A simple fixer formula. Any opinions?

Anon Ymous · Oct 29, 2008

Hello, I recently found a fixer formula that seems to be very cheap and obviously easy to make. The ingredients are probably easily obtainable. Please note that the original text was not in english, but I did my best to translate it. So, here it goes...

250 gr Hyposulfite* (Is it Na2S203?)
25 gr Metabisulfite (Is it Na2S2O5?)
Water to make 1 litre

I'm more or less clueless when it comes to photochemistry, but I guess it's a non rapid, non hardening fixer. Since I don't need a hardener and don't mind fixing for few more minutes I wouldn't mind giving it a try. So my questions are:

1) Has anybody used that formula?

2) How many 36exp 135 films would the 1lit solution fix?

3) Since I use stop bath (it's cheaper than dirt anyway, so why not use it...) would there be S02 produced?

4) If S02 does form would a water rinse after stop bath (or a plain water stop bath) eliminate that?

5) How much do you think it would take to fix film and prints?

6) How about odor?

Thanks in advance

* Probably pentahydrate. He didn't mention any details about it.

srs5694 · Oct 29, 2008

That formula is similar to that of Looten's Acid Hypo, which is formula #132 in Anchell's Darkroom Cookbook, 2nd Edition. (There's now a 3rd edition, but I haven't bought it yet.) Looten's formula is about twice as concentrated, though, and the proportions are just slightly different -- it's 480g of sodium thiosulfate and 45g of sodium metabisulfite to make 1 liter. The instructions say to use it undiluted, but Anchell doesn't say anything about its capacity. Some other fixers with ~250g of sodium thiosulfate in Anchell's book have claimed capacities of 20 sheets per liter, though, so I'd expect yours would be in that ballpark.

Personally, I've found fixers based on ammonium thiosulfate are less expensive than those based on sodium thiosulfate. This is based on mail-order chemical supply costs to me in Rhode Island, USA. Your costs or availability of raw materials may be different. I mostly use TF-3, although Dead Link Removed is also inexpensive. TF-3 has the disadvantage of having a rather strong ammonia odor, but to me this isn't a big deal.

Anon Ymous · Oct 29, 2008

srs5694 said:
...Some other fixers with ~250g of sodium thiosulfate in Anchell's book have claimed capacities of 20 sheets per liter, though, so I'd expect yours would be in that ballpark.

20 sheets of what? Could you clarify that one please?

srs5694 said:
Personally, I've found fixers based on ammonium thiosulfate are less expensive than those based on sodium thiosulfate. This is based on mail-order chemical supply costs to me in Rhode Island, USA. Your costs or availability of raw materials may be different. I mostly use TF-3, although Dead Link Removed is also inexpensive. TF-3 has the disadvantage of having a rather strong ammonia odor, but to me this isn't a big deal.

Yes, it will all depend on availability and the prices if I try it or not. If it's not seriously cheaper I won't bother giving away the convenience of ready made fixers. Oh, and thanks for the links

Paul Verizzo · Oct 29, 2008

Here is a pdf of my fixer testing. As PE upbraided me, these are times to clear, not fix. YMMV.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Mike Wilde · Oct 29, 2008

of what?

most film dev and fixer ratings are based on 80 sq inches of film - 1-8x10", 4-4x5", one roll 120, one roll 135-36 are all equivalent to 80 sq inches.

Anon Ymous · Oct 29, 2008

Thanks a lot guys!
So, it seems than 1lit of that stuff is probably good for approx 20 films. Not bad at all. I have a feeling though that it won't be a good/practical print fixer. It will probably take rather long to fix prints.

CBG · Oct 29, 2008

Get some hypo check to be sure you don't overuse your fix, and use two bath fixing and most fixer formulas will work fine.

A formula to make your own hypo check is at: www.digitaltruth.com/techdata/fixtest.php just potassium iodide and water.

Or buy it at zillions of retailers: www.adorama.com/CHEHC4.html or www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/16686-REG/Edwal_EDHC3_4_Hypo_Check_Liquid_.html

C

Anon Ymous · Oct 29, 2008

CBG said:
Get some hypo check to be sure you don't overuse your fix, and use two bath fixing and most fixer formulas will work fine.

