D76 Floaties like I have never seen before

[hoffy]

Hey Folks,

I went to process a roll of film tonight, but have noticed my D76 has a lot of floating debris/sediment in the stock solution. This was a brimmed full 1.5L bottle that was mixed back in late January.

While I have seen this before in the last little bit of a bottle (which I often don't use, for that reason), I have never seen a full bottle like this. The sediment must be quite light, as I have let it sit for over an hour and it still suspended.

I plan on filtering it with a coffee filter tomorrow (after I head to the shops to get a filter) and process the film tomorrow night.

Has anyone experienced this before?

Cheers

 

[lantau]

Yes, when I forgot to blow away accumulated dust from the mixing vessel I ended up with a kind of Snow Globe D76. I used it over several month as oneshot 1:1 without any problems.

 

[hoffy]

While I do like your description, I'm pretty sure dust isn't the problem here. I'm a bit OCD when it comes to rinsing out my gear before using it!

 

[bvy]

While I do like your description, I'm pretty sure dust isn't the problem here. I'm a bit OCD when it comes to rinsing out my gear before using it!

I'm also pretty sure it's not dust. I had the same issue occasionally with D-76 and have the same issue consistently with XTOL. It's one of the main reasons I switched to liquid developers. For my XTOL problem, I filter the stock developer before using it. You'll read scuttlebutt about using lab grade filters for this purpose, though that was lost on me. I'm using regular coffee filters and a funnel, and a visual inspection afterward confirms that the residue is gone.

Truthfully this may all be indulgent. I've never seen or suspected anything in my developed negatives that I could attribute to this floating residue. And before I knew better, I'm sure I even developed film in this "snowglobe" developer. For that reason, I'm not investing in lab grade equipment to remedy the problem. It's more about peace of mind.

 

[Shoom]

I don't know how relevant this is to you, but I realized once that the floaties in my stop bath were from the paper in the cap disintegrating into the concentrate.
Does your cap have anything like that?

 

[mshchem]

When I had precipitates in XTOL it was from excessive minerals in (softened) hard water. D76 will do the same. Not sure what is going on in your situation. Like you I am very picky about developing.
The city where I grew up, the tap water worked great for everything, deep wells, treated water . I moved 25 miles away, water has so much Calcium I put in a reverse osmosis system. I use this water for developer, color chemistry, powdered chemicals.
Best Mike

 

[hoffy]

Thanks for the reality check folks.

Where I live, the water is of variable quality and can differ from time of the year. For that reason, I actually use bottled water (geez, I sound like a millennial ) - just a cheap one with no additives. I've been doing this for the last 5 or so years. The stock solutions go back into the bottles that the botttled water comes from. To be frank, it could just be the trace minerals in that water.

That being said, as per my original post, I have noticed these floaties before in the dredges at the bottom of the bottles, just not as bad as this!

My main concern is that this was causing issues on the negs. While its not overly prevalent, I have had a few rolls over time that have had inexplained spots and marks - I was just putting one and one together.

So, a coffee filter it is! Just need to make it to the shops to get some.

Cheers

 

[Mick Fagan]

Yep, experienced it regularly, although I'm using Melbourne tap water. Almost always it is worse near the end of summer, February to April before the rains come. At this point in the season, if it has been a dry summer, the water authorities put a flocculant in the reservoirs, thus making the little bits cling/clump together then fall to the bottom.

I have been using coffee filters over my scratch mixed D76 for about the last 35 years, before that I had access to lab filters from work.

By the way, smaller glass jars and/or glass marbles virtually eliminate air gaps.

Mick.

 

[Mick Fagan]

Forgot to add that I always filter my developer stock solution with coffee filters. Quite often I have arrived home from being away and wishing to develop film, I mix some developer up, then set it aside to cool. While doing that I will mix the other stuff required, fix, stop and so on. Then I always filter the stock solution, even though it may have only been around for 30 minutes to one hour maximum. Just a habit one gets into and believe it or not, every now and again I found minute particles in the filter membrane, which I've always assumed was just some powdered chemical solids and/or impurity.

Mick.

 

[hoffy]

Well, the developer has been doubled filtered, the bottle rinsed and refilled. Hopefully that should do it.

I probably now need to add a filter step to my routine. Whether when its during the bottle fill after mixing or whether its during another process.

I'll probably run through a roll sometime this week.

 

[Pentode]

Interesting you should should post this topic when you did. Three days ago I noticed considerable amounts of floating debris in my D-76 stock solution, indicator stop and fixer. Remember "Sea Monkeys"?
I assumed that they carried over from the developer to the other two chemicals (although I could be completely wrong).

After my initial panic I calmed down and thought "Well, the stop bath is still yellow so I'm sure it's fine. I'll do a clearing test of the fixer and if it still clears, it's probably still fine, too". The fixer was okay.
I still didn't really understand where the particles came from originally as I only use D-76 1:1, one-shot and this stuff was in the stock solution.

There are only two possibilities; I could have washed the bottles (re-purposed 1.5l plastic beer bottles and smaller water bottles) insufficiently, which is very possible, or contents of the NYC tap water are clumping in the solution (more likely). The spring weather finally arrived so it's possible the change in temperature caused the particles to clump.

The bottom line for me is that these particles didn't come from nowhere; They had to have been in the solution all along and I haven't had any problems with developing quite a few rolls so I just decided to filter everything carefully and proceed. It's possible that they were even clumped up like that for a while and I just didn't notice but I still see no problems with the negatives. Three coffee filters and a couple of hours later everything is clear and clean. I haven't run any more rolls since but I plan to develop three rolls later today and I don't expect any problems.