D-72 the color of a good brown ale?

Pioneer · Apr 22, 2021

I mixed up a new batch of D-72 yesterday since my Ansco 130 was getting low and decanted it into a plastic bottle that had held some Dektol a year or so ago.

This morning I went to develop a print and the developer came out of the bottle dark brown. I had read that Dektol had this problem a while back but this is the first time it has happened to me with my home brew D-72 and this was fresh stock, only a day old.

I went ahead and used it anyway and it developed the print like normal so I'm not going to get to stressed about it. But I do wonder what could be causing it?

The bottle had been washed, rinsed and dried before I put it away.
The chemicals are all kept in their original containers in a cool environment. None of them are terribly old with the possible exception of the sodium carbonate.
I did use tap water rather than distilled but I've done that before without having any trouble. I go through a liter of print developer so quickly I don't normally worry about using distilled water.

BradS · Apr 22, 2021

It is not supposed to be brown. Mine is usually tinted very light grey but clear.
Like when D-76 turns brown, I think that D-72 turns brown just before it goes bad. Maybe (I am not a chemist!) something to do with Sulfite or oxygenation ???

Alan9940 · Apr 22, 2021

Odd. I've used D-72 as my primary print developer for years and have never experienced it turning brown. It does have a slight tint to it when first mixed, but nothing even approaching a light tan let alone brown. I've stored mine in amber glass bottles for, at least, six months and it looks as fresh as the day I mixed it. I'm guessing some oddball contamination with the water used. I do always mix mine with RO water.

gone · Apr 22, 2021

Welcome to Kodak 2.0

I had to throw out a gallon each of D76 and Dektol a couple of weeks ago due to this. After contacting Kodak, they said they would send me a replacement for the D76. At least that's what they said, I haven't seen anything arrive in the mail, and don't expect to really. Never thought this would ever happen, but I don't buy Kodak products after this. Only the old tins of developers on auction sites.

Pioneer · Apr 22, 2021

I'll use it again tomorrow and see how it works. Today's print developed perfectly so the color doesn't seem to have any effect on the developing power. As much as I am printing right now I seriously doubt that this liter will last more than a week. Hopefully it will last that long but if not, que sera.

I've been mixing D-23 for quite awhile and that uses a lot of sodium sulfite. So far I have not had any problems with my D-23 so I can't believe that the Sodium Sulfite has gone bad. I guess it is possible that there may have been a bit of residue in the bottle I was reusing but even then I can't understand the color change since it has been used for Dektol or D72 (whichever I happen to be using at the time) as long as I've owned it. It was the normal clear developer when I finished mixing and poured it into the bottle yesterday but this morning it came out dark brown, almost the color of Guiness.

I do have a bottle that has some old Liquidol developer I haven't used up. Maybe I'll clean it out this evening and try mixing another batch tomorrow morning and see how that turns out. Like I said, I'm using this stuff fast so it certainly won't go to waste.

MattKing · Apr 22, 2021

momus said:
Welcome to Kodak 2.0

I had to throw out a gallon each of D76 and Dektol a couple of weeks ago due to this. After contacting Kodak, they said they would send me a replacement for the D76. At least that's what they said, I haven't seen anything arrive in the mail, and don't expect to really. Never thought this would ever happen, but I don't buy Kodak products after this. Only the old tins of developers on auction sites.

I wondered how long it would take for someone to blame Kodak for self-mixed D-72

Pioneer · Apr 22, 2021

MattKing said:
I wondered how long it would take for someone to blame Kodak for self-mixed D-72

I haven't noticed anyone blaming Kodak. That certainly isn't the case here. This is certainly all my doing, not Kodak's. I had just remembered a Dektol post a few months ago where a similar color change had occurred. This one has nothing to do with that with the possible exception of this mix being used almost interchangeably with the other.

Maybe I'll wait on mixing the new batch until I can try it with distilled water in the same bottle. That way I am only changing one variable at a time.

MattKing · Apr 22, 2021

Pioneer said:
I haven't noticed anyone blaming Kodak.

