Drying Marks are "drying me nuts" !

[Arklatexian]

I think we're talking about two kinds of drying marks. Your approach should remedy drying marks from deposits in the water. I don't want those either, but I'm talking more about drying marks caused by uneven drying -- i.e. the area under a standing bead of water will dry more slowly than the area around it leaving a visible mark along the border.

I develop only B&W. Many in this group wash film for only a few minutes in the final wash, I wash at least 30 minutes. I mix photoflo, one cap to 1 qt/liter of distilled water, take the film 120/135 OFF of the reel and, holding one end of the film, dip it into the dil photoflo, letting the 'natural' curl of the film roll and unroll for less than a minute (30 sec. or so). I never let my reels nor tanks touch any 'wetting agents' of any type. (read what Jobo has to say about that). I then hang the film without any final rinse, watching for droplets on either side of the film. If I see any, I know that my wetting agent has not done its job so I dump it and mix fresh, then re-treat the film. The water must 'sheet' off the film and not leave droplets. If it doesn't, something is wrong. Our climate is always humid, tap water is usually ph7. I don't get water-spots and haven't for many years. I use both SS and Jobo plastic tanks. I have been known to boil used SS tanks and reels to be sure of no wetting agent contamination.........Regards!

 

[trendland]

Oh nooo ... problem isn't solved jet?
OK - crash course : "TO AVOID ANY MORE WATERMARKS IN THE FUTURE"
1 ) double time of final rinse
2) try foto flow but in much less quantity
3) 1 step with destilled water
4) 2 bath destilled water (don't mix the baths)
5) try to dry your film - water marks again?
Then went back to step 1.

with regards

PS : Never heard about such resistant water marks like here.......

 

[Sirius Glass]

Oh nooo ... problem isn't solved jet?
OK - crash course : "TO AVOID ANY MORE WATERMARKS IN THE FUTURE"
1 ) double time of final rinse
2) try foto flow but in much less quantity
3) 1 step with destilled water
4) 2 bath destilled water (don't mix the baths)
5) try to dry your film - water marks again?
Then went back to step 1.

with regards

PS : Never heard about such resistant water marks like here.......

PhotoFlo should be that last step. Skip steps 3 and 4.

 

[Wallendo]

My personal experience is that environment plays a large role in drying mark issues. I have moved twice since starting home development, and on both occasions have had to modify my final washing step.
When I started I used well-water from a shallow well. Ilfotol mixed per Ilford's instructions worked great.
I moved a few miles away to a house on a municipal water supply derived from deeper wells and found that Ilfotol left soap marks on the film and eventually switched to using distilled water only with good results.
Both of those houses were in high humidity areas.
I now live in a house with low air humidity in the house and deep well water high in calcium and iron. Neither of my previous technics worked well, and I have switched to Edwal LFN with a gentle wiping prior to drying the film. At times, I wonder if humidifying my drying area would help.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I would wonder about the long term effect of the acid vinegar on the negative.

A valid concern for sure. The long term effect is unknown, however, with that being said, I don't soak the film in it, I dip it, and if you got your surfactant ratio correct, it runs off leaving very little if anything behind. Again, the point of the surfactant is not let the water bead up so it will run off of it assuming you haven't evaporated it off before that happens. I can't even smell it on the negative once it's dry. It's just there to help keep any dissolved calcium/minerals dissolved while it runs off.

 

[JWMster]

Love the continuing thread!
What I'm doing now seems to have worked a few times consistently. I have a wide, oblong bucket that all my developing gear drains into after getting washed out. I rinse this out in turn and when I'm ready to develop, I pour 2 liters of distilled water into it, 1 ML of Photoflow and mix it up.
When the film comes out of the drum, I dip and drag it through the water here 3 times and hang it up to dry. Sometime it looks like it's going to dry weird, but it doesn't and if I don't stress about it, it's just fine. So I'm learning to walk away and be "done".

 

[rpavich]

I had a devil of a time with water marks also until I started doing the following;
After developing (no photoflo just water rinse from the tap) I immediately put the reel in a salad spinner with another reel on the other side to balance it out; both held in place by a rubber band.
Then I spin very fast no less than 20 times...25 times is my normal amount.
Then I put the reel in a film dryer immediately and dry for 50 minutes to 1 hour. I used to make my film dryer by then I found a few inexpensive commercial ones and so I use them.

