Question about D-76 developer

[mich8261]

I am about to process film at home for the first time. I have a question about the water to powder ratio for D-76. The instructions say to start off with 3 litres of water in which you disolve the powder and then top off to 3.8 litres (or 1 US galon). Instead of topping off, I added 0.8 litre of water to the 3 litres already in the bucket. I didn't factor in the volume of the powder. I still ended up with less than 4 litres of D-76. Will this small discrepancy (an extra 0.10 to 0.15 litre) make a difference? Should I dump the batch and start fresh?

Thanks for your help.

 

[EcoLeica]

hey it seems close enough....sounds like a waste just pouring it down the drain. Shoot a roll and give it a go (of course there will be many that disagree with me but from what i read everyone fiddles with the dilution anyway)

 

[steamer]

Why not keep adding water until you have 7.6 liters which makes a 1:1 solution, which is the strength I use anyway (disclaimer: I've been developing my own film for like 1 week now)

 

[kaiyen]

Whoa.

1 - do NOT add water to 7.6 liters. that will give you 1+1, but it'll go bad in like a day. Or hours. Do not do that. Do not 🙂

2 - only way to find out for sure is to test. You might have slightly weakened your developer. But it's up to you whether you want to just toss it or save the money on that gallon.

What I do is mix it up in the 3 liters or whatever, then pour into a 1 quart beaker, then into my 1 gallon jug. At some point, I run out of the mixture and need to add water. So I add water until I've put 4 quarts into the jug.

allan

 

[trittium]

Ehh, it's fine. I never check it exactly, and my negs are always fine. It is a developer that is hard to screw up.

 

[steamer]

Thanks Kaiyen, well I did say I'd been at this for like a week 🙂 Looked up the info and it doesn't even last 24 hours, hmmmm, better toss mine out.

 

[rover]

Ehh, it's fine. I never check it exactly, and my negs are always fine. It is a developer that is hard to screw up.

I am not the most technically capable person, and this point is pretty important. It is hard to screw up. I mix up to produce a gallon of solution (but probably not exact), dilute to 1:1 for use and have not had any problems. Remember, time and temperature and agitation are all important variables and all hard to control. When you process your film chances are that you will not have everything perfect, or as you think it is, and you will find you still get good results. If you have some issues, try to figure out if there is something is seriously wrong in your process and try to fix that, or adjust only one factor, time for instance, but keep everything else "constant." Drop the film in the tank though, I bet you will get a good result.

 

[mich8261]

thanks to all. I feel better. Thursday night is the night I'll get to see the results...

 

[dll927]

Has anyone ever heard of following directions?? They wouldn't be there if the situation were meant to be hit-or-miss.

But having said that, D-76 is a pretty reliable soup. And it's been around since shortly after the Creation. The usual practice, as mentioned, is to make up the basic supply, then for use it's diluted 1:1. And following directions (again), the basic supply will be rather on the warm side, since you're supposed to start at about 120 degrees F. It usually isn't recommended to keep working solutions (the diluted version) around for long - you dilute right before use.

 

[kaiyen]

dll927,
The one thing about the RTFM thing is that the directions are ambiguous on one point, for both Ilford and Kodak. So you mix up the powder in X amount of liquid. Cool. Got that. Now, how do I go about bringing it up to 1 gallon? Most people don't have 1 gallon beakers. And there is a difference in volume, actually mostly from evaporation, but it's not much. So if I'm supposed to use 3000ml to mix, I might find that I have 2900 by the time I'm ready to bring volume up to 3800ml.

That's why I remeasure out and make sure I end up with 1 gallon using a series of 1 quart beakers.

Also, not that if some of us are in fact measuring development control over 15 second intervals, this can be important.

Oh, and one way to cool down D76 quickly is that when you bring it up to 3800ml, use cold water.

allan

 

[Ororaro]

D76 is pretty straightforward to mix, as indicated in their instructions.

 

[mich8261]

in addition to my issue listed above, I had a close call which could have been far worse. I was using a "made in Canada" bucket to do the mixing and I was about to use the 1 Gallon mark as a guide. Then it dawned on me, this would have been an Imperial Gallon (4.54 litres or 160 oz).

I think I'll stick to metric from now on and I'll go out and find a decent gallon (US) size graduate.

 

[Benjamin Marks]

At the risk of sounding flip -- being off by 0.1 liter (that is 100mm or about 4 fluid oz.) out of 4 liters is a very small amount. Just develop your film and keep notes of what you do. FWIW there are a lot of factors which go into the determination of your own personal film speed. Local variations on the pH of your tap water, presence of extra calcium (or other minerals), variations in the accuracy of your thermometer, ambient temperature of the room where the development is taking place, drift of the developer temp during development. The trick is to eliminate the variables as much as possible and then standardize on a procedure. Enjoy that D-76; it's a classic developer and I used it for years.

I mix it in a 5 liter plastic container. Start with 3 liters, mix in your powder (try to do it outside so you don't breathe in too much of the metol/hydroquinone mix). When the powder is dissolved, just add water untill you have 4 quarts/3.8 liters. I then bottle it in 4 1-liter glass bottles, 3 of them filled absolutely as high as they will go and capped tightly. If the water is still hot, you may get a little vaccume in these, when the water vapor cools. The fourth brown glass bottle is my first working solution. I use it 1:1 and discard. If the half-full 1 liter bottle is going to be sitting for more than a week, I rebottle in a smaller 500ml bottle. Oxygen is the enemy here -- don't use the stock solution if it has turned brown.

FWIW one of the advantages of XTOL over Dektol is that it mixes nicely in room temperature H20 (less waiting time before you can soup that film).

Ben Marks