You must have missed momus' post:

momus said:
Welcome to Kodak 2.0

I had to throw out a gallon each of D76 and Dektol a couple of weeks ago due to this. After contacting Kodak, they said they would send me a replacement for the D76. At least that's what they said, I haven't seen anything arrive in the mail, and don't expect to really. Never thought this would ever happen, but I don't buy Kodak products after this. Only the old tins of developers on auction sites.

Wayne · Apr 22, 2021

MattKing said:
I wondered how long it would take for someone to blame Kodak for self-mixed D-72

And I'll bet you thought it would be me. But I was going to correct momus until I saw you already had

ParkerSmithPhoto · Apr 22, 2021

Pioneer said:
I mixed up a new batch of D-72 yesterday ... and decanted it into a plastic bottle t...This morning I went to develop a print and the developer came out of the bottle dark brown.

When I read the title of this thread, the first thing that flashed through my mind was: PLASTIC BOTTLE. I've had Dektol turn into brown sludge inside of a week in one of those old DataTainer plastic bottles. Total garbage for developers. Glass only now.

Pioneer · Apr 23, 2021

A very similar type bottle for sure Parker. Most of my developers, particularly film ones, are stored in glass but I have been in the habit of keeping my print developers in plastic. I may have to wean myself from that habit.

And you are right Matt. When I scanned the replies I missed momus.

Pioneer · Apr 23, 2021

So far it is working just fine though I almost feel like I'm developing with some well ripened Ansco 130. I've got more prints this morning that have turned out pretty nice.

I am going to have to be careful or I will start to feel like I actually know how to print.

MattKing · Apr 23, 2021

Did you recently source some new constituent chemicals?

Pioneer · Apr 23, 2021

MattKing said:
Did you recently source some new constituent chemicals?

No. I have recently picked up a few things from Photo Formulary but what I used for this batch has been used before for other developers.

Down Under · Apr 23, 2021

D72 is home brewed ale - developer, sorry! I too mix my own, mostly as I have a lifelong stock of chemistry hoarded in my darkroom.

Some chemicals may weaken or go bad before others. Some of my metol has changed color to a darker hue. So far it goes on working well.

I now mix only small batches of chemistry at any one time and try to use it all by a given date. I also store in glass bottles filled to the top and more securely sealed with cling wrap as well as a tight cap.

This story relates to paper developer but my film developers are also home-mixed, so they may be some similarity/link. Last weekend I decided to process a backlog of film and retrieved a liter bottle (full to the top) of Adox MQ-borax fine grain develope.

I did a small test strip on my Jobo as I always do. It worked fine. The second roll I processed looked slightly underdeveloped. For the third roll (I do at most only three rolls in any one lot of developer before I dispose of it) I increased the time by +20% and the result was slightly underdeveloped. All three films are easily printable.

On checking my notebook I realised I mixed that developer on April 24, 2020.

Like many I no longer use plastic bottles as I have heard they 'bleed' air into the chemistry. I now buy one liter water bottles with ceramic or plastic clip tops from the Reject shop or the local charity shops. They are easier to wash and keep decontaminated. Even then I dispose of some of them after a year when sludge starts building up on the glass that cannot be washed off.

It may be that your chemicals are very old, like mine. I still have Phenidone from 2010. So little of this is needed for developers, I will probably have some left when I eventually give up darkroom work.

This may not be of much help to you, but I wanted to relate my experiences as a 'self-mixer'.

Pioneer · Apr 23, 2021

Thanks ozmoose. I also try to keep enough chemicals on hand so I don't run out when I need some developer or other solution.

I write the date the various chemicals are bought on their bottles when they arrive. It helps me keep things straight. The oldest is the Sodium Sulfite which is a fairly large jar that was purchased back in May 2019 so it is almost 3 years old. I can't imagine it has gone bad in that amount of time. I used some of the D-23 I mixed two weeks ago today and it worked fine and has not changed color. The Potassium Bromide was bought in August 2019. I hope that lasts because I use so little of it each time and I still have a lot of it. Everything else was picked up in 2020. The other one that I hope does not go bad is the Sodium Carbonate. The last time I ordered it I picked up a large batch.

