Drying Times and Alcohol Use

tron_ · Jul 18, 2017

I've been thinking about some information I recently heard about regarding drying times and the use of alcohol to accelerate the drying process.

Usually I'll allow my HP5+ to dry for about an hour or two by which time the film is dry to the touch and not "tacky" whatsoever. The other day I was doing some reading online and read some advice about allowing film to dry for a full 24 hours in order for the emulsion to 100% cure and harden before you scan and/or print.

Is there any merit to this claim? Is it just the film photography version of an old wives tale?

Additionally, I've heard of some users using alcohol mixed in with their LFN's to accelerate drying times. Is this something that's safe to do? I would assume the alcohol would allow water to evaporate faster but my concern is that it would leave behind particulates on the film from the solution.

pdeeh · Jul 18, 2017

Alcohol drying out has to be performed safely.
Usually 10 days will suffice, but it is important to support the withdrawal phase with a benzodiazepine such as Diazepam in order to avoid seizures, and with Vitamin B complexes (preferably by injection) in order to avoid Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome and thus the risk of permanent mental impairment.

As for film, have a search of the forum for the subject in question, it's been asked and answered a few times. I vaguely remember wood alcohol being the preferred poison, but I can't truly recall properly.

pdeeh · Jul 18, 2017

here ya go (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

MattKing · Jul 18, 2017

An hour is pretty short. I prefer to let my film dry over night. I'm particularly concerned about the effect of varying humidity on the completeness of drying.
Would I be correct in assuming Michigan experiences a little bit of humidity variability?
I use Kodak Photo-flo 200, and I do use alcohol, but not to speed drying. I use it to permit making up an intermediate 1 + 7 stock solution, where the 7 refers to 7 parts alcohol. I then dilute the stock solution 1 + 24 with water immediately before use. The alcohol in the stock solution prevents the solution from unwanted growing things. Having the intermediate stock solution allows me to easily achieve more accurate dilution control.
A long time ago I worked in newspaper darkrooms. We did use a combination of alcohol rinse and forced warm air drying to speed drying of time critical negatives, but in that environment negative condition and longevity was definitely not of high importance!

Ko.Fe. · Jul 18, 2017

Exactly, have a drink or two. Time flies by. Especially if you have film soaked for a minute in the fresh PhotoFlo mix. Wink:Wink. I have bw negatives dry this way in one hour.

tron_ · Jul 18, 2017

pdeeh said:
Alcohol drying out has to be performed safely.
Usually 10 days will suffice, but it is important to support the withdrawal phase with a benzodiazepine such as Diazepam in order to avoid seizures, and with Vitamin B complexes (preferably by injection) in order to avoid Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome and thus the risk of permanent mental impairment.

As for film, have a search of the forum for the subject in question, it's been asked and answered a few times. I vaguely remember wood alcohol being the preferred poison, but I can't truly recall properly.

Hahaha I figured I would get some funny remarks . I had a look through the link you posted and it's one of the threads I came across. I'm interested in the post suggesting a cap full of photo-flo and a cap full of alcohol in 2L of water makes for a good soak before drying film. I'm using a Jobo in my current workflow and the use of LFN's is kind of a no-no so I'd be interested to see how I can incorporate this into my practice. Although I do suppose plopping the reels/cores into a spare bottle with the solution wouldn't exactly throw a wrench into things.

MattKing said:
An hour is pretty short. I prefer to let my film dry over night. I'm particularly concerned about the effect of varying humidity on the completeness of drying.
Would I be correct in assuming Michigan experiences a little bit of humidity variability?
I use Kodak Photo-flo 200, and I do use alcohol, but not to speed drying. I use it to permit making up an intermediate 1 + 7 stock solution, where the 7 refers to 7 parts alcohol. I then dilute the stock solution 1 + 24 with water immediately before use. The alcohol in the stock solution prevents the solution from unwanted growing things. Having the intermediate stock solution allows me to easily achieve more accurate dilution control.
A long time ago I worked in newspaper darkrooms. We did use a combination of alcohol rinse and forced warm air drying to speed drying of time critical negatives, but in that environment negative condition and longevity was definitely not of high importance!

I think suggesting there's a little bit of fluctuation in humidity would be an understatement haha. There was a few days last week where the air was so thick that my film wasn't dry in 2+ hours and I wound up with soft emulsion that I'm pretty sure I smeared .

Do you mean the alcohol kills off anything that would grow into mold? I've heard it can affect the dyes in color film too so that is obviously of concern for me too as I process both color and black and white.

Ko.Fe. said:
Exactly, have a drink or two. Time flies by. Especially if you have film soaked for a minute in the fresh PhotoFlo mix. Wink:Wink. I have bw negatives dry this way in one hour.

Or in my case three or four am I right?

MattKing · Jul 18, 2017

tron_ said:
Do you mean the alcohol kills off anything that would grow into mold? I've heard it can affect the dyes in color film too so that is obviously of concern for me too as I process both color and black and white.

The alcohol is in the stock solution to prevent mould (what you call mold) growth in the stock solution.
You would only use my version of Photo-flo stock solution with black and white film.
Of course, you wouldn't want to use Photo-flo with colour film anyways. With colour film, you need to instead use stabilizer/final rinse as your last solution, because in addition to the wetting agent components, it also has bactericidal ingredients in it.

keenmaster486 · Jul 18, 2017

Yeah, I thought you were saying drying time is affected by how many drinks you've had.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time"

pentaxuser · Jul 18, 2017

keenmaster486 said:
Yeah, I thought you were saying drying time is affected by how many drinks you've had.

Yes, pdeeh was suggesting exactly that - 10 days seems about right.

pentaxuser

David Brown · Jul 18, 2017

In the 70s and 80s, I used a product called Yankee Instant Film Dryer, which was alcohol of some variety. It's no longer available, and was probably never very good for the film. But in the pre-digital, but still need it right now world (read: journalism and security footage) it had a market and use.

Rick A · Jul 18, 2017

Yeah, set the film aside to dry, and have several drinks whilst you wait. Wake up in the morning, hopefully no hangover to deal with, and commence printing.

removed account4 · Jul 18, 2017

from what i understand, the use alcohol in the developing stage is quite common instead of the wetting agent,
its useful for "stand development" to assure even over exposure.
a weak bath of potassium ