in the mixing ratio description (as discussed here: http://photo.net/black-and-white-photo-film-processing-forum/00QIey?start=0), I diluted it 1+3 instead of 1+4. This was two days earlier (so the fixer was fresh: I fixed just one film in it before w/o any problem). However, this time, e.g. yesterday, I wanted to fix a 120 roll of Kodak Tri-X 400, developed in Ilfotec HC and stopped in fresh Ilfostop solution. After 3 minutes of fix (as Ilford recommend 2-5 minutes, and the fixer was fresh, I thought 3 minutes would be just fine), I open the tank and I see an extremely milky film, e.g. completely white on the back side, and seemingly positive image on the emulsion side. This has never happened to me before, so I didn't know what's wrong. After some internet research I understood the only thing I could do was a re-fix. So I took some 3,5 months old solution of my usual fixer Fomafix, re-fixed for usual 3 min and the film came out nicely clear, apparently w/o any IQ damage...

Now, my question is: Somebody here wrote that "[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]if your fix is exhausted your film will have milky white or yellow staining when you remove it from the tank."[/FONT] So, how could I reach this completely white neg? How could it be caused by the wrong dilution? If the fixer solution I used was 1+3 instead of 1+4, it should theoretically just "work faster" (and potentially harm the negative), I can understand that (being a chemically laic)... But this milky error after 3 minutes of fresh 1+3 solution – I don't understand at all, as long as a milky coloration is a sign of an exhausted fixer.

Thank you everybody for any idea of what could be wrong... It's probably just my lack of basic chemical knowledge... ? But to me it seems to be a "mystery" :)

Cheers, Jan
 
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That's odd. I've been using Ilford Rapid Fixer for years without issue at 1+4. I can't understand why 1+3 would cause any issues with improper fixing. I could understand a weaker dilution causing it, but not a stronger dilution. I had one time where I had borderline exhausted my fixer and my negs were a little shy of having a clear base, but never milky. Ever since then I always check my fixer with either hypo check or a snip test (take a snip of the film leader and test it in the fixer prior to developing the whole roll).

Also, back to the OP, I find this fixer to last a LONG time in working dilution. I've gone months and and a couple dozen rolls on one quart of working dilution.
 
Don't worry about it. Fixer lasts for a LONG time, I mean really LOOOOOOOOOONG. I mixed up a 500ml dilution, and used it to fix around 13-14 rolls of 135 36exp films. I've done this for hundreds of rolls, not a single failure. The dilution easily lasts for more than 3 months. Don't think there would be any problem for 6 months. BTW, I used stop bath before fix.

mabelsound said:
OK, I've been developing film for a couple of years now, and...I just happened to notice on the Rapid Fixer bottle a little table of shelf life times. Unopened concentrate, 2 years; opened but capped concentrate, 6 months, 1:4 solution, 7 days.

7 days?!!? Uh...I have been using this same bottle of concentrate for two years, mixing up a new 500ml batch every six months or so. And using the diluted fixer (stored in a dark glass bottle and filled to the top) for all of those 6 months...maybe 25 times total before mixing up a new one (and new stop bath along with it.)

So...are all my negs from these past two years doomed? I went through all of them and none looks as if it has degraded at all. (I scan, hi-res, the day I develop and rarely return to the negs, so this wouldn't be quite the tragedy it might seem.) I guess it's time for a new bottle of fixer, though it's a shame--I haven't used even close to all of it. I shoot maybe 50 rolls of B&W a year...probably more in the near future, as I have kinda given up color film for digital. So how should I be using fixer? Should I be seriously mixing up a new batch every week?

Veterans, advise.
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xia_ke said:
That's odd. I've been using Ilford Rapid Fixer for years without issue at 1+4. I can't understand why 1+3 would cause any issues with improper fixing. I could understand a weaker dilution causing it, but not a stronger dilution. I had one time where I had borderline exhausted my fixer and my negs were a little shy of having a clear base, but never milky. Ever since then I always check my fixer with either hypo check or a snip test (take a snip of the film leader and test it in the fixer prior to developing the whole roll).

Also, back to the OP, I find this fixer to last a LONG time in working dilution. I've gone months and and a couple dozen rolls on one quart of working dilution.
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Thanks for the reply. Obviously there is something wrong with the fixer. I've just done a snip clearing test: The 3+1 solution I had used didn't clear it even after 10 minutes (continuous agitation)! This means that the whole bottle of fixer concentrate must be dead... for some reason that I don't understand yet... anyway, I have learned testing the fixer... So there is a positive outcome of this strange story. I think I will buy a hypo-check!
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