A formula to make your own hypo check is at: www.digitaltruth.com/techdata/fixtest.php just potassium iodide and water.

Or buy it at zillions of retailers: www.adorama.com/CHEHC4.html or www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/16686-REG/Edwal_EDHC3_4_Hypo_Check_Liquid_.html

C

That one is very easy to make it yourself. Pharmacies probably have KI. Make 200 - 300ml and that should last a lot. BTW, thanks for the tip

Photo Engineer · Oct 29, 2008

When using a fix with unknown properties, it is best to run 3 tests:

1. Fixation test. Sodium Sulfide solution turns brown if the fix was exhausted or weak or the time was too short.
2. Wash test. Silver Nitrate in Acetic Acid, with a color chart will tell you how good your wash cycle was.
3. Exhaustion test. Potassium Iodide in fix forms yellow cloudy precipitate if fixer is bad.

I run these all the time!

PE

srs5694 · Oct 29, 2008

Anon Ymous said:
20 sheets of what? Could you clarify that one please?

Sorry, I meant 20 sheets of 8x10-inch paper. (I actually wrote that, but accidentally browsed away from the reply page, and so had to start my reply again, and that detail got lost.) As PE says, you can run tests to verify the capacity of your fixer. Particularly when fixing fiber-base paper, using a two-bath fixing regime is desirable, too.

If you could say where you live, somebody might be able to provide sources of supply for raw chemicals.

Anon Ymous · Oct 29, 2008

Photo Engineer said:
When using a fix with unknown properties, it is best to run 3 tests:

1. Fixation test. Sodium Sulfide solution turns brown if the fix was exhausted or weak or the time was too short.
2. Wash test. Silver Nitrate in Acetic Acid, with a color chart will tell you how good your wash cycle was.
3. Exhaustion test. Potassium Iodide in fix forms yellow cloudy precipitate if fixer is bad.

I run these all the time!

PE

Ok, #3 is what CBG mentioned. It's pretty obvious. I'm not sure if I got 2 & 3 right. Let's see...

1. Do you mean that you put a piece of the processed film (blank parts) in Na2S solution and see if it gets brown?

2. Accordingly, do you throw a piece of the processed film in acetic acid solution?

3. What's that yellow precipitate? AgI?

Photo Engineer · Oct 29, 2008

One drop of each of #1 and 2 solutions. They can be purchased premixed from many photo stores.

#1 is Sodium Sulfide solution and #2 is Silver Nitrate in Acetic Acid mixed. A drop of each on different spots of your paper or film and if the drops become yellow spots, then fixing and washing were not correct.

PE

john_s · Oct 29, 2008

srs5694 said:
..............Personally, I've found fixers based on ammonium thiosulfate are less expensive than those based on sodium thiosulfate. This is based on mail-order chemical supply costs to me in Rhode Island, USA..................

There are places where ammonium thiosulphate is not readily available (e.g. here in Australia). So I used to mix up TF-2 ( see http://www.jackspcs.com/fixer.htm )

Now I just use Kodak Flexicolor Fixer (made primarily for colour film) because it also doesn't smell much and is quite cheap.

dancqu · Oct 29, 2008

Anon Ymous said:
"Hello, I recently found a fixer formula that seems to be very
cheap and obviously easy to make.

250 gr Hyposulfite* (Is it Na2S203?)
25 gr Metabisulfite (Is it Na2S2O5?)
Water to make 1 litre

... I guess it's a non rapid, non hardening fixer. Since I don't
need a hardener and don't mind fixing for few more minutes
I wouldn't mind giving it a try.

It is a non-rapid, non-hardening, acid fix. Na2S2O3, sodium
thiosulfate and likely the penta, is by itself very nearly ph
neutral. Were sodium sulfite substituted for the meta
you'd have a mildly alkaline fixer.

My formula fixer is even more simple, the thiosulfate
alone. From the dry anhydrous concentrate I prepare fresh
fix at time of use. The shelf life of that dry fixer concentrate
may be forever.

