Developer Life

The best way to keep your developer fresh is to take lots of photos. It's intended to be used not grace a corner of your darkroom.

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Best advice I've seen yet. I do have a series of various size glass bottles, some from the past and some recently bought at B&H in sizes from 125ml-1000ml. I guess I ought to put the to use.

Gas blanketing is also your friend...

I use simple squirts of Dust-Off. Many others use inexpensive butane. Wine aficionados may already have argon on hand to protect far more expensive liquids. Cheap nitrogen works as well as a purge. (As do marbles...)

I have processed film using home-brewed D-76d (the buffered version, at 1+1) from one-quarter-full one-liter Boston round brown glass bottles (with the poly cone lids) after 10 months cool dark storage with no obvious stock solution color change or apparent underdevelopment artifacts. I likely could have stored it for even longer.

Although in fairness, I have not rigorously tested for underdevelopment against a control over that length of storage time. The resulting negatives just looked and printed more or less as expected. So YMMV on the latter observation.

But Gerald's advice in post #25 is still the best. Mix up only what you believe you can reasonably use, then go make photos and use it. If the cost of commercial D-76 is prohibitive, purchase the bulk chemicals and roll your own in any volumes you may require.

Ken

I primarily use either Rodinal or HC-110 Dilution H so, there's little worry about storage since it's a one shot deal. There are times I like to use ID-11 and it makes a quart. I use it 1:1. That's the one I'd be more concerned about and that concern was brought to light recently when I decided to pour it out after six months. As I mentioned, the color was nearly the same as yellow stop bath...petered out.

Curious about the Dust Off squirts. Just stick the nozzle in the solution till what?

ColColt said:

Curious about the Dust Off squirts. Just stick the nozzle in the solution till what?

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Until three or four seconds elapses. Enough to purge out most of the air. Then when the bottles are left standing still on the shelf the idea is that the gases will stratify by density, with the heavier non-oxygen gases sealing over the liquid beneath them. Like the wax in Mason jar preserves, just not solid.

It's all invisible of course, but it sure seems to work for me. In fact, if the light is just right the next time I pour from purged bottles, I can see via density refraction the gas being poured out of the bottles before the liquid begins to also pour.

Kinda' cool, that...



Ken

I'll have to try that. Before when I kept developer in glass bottles I just added marbles to bring the level back up. Unfortunately, when I folded the darkroom some years ago I must have misplaced the marbles...now, I can't find them. Some of my small bottles may not have a wide enough mouth to accept them anyway.

ColColt said:

I'll have to try that. Before when I kept developer in glass bottles I just added marbles to bring the level back up. Unfortunately, when I folded the darkroom some years ago I must have misplaced the marbles...now, I can't find them. Some of my small bottles may not have a wide enough mouth to accept them anyway.

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OMG, you lost your marbles???

Long ago, I fear.