I am beginning to suspect that the bottle is the cause of the contamination and I will be getting rid of it once I am done with this batch. I will need to order some more glass bottles as the ones I presently have are all in use.

bernard_L · Apr 24, 2021

Pioneer said:
The other one that I hope does not go bad is the Sodium Carbonate.

Don't take that one for granted. Sodium carbonate exposed to air slowly absorbs humidity and carbon dioxide, transforming to sodium bicarbonate.

Down Under · Apr 24, 2021

I used to put my developer glass bottles in the dishwasher to clean them properly, but my partner threatened me with death by small cuts if I did it again, so I too now dispose of bottles in the recycling bin (where contamination if it does happen then becomes someone else's worry) and just get a new lot.

After much experience I have learned (mostly the hard way) that it is best to home-mix fairly standard developers and not the more, well, fiddly ones which can give wildly different results if one accidentally uses the wrong chemical blend or has exhausted chemistry. I tend to brew up D72 and D76 in its many variants and now and then a batch of Adox MQ-borax. For many years I played with two bath developers, mostly the Thornton blend (in the Ansel Adams mix) but eventually gave up on this as I found basically the more standard developers give as good results. The two baths have an honored place in darkroom history but as I now tend to travel to Southeast Asia, go thru my films, return home with up to 50 rolls of B&W and process in big batches and all-night sessions in my darkroom, fortified with good music and even better Tasmanian red wines, I find mixing up small batches of developer, processing as few rolls as I want to do without compromising quality, and then mixing up new batch, is by far the best way. No false economy is involved here and the best results are usually guaranteed, give or take the usual disasters that can occur.

You Americans are so fortunate to live in a society where anything photographic is relatively inexpensive compared to us colonials who have to pay through the nose for what you buy for reasonable prices. For this reason we tend to hang on to our photo things for a long time, maybe too long, and throwing away darkroom chemicals when they are well beyond their use-by dates rates as heresy. I tend to compromise as Sagittarians do by holding on to everything until it becomes ancient and then doing tests with small bits of film before I risk irreplacable images on film to outdated chemistry.

bernard_L · Apr 24, 2021

ozmoose said:
I used to put my developer glass bottles in the dishwasher to clean them properly, but my partner threatened me with death by small cuts if I did it again, so I too now dispose of bottles in the recycling bin (where contamination if it does happen then becomes someone else's worry) and just get a new lot.

You don't have to. I had a glass bottle with a solid deposit inside that resisted lye, sulfuric acid, and the sulfochromic mixture sold many years ago by Ilford; now banned. Nothing worked. Then I put a few spoonfuls of sand, plus half-filled with water, and shaked; Perfectly clean.
In the absence of a solid deposit inside the bottle, a rinse+shake with warm water is adequate as far as I'm concerned.

Pioneer · Apr 24, 2021

bernard_L said:
Don't take that one for granted. Sodium carbonate exposed to air slowly absorbs humidity and carbon dioxide, transforming to sodium bicarbonate.

I've been know to spread batches of sodium carbonate on a tray and warm them in the oven at about 200F to help drive off moisture. It sounds odd but it does work. I believe that you can often increase the amount in grams in a given formula if your sodium carbonate is no longer anhydrous.

That being said I'm not sure that sodium carbonate that has absorbed a bit of moisture would cause the entire batch to go brown.

Pioneer · Apr 24, 2021

ozmoose said:
I used to put my developer glass bottles in the dishwasher to clean them properly, but my partner threatened me with death by small cuts if I did it again, so I too now dispose of bottles in the recycling bin (where contamination if it does happen then becomes someone else's worry) and just get a new lot.

