Just a quickie question. I have been reading about the mixing of D76 but didn't find anything on D23 about it. After mixing D23 do I need to wait to use it, until it settles in like D76?
Thanks
Thanks
Just a quickie question. I have been reading about the mixing of D76 but didn't find anything on D23 about it. After mixing D23 do I need to wait to use it, until it settles in like D76?
Thanks
Looks like I left out the "I" in mixing in the title. Anyway I can fix that?
Just a quickie question. I have been reading about the mixing of D76 but didn't find anything on D23 about it. After mixing D23 do I need to wait to use it, until it settles in like D76?
Thanks
Is there a sweet spot temperature for mixing and if so any tolerances +/-?Not sure about the "settling". If you mix the components properly at the correct temp, there should be virtually no precipitate, certainly not by the time the solution has cooled to room temp (you should wait for that before using it).
Is there a sweet spot temperature for mixing and if so any tolerances +/-?
Is there a sweet spot temperature for mixing and if so any tolerances +/-?
It should not be super touchy. I heat distilled water about 70% of final volume to 110-120F or so.Is there a sweet spot temperature for mixing and if so any tolerances +/-?
It looks as if this is about 50 degrees Centigrade but a couple of degrees either side is fine. Jon Finch who has a good 10 minute video on this developer simply uses the phrase " around about 50C " so the couple of degrees either side is my interpretation of what "around about " might mean. Based on #10 it looks as if a much lower temp of about 32 C will work so may be the "round about" 50C has more leeway than I had assumed
Here's his video if it helps
pentaxuser
If you're referring specifically to D-23, it's the easiest developer to assemble, and with only Sodium sulfite and Metol involved, warm water is sufficient: about 85-90 F does the job (up to100F won't cause problems, but temps below 80F will result in taking longer to dissolve the two dry components).
As others have mentioned, put a pinch of the sulfite in the water before adding the Metol. This scavenges the dissolved oxygen from the water so that it doesn't oxidize prematurely.
I just did the mixing at 100F. It looks like the chemicals did dissolve. Looks slightly milky.
It should not be super touchy. I heat distilled water about 70% of final volume to 110-120F or so.
Put just a pinch of the sodium sulfite in and add the metol.
Stir until fully dissolved.
Add the rest of the sodium sulfite, keep stirring, and top off with room temp distilled water to final volume.
Stir until everything is fully dissolved.
Store in glass bottle.
So long as it has no particulates in it, it will clear once it cools.
Stored it in plastic photo bottle. Didn't have glass.
I was thinking of those root beer bottles, for the time being until I can get the other brown/amber bottles. There used to be a beer and wine making shop in town but it went out of business some years ago. A dry cleaners is now in its place.Not sure what volumes you are mixing, but a glass bottle with a polycone style cap is the ideal way store developer. By convention they are brown, but do not have to be, I am told.
Plastics, even those marketed for photographic use, are often semipermeable to air and will foster developer oxidation over the longer run. For now, it's no big deal, but I would definitely look to repurpose a nice glass container. Personally, I mix most developers at least 2l at a time (other than Pyro based ones) so I "repurpose" glass beer growlers. I wash them very thoroughly and put a polycone cap on them to promote a good seal. (You get to drink beer that way too!)
250ml, 500ml, and 1l brown bottles are widely available on eBay and Amazon as necessary but you would be surprised to find sources of reusable glass bottles in your everyday shopping.
The scale of tones look visually compressed, soft, like Pyrocat developed film yet without the coloration and with a boatload of detail.
These qualities are why this simplest of all developers is still around after about a hundred years. Especially when used diluted, it's highly compensating (not quite as much as Pyrocat, but much more so than most other of its contemporaries), and with extended development and reduced agitation can get back most of the speed it loses compared to the standard D-76 while maintaining or even improving its compensating quality.
Even better, if you make up the replenisher and use it replenished (at stock strength, of course) it can be very cheap to use; the only extra chemical in the replenisher (DK-25R) is sodium metaborate, which can be made in process from laundry borax and lye drain opener (much more cheaply than buying metaborate from a supplier like DigitalTruth). John Finch has another video aimed specifically at how to use D-23 in replenishment. I've used it this way; it produces nice negatives and a liter of D-23 will last about 20+ rolls before you run out of the recommended amount of replenisher and need to discard all but 250 ml of the stock solution and top up with fresh stock and start a fresh batch of replenisher.
View attachment 358475
Anniversary Speed Graphic, 150 mm Componon, .EDU Ultra 400, D-23 replenished stock.
I just replenished with fresh stock D-23 and never had an issue.
In theory, you should see a slight reduction in activity if you replenish with D-23 stock vs. DK-25R, because the concentration of active metol will fall a little with each roll of film processed until you reach a steady state well below fresh stock (though it is recommended to process six rolls per liter in the fresh stock before you start replenishing with DK-25R -- the reason to keep a quarter batch of the old replenished stock is to "pre-season" so you don't have to do this again). In practice, if you don't replenish for more than about twenty rolls per liter after seasoning, its unlikely most workers would notice the difference, since the stock can be reused for a dozen rolls without either adding time or replenishing, if you choose to go that way. The metaborate in DK-25R slowly pushes up the pH from that of sodium sulfite alone to compensate for this loss of metol concentration. It would (I think) require a higher replenishment rate to self-replenish, and/or settle at a lower activity level as a steady state (and hence require a longer initial seasoning period than with DK-25R).
One of the things I like most about Xtol and its clones/work-alikes is the ability to self-replenish without limit -- but the replenishment rate is pretty high compared to dedicated replenisher systems like D-23/DK-25R or D-76/D-76R (and while D-76R is long gone from commercial sale, Ilford still provides instructions on how to make ID-11 replenisher from two packets of ID-11 dry chemicals).
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