Never a mark of any kind.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Adrian,

The problem with your method is that the film's emulsion absorbs a certain amount of water - and anything else that is dissolved in it. All the water on the negative doesn't just run off leaving a dry surface; the absorbed water must evaporate from the emulsion, leaving behind everything else that was in it to begin with. This means that there is likely some residual acetic acid in your negatives' emulsion, which can't be good. Baby shampoo may be harmless, but who knows? PhotoFlo is a surfactant that was designed and tested to work on and not damage photographic emulsions. It may even be cheaper than baby shampoo too...

The ephemeral problem of water marks has to do with the myriad of causes of the problem. One can get water marks from using too much of the surfactant (e.g., PhotoFlo or the like) in the final rinse, or by not hanging the negatives so that all the surfactant-laden water sheets off. If the water collects in a puddle and then dries, it leaves behind too much of the surfactant, causing marks. Also, if one mixes the surfactant too dilute, the sheeting action of the surfactant is not complete and droplets will form. This also results in droplets drying and thereby concentrating the small amount of surfactant in them, causing marks. The right amount of surfactant and hanging the film properly will fix this part of the problem.

Another common cause of water marks is dissolved minerals. In areas of hard or mineralized water, these minerals get into the film's emulsion and when the film dries cause mineral deposits to form on and in the emulsion. The solution here (pun intended) is to soak the film in distilled or demineralized water long enough for enough ion exchange to take place so that the retained minerals in the emulsion are negligible. This step is commonly combined with the surfactant step, in which case it needs to be lengthened to include the needed soaking time to leach the minerals from the emulsion. This time is dependent on water quality and must be determined individually. The final distilled water bath (with surfactant or not) cannot be overused or the level of dissolved minerals in it will reach a point where too many minerals get left in the emulsion. I use my distilled water/surfactant bath one-session.

Finally, there is the somewhat random problem of uneven drying, which seems to bother some more than others and some films more that others. When droplets form on the film's surface (i.e., no surfactant or not enough), the areas under the droplets will dry at a different rate than the rest of the emulsion. This can cause some stress and stressing of the emulsion at the interface of these two areas, sometimes causing rings that correspond to the perimeter of the droplets (or streaks if there are runs on the emulsion's surface). I would imagine that films with less hardening are more susceptible to this than others and that drying speed plays a significant role here. Solution: use a surfactant properly.

As for squeegeeing: stripping the excess water from the film surface isn't in itself a bad thing. However, if the emulsion is fragile or the squeegeeing too vigorous, the emulsion can be damaged. The risk of not squeegeeing is that water will bead up or form runs on the negative and can possibly lead to uneven drying marks; the danger of squeegeeing is that one can scratch the film. Solution: use your surfactant properly so that the water sheets and runs off the film evenly and if you prefer to squeegee (like I do), make sure that you have a method that is gentle enough so as to not damage the film you are using.

Finally, keep dust and particulates off your film from beginning to end of the process and hang your film in a dust-free environment to dry.

Best,

Doremus

 

[bvy]

This is an excellent summary Doremus.

Finally, there is the somewhat random problem of uneven drying, which seems to bother some more than others and some films more that others. When droplets form on the film's surface (i.e., no surfactant or not enough), the areas under the droplets will dry at a different rate than the rest of the emulsion. This can cause some stress and stressing of the emulsion at the interface of these two areas, sometimes causing rings that correspond to the perimeter of the droplets (or streaks if there are runs on the emulsion's surface). I would imagine that films with less hardening are more susceptible to this than others...

This is exactly the problem I had here some time back:
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/bad-dev-or-drying-mark.129999/
Acros is known to be a soft emulsion, and the problem has gone away since I've gone through some pains to harden up the emulsion (for other reasons).

Another common cause of water marks is dissolved minerals. In areas of hard or mineralized water, these minerals get into the film's emulsion and when the film dries cause mineral deposits to form on and in the emulsion. The solution here (pun intended) is to soak the film in distilled or demineralized water long enough for enough ion exchange to take place so that the retained minerals in the emulsion are negligible.

This is quite a different problem, but as the OP I feel I should update everyone. This is one of two steps I took to address my problem. I live in a known hard water area, and always rinsed with tap water. Photo-Flo I mixed with distilled water but didn't soak the film in it very long. My last rinse cycle is now a three to five minute soak in plain distilled water.