For film I use 16 grams of the anhydrous in a solution
volume of 500ml, very dilute, one-shot, one 120 roll.
Same for paper, very dilute, one-shot. Dan

Anon Ymous · Oct 30, 2008

dancqu said:
It is a non-rapid, non-hardening, acid fix. Na2S2O3, sodium
thiosulfate and likely the penta, is by itself very nearly ph
neutral. Were sodium sulfite substituted for the meta
you'd have a mildly alkaline fixer.

My formula fixer is even more simple, the thiosulfate
alone. From the dry anhydrous concentrate I prepare fresh
fix at time of use. The shelf life of that dry fixer concentrate
may be forever.

For film I use 16 grams of the anhydrous in a solution
volume of 500ml, very dilute, one-shot, one 120 roll.
Same for paper, very dilute, one-shot. Dan

I'm not sure, but I think Metabisulfite makes it last longer. Hypo alone would exhaust rapidly (that's why you use it one shot) and since you can easily check for that (Potassium Iodide test mentioned previously) I'd go that way.

How is plain hypo for paper fixer? How long do you fix?

Anon Ymous · Oct 30, 2008

srs5694 said:
If you could say where you live, somebody might be able to provide sources of supply for raw chemicals.

You're right about the geographic location, although it won't make a lot of difference in my case. Most members of this site are from the US. Europeans are fewer and greeks can be counted with the fingers of one hand.

dancqu · Oct 30, 2008

Anon Ymous said:
I'm not sure, but I think Metabisulfite makes it last longer.
Hypo alone would exhaust rapidly (that's why you use it one
shot) and since you can easily check for that (Potassium
Iodide test mentioned previously) I'd go that way.

How is plain hypo for paper fixer? How long do you fix?

Metabisulfite in solution is sodium bisulfite. Bisulfite or sulfite,
either will help preserve the thiosulfate. There is some question
as to which preserves the better. Thiosulfate in acid solution is
more prone to break down.

You've got it bassackward. I can use the thiosulfate with out
preservative because it is used one-shot.

Pre-testing with the materials to be used is done before
hand in order to establish chemistry minimums and times.
With the very dilute fixers I use the iodide test is of no
use and not needed. Tests before hand on films and
papers determined chemistry amounts and times.

My fix times are 4 minutes paper, 10 minutes film.
A single very dilute one-shot fixer will deliver 'archival'
results, film or paper. A BIG advantage for very dilute
fixer. Also no stop is required. All in all a good way
to process when using a single tray. Dan

Anon Ymous · Oct 30, 2008

Hello Dan,
I understood exactly why you don't use a preservative. I guess it was bad phrasing from my part. After all, english is not my native language.

Metabisulfite is easily obtainable from wine making supplies stores, so I have another reason to use it. Besides, I wouldn't like to mix fixer all the time; I'll make batches. If I can get something like 1kg of hypo and 100g of meta I can split it by volume (each ingredient alone) to 4 parts and so I don't even need a scale.

Regarding paper, I think it won't be that bad, provided that I print on RC only at this point. "Archival" wash for RC is just 2 minutes And the 4 minutes you mention are likely to be 2 in my case.

Paul Verizzo · Oct 30, 2008

Anon Ymous said:
I'm not sure, but I think Metabisulfite makes it last longer.

Just like its alkaline cousin sodium sulfite, metabisulfite is a preservative, too. However, it is very acidic and most formulas use metabisulfite as a pH reducer which then causes a slowing of developing action. It takes some of the heat of very active developers out, so to speak. Why? One reason might be to get reasonable developing times. Another is to let the developing agent(s) bring up the shadow detail w/o blowing out the highlights.

Paul Verizzo · Oct 30, 2008

Anon Ymous said:
Hello Dan,
I understood exactly why you don't use a preservative. I guess it was bad phrasing from my part. After all, english is not my native language.

Metabisulfite is easily obtainable from wine making supplies stores, so I have another reason to use it. Besides, I wouldn't like to mix fixer all the time; I'll make batches. If I can get something like 1kg of hypo and 100g of meta I can split it by volume (each ingredient alone) to 4 parts and so I don't even need a scale.

Regarding paper, I think it won't be that bad, provided that I print on RC only at this point. "Archival" wash for RC is just 2 minutes And the 4 minutes you mention are likely to be 2 in my case.