After much experience I have learned (mostly the hard way) that it is best to home-mix fairly standard developers and not the more, well, fiddly ones which can give wildly different results if one accidentally uses the wrong chemical blend or has exhausted chemistry. I tend to brew up D72 and D76 in its many variants and now and then a batch of Adox MQ-borax. For many years I played with two bath developers, mostly the Thornton blend (in the Ansel Adams mix) but eventually gave up on this as I found basically the more standard developers give as good results. The two baths have an honored place in darkroom history but as I now tend to travel to Southeast Asia, go thru my films, return home with up to 50 rolls of B&W and process in big batches and all-night sessions in my darkroom, fortified with good music and even better Tasmanian red wines, I find mixing up small batches of developer, processing as few rolls as I want to do without compromising quality, and then mixing up new batch, is by far the best way. No false economy is involved here and the best results are usually guaranteed, give or take the usual disasters that can occur.

You Americans are so fortunate to live in a society where anything photographic is relatively inexpensive compared to us colonials who have to pay through the nose for what you buy for reasonable prices. For this reason we tend to hang on to our photo things for a long time, maybe too long, and throwing away darkroom chemicals when they are well beyond their use-by dates rates as heresy. I tend to compromise as Sagittarians do by holding on to everything until it becomes ancient and then doing tests with small bits of film before I risk irreplacable images on film to outdated chemistry.

I agree. The simpler the better. 90% of my mixing is D-23 (can't get much simpler than that) and D-72. If I could find a simpler print developer I would try that but D-72 seems to work pretty well.

Once in awhile I whip up some Ansco 130, which I like except for trying to get the glycine to dissolve; some FX-37, which I love on TMX100; and Beutler; which I use on JCH400 when I pick it up.

Oh yeah, I use some caffenol once in awhile just because I like the fact that it is made mostly from common stuff found in the kitchen. I also love how it works on HP5+. If I could get it to work on prints then I might not use anything else ever.

Pioneer · Apr 28, 2021

I believe the mystery is solved.

I drained the plastic 1L bottle this morning in making up my last batch for printing and what do you think came out in the last few dribbles? You got it. There was some grunge in the bottom of the bottle. This would have been some left over from the last batch of Dektol I had mixed and it managed to provide just enough contaminant to turn the entre liter dark brown. Obviously I had not cleaned this particular bottle as well as I had thought.

BTW, I have been printing like crazy over the past few days and none of the prints have shown any evidence of poor development so fortunately the contaminant did not appear to cause any serious harm to the D-72.

Thank all of you for your suggestions. I am always amazed at how helpful people are on this forum.

And, I have another glass 1L bottle that I have rinsed thoroughly (used to contain som Xtol) for my next batch of D-72 which I will be mixing up this afternoon.

gordrob · Apr 28, 2021

Years ago I ran into the problem of some developer being spoiled due to contamination in the brown 1 and 2 litre bottles I was using. I found a couple of items in a wine making store that I have used regularly to keep the bottle and measuring graduates clean. I have been using a J Tube Bottle Washer that will shoot a blast of hot water up into the bottle with enough force to dislodge any solids clinging to the bottle, bendable bottle cleaning brushes and small package of stainless steel balls that can be swirled around on the bottom of the bottles to remove any particles that cling to the glass.

Pioneer · Apr 28, 2021

gordrob said:
Years ago I ran into the problem of some developer being spoiled due to contamination in the brown 1 and 2 litre bottles I was using. I found a couple of items in a wine making store that I have used regularly to keep the bottle and measuring graduates clean. I have been using a J Tube Bottle Washer that will shoot a blast of hot water up into the bottle with enough force to dislodge any solids clinging to the bottle, bendable bottle cleaning brushes and small package of stainless steel balls that can be swirled around on the bottom of the bottles to remove any particles that cling to the glass.

That sounds like a great idea. I'll look into this. I hate to dump all my brown plastic bottles as I use them for my flexicolor and slide color chemicals as well. Not to mention that I was never the most coordinated person in every day life and this tendency to drop things has not improved since I passed retirement age.

Thanks.

D-72 the color of a good brown ale?

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D-72 the color of a good brown ale?

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