Ilford Simplicity Fixer

[charjohncarter]

Marty, Freestyle has my order, along with other stuff. Thanks again.

 

[Freakscene]

Thank you for telling me I have been doing things wrongly during the last forty years and that all my negatives are about to die a painful death very soon.

I can confirm that an acid stop bath followed by 10 minutes in plain thiosulfate provides more than adequate fixing for modern films, without any risk of veiling, spotting or oxydation, even after decades in storage.

As stated, the downside of this plain hypo fixer is that you have to use it immediately and also that it won't be able to fix a large quatity of film because it gets exhausted quite rapidly. But for single use fixing of a couple of films, it gets the job done!

No, not very soon, I never said soon. But some time. ‘Short term’ for archival storage is up to 5 decades. It might take several decades for problems to emerge. And of course anyone can fix their films however they like, but understand that particularly if you shoot TMax, Delta, Acros or Foma 200 a single 10 minute bath of plain hypo will not fix it to archival standards. It is very simple to show chemically on exposed processed film.

Films first got a lot more iodide in them around the late 1980s. Traditional films that have been reformulated since then - i.e. Tri-X around 2001-02 also have more iodide than earlier formulations, but they still have much less than flat grain, epitaxial or monosize cubic films.

A 500mL bottle of Ilford Rapid fixer (as an example) costs about $US20 (or equivalent elsewhere - I mostly buy fixer in Australia and New Zealand) - that is enough to fix 60 b&w films, give or take depending on whether the scenes are high or low key. That’s about $US0.33/ film to fix it to archival standards. Fixer is also cheaper if you buy larger bottles. Given the cost of film in 2020, it’s nothing.

My point is that if you are creating a physical object and spending the money on film (which is no longer cheap) in the first place, it is worth understanding how to handle it best. And I can say, having just finished re-fixing a museum archive of tens of thousands of rolls of TMax, you’ll save damage to your images and potentially a giant amount of bother by doing it the best way you can the first time.

But like I said, do it however you like.

Marty