Anon, the metabisulfite in fixer is to reduce the pH with the presumption you want an acid fixer so that, in turn, you can use a hardener. The preservative action is secondary.

I use 25% ammonium thiosulfate and 15 grams of sodium sulfite in a liter of water. It fixes in under a minute, thoroughly, even T-Max films. See my pdf I linked to above.

Photo Engineer · Oct 30, 2008

By the time a print or film is in the fixer, development is supposed to have been stopped. Otherwise, you chance getting dichroic fog or other unwanted effects.

PE

Anon Ymous · Oct 30, 2008

Paul Verizzo said:
I use 25% ammonium thiosulfate and 15 grams of sodium sulfite in a liter of water. It fixes in under a minute, thoroughly, even T-Max films. See my pdf I linked to above.

So, that would make it a rapid fixer right? Two potential problems are:
1) I'm not sure how easily obtainable ammonium thiosulfate is. I checked it out and both of the ingredients I want can be found easily here.
2) That might give some nasty smell. Wouldn't it?

Oh, and... I don't use T grain films so fixing times are not much of an issue.

srs5694 · Oct 30, 2008

As a general rule, the ammonium odor from ammonium thiosulfate is only strong in alkali solutions (or perhaps a certain range of alkaline pHs; I'm not sure of the details). TF-3 suffers from this problem, but many other fixers based on ammonium thiosulfate, such as Kodak Flexicolor (C-41) fixer, do not. Depending on other ingredients, you can get other odors with either ammonium thiosulfate or sodium thiosulfate fixers.

Concerning fixing times, I personally find this to be more of an issue with paper than with film. In a typical printing session, I'll put prints through the developer/stop/fixer sequence half a dozen or a dozen times. An extra two minutes of fixing time can therefore add up to close to half an hour per session. I seldom do more than one processing sequence for film, though, so an extra two minutes of fixing time extends my processing session by two minutes.

Anon Ymous · Oct 30, 2008

srs5694 said:
Concerning fixing times, I personally find this to be more of an issue with paper than with film.

My thoughts exactly.

srs5694 said:
In a typical printing session, I'll put prints through the developer/stop/fixer sequence half a dozen or a dozen times. An extra two minutes of fixing time can therefore add up to close to half an hour per session.

Yes, that could make it boring. I'll have to try and see how good it is.

srs5694 said:
I seldom do more than one processing sequence for film, though, so an extra two minutes of fixing time extends my processing session by two minutes.

I don't mind spending 2 more minutes fixing film.

BTW, I searched a bit for fixers and found this page. There's an interesting article about fixers and the guy who wrote it proposes the use of a formula close to what I wrote at the beginning of the thread. He uses 30 - 60g of sodium sulfite instead of metabisulfite as a preservative.

kodachrome64 · Oct 31, 2008

dancqu said:
It is a non-rapid, non-hardening, acid fix. Na2S2O3, sodium
thiosulfate and likely the penta, is by itself very nearly ph
neutral. Were sodium sulfite substituted for the meta
you'd have a mildly alkaline fixer.

My formula fixer is even more simple, the thiosulfate
alone. From the dry anhydrous concentrate I prepare fresh
fix at time of use. The shelf life of that dry fixer concentrate
may be forever.

For film I use 16 grams of the anhydrous in a solution
volume of 500ml, very dilute, one-shot, one 120 roll.
Same for paper, very dilute, one-shot. Dan

I'm very interested in doing this. I have a couple of questions:

1. If I make a one-shot fixer, would it be better to use sodium thiosulfate or ammonium thiosulfate? The latter would be a rapid fixer and much faster, correct? Is there any reason to use one over the other? Both are available from Photo Formulary and are very close in price for 1lb containers.

2. I wouldn't want to bother with using a scale before every session, so would it be possible to use a volume measurement, taking a bit from a jar of powder and mixing it with 500mL of water? I'm sure accuracy is not that vital here.

This is really appealing to me to be able to fix my negatives to the highest archival standards and to not have to mess with reusing fixer. Also the cost savings should be significant since fixer is my highest expense with developing film.

Thanks,
Nick

A simple fixer formula. Any opinions?

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