The second step I took, and I think it's what really got to the heart of the problem, is to seesaw my film through the Photo-Flo solution as a final step before hanging. Previously, as I mentioned, I would soak the film in Photo-Flo, then remove the loaded reels to my work area where they sat on their sides while I prepared the hanging area and gathered my clips. Film dries relatively fast in my space, and I think letting the reels sit like this for anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes really did a lot to cause my drying marks. I can imagine the Photo-Flo solution running to one edge of the film while it sat on its side, then being somewhat unevenly wet when hung vertically to dry. Now the film sits in the distilled water final rinse, until it's ready to be hung. I remove it, clip both sides, pull it through a Pyrex measuring cup of Photo-Flo a couple times (base side down) and immediately hang it. Still testing this out, as I haven't processed a lot of black and white recently, but so far so good.

I also stopped experimenting with alternate Photo-Flo dilutions and went back to the manufacturer recommended 1+200. These recipes that call for WD-40 and Jheri-Curl as a final rinse sound intriguing, but at some point it pays to go back to the basics. I'm still convinced drying film should be easy.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

use as little photo-flow as possible. I use 10% of recommended, yes 1 drop per film dev tank and as you distilled water as a last rinse.However ,I squeegee through two fingers after having from top to bottom.fingers don't scratch oil;at least mine don't.good luck!

+1

I might add that some people find a mix of water and isopropyl alcohol applied from a squeeze bottle as the last step to be effective.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

A surfactent is used to lower the surface tension of the water. This will cause the water to sheet off the film without forming droplets. If you notice that the final rinse is foaming then you are using too much Photo-Flo. Photo-Flo contains an anti foaming agent but it can be defeated if you use too much.

 

[Sirius Glass]

A surfactent is used to lower the surface tension of the water. This will cause the water to sheet off the film without forming droplets. If you notice that the final rinse is foaming then you are using too much Photo-Flo. Photo-Flo contains an anti foaming agent but it can be defeated if you use too much.

Absolutely correct. When all else fails follow the directions on the surfactant bottle, haphazardly throwing capfuls, drops or dollop of the tank is a great way to screw up your negatives.

 

[lantau]

I wrote quit a bit further up how it works for me. However, recently I didn't have my film clips at home. I left them in my darkroom, so I had to use two cloth pegs to hang up a 120 film. And behold, I had two 'streams' running down from the pegs. A definite drying mark. It seems that the surfactant run off was so uneven there that it left two stripes down almost the length of the film. In that case I used wet paper cloth (I used deionised water for wetting it) to wipe of the marks on the freshly dried film and then a dry paper cloth to dry the film back. Yes it was the film back. The emulsion side seems to be a lot less prone to drying marks. I guess its obvious to everyone why.

Problem solved. I just hung up a 135 film, this time again with my metal film clips. No problem as usual. My Adox Adoflow surfactant does foam, btw. No anti foam component it seems. But as I probably described in my earlier post I remove the foam from the surface of the liquid before I pull the film out in one smooth movement.

Now I've got only about another dozen or so films from my holiday to observe the drying behaviour...

 

[whojammyflip]

I was getting annoying drying marks and was only using about 1.5ml of Tetenal photo flow. I now use about 1cm^3, using a dropper and getting a good dose of photo flow, and the drying marks have gone. I should say this is for 330ml in a Paterson tank. Other tanks may have different results. Who knows. What can be measured can be improved, so the tank is mentioned for your scientific gratification. From previous unrelated endeavours, its best to envelope your target and then hone in using halves, where you halve the interval that the target has landed in. Its the fastest way to find a solution. If you are making no progress, your initial envelope is too tight, or you are mucking with the wrong variable. Simple science.

 

[Ces1um]

Yes, I use distilled water! Please let's eliminate the water quality variable straight off.

I'm still getting drying marks on my film. I use Photo-Flo at the recommended dilution mixed with distilled water. I soak for one minute. Also, my last rinse cycle is with distilled water. I shake the film while on the reel to remove excess water. I hang the film vertically (but I get marks top and bottom).

If you have your own air compressor I've found blowing the water off while it's still on the reel works fairly well. It takes a bit of patience but you can drastically reduce the amount of remaining water this way. If you also happen to have access to a stone model vibrator (or anything that vibrates strongly that you can put the reel on) you can vibrate off a ton of water as well.