Developer Mixing Temp

A friend of mine recently developed some rolls of Tri-X, they all came out clear, no edge numbers or anything. My guess was he fixed before developing. He believes it was because he mixed the pre-packaged developer at 68 degrees(developing temp) instead of heating the water to 120 then mixing. I have a hard time believing this would be the problem as I thought that heating the water was primarily for ease of disolving the developer. Even if it did cause a problem I would have thought at least some developing would occur. I think the developer was Kodak maybe d-76 or dektol.

JC Conrad said:

A friend of mine recently developed some rolls of Tri-X, they all came out clear, no edge numbers or anything. My guess was he fixed before developing. He believes it was because he mixed the pre-packaged developer at 68 degrees(developing temp) instead of heating the water to 120 then mixing. I have a hard time believing this would be the problem as I thought that heating the water was primarily for ease of disolving the developer. Even if it did cause a problem I would have thought at least some developing would occur. I think the developer was Kodak maybe d-76 or dektol.

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I agree, it sounds like fixer first. And although the developer may not have been totally dissolved in the cool water, it would have produced something.

Pete

Particularly if your friend used XTOL, it's possible he ran into developer failure. XTOL has a reputation for failing unexpectedly, quickly, and without warning. This explanation is most likely if your friend mixed the developer several days or weeks before using it, and especially if it was stored poorly (in half-full bottles, say). FWIW, XTOL's packaging specifies room-temperature mixing, although some people prefer mixing it at slightly higher temperatures.

FWIW, I do tend to concur that this sounds like fixing before developing. A simple test to see if the developer will blacken a snip of film (a leader, say) might help clear things up. If the developer's bad, for any reason, this won't work. This can be done in ordinary room light, and the film snip need not be fixed; just develop it and toss it.

I can see where there may be problems with his mixing method. The developer might not all dissolve into the water and therefore might be weaker than it should be. Also, there might be certain important ingredients that dissolve less than others at the cooler temp, but I agree that it is hard to imagine that the damage would be so great that there was no developing whatsoever. I think you should try the leader test suggested.

Paul.