white spots on my images

[sanmich]

last batch of film was much more dirty than usual.
Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of the small speckle of dust or more something like impurities are stuck in the emulsion, and I would like to know what I'm doing wrong here. One idea: Sometimes, I let the films in standing water for some time to "rinse them by diffusion". I tend to do this with inverted Osmosis water, but one of the last batches stayed a few hours in tap water. Could this be the problem?

 

[John Bragg]

Hi Michael. Prolonged wet times are bad for film emulsion. Could be impurities in the water possibly ? Could you post an example please ?

 

[sanmich]

John

can you please explain what's the damage to the emulsion from a prolonged stay in water?

here are a couple of examples. as you can see I also have trouble with dark spots which puzzle me even more (I have open another thread about them)

Thanks!

 

[mwoenv]

Since I have filtered all my solutions between developing cycles using paper coffee filters (one for each solution obviously), these types of imperfections have disappeared. In reusing solutions, they pick up a very minor amount of particles, e.g., silver removed from the film during developing and fixing. I use clear seltzer water bottles for storing my solutions and if you invert them and hold them up to the light you will see a small amount of debris in them, which the filtering removes.

 

[sanmich]

Since I have filtered all my solutions between developing cycles using paper coffee filters (one for each solution obviously), these types of imperfections have disappeared. In reusing solutions, they pick up a very minor amount of particles, e.g., silver removed from the film during developing and fixing. I use clear seltzer water bottles for storing my solutions and if you invert them and hold them up to the light you will see a small amount of debris in them, which the filtering removes.

Sounds like a good idea, and I do filter my developer after mixing it from powder.
do you filter all solutions? fix? Hypo clear?

 

[John Bragg]

Hi Michael. prolonged immersion can soften and actually lift emulsion from the film, or at the very least allow any debris in the water to settle and fuse to it. Most people dont use a film squeegee these days, but if you do, then over softened film is even more prone to damage.

 

[sanmich]

Thanks John

I'll make sure my films stay only about 20 min in water, and use filtered chemicals.
Hopefully this will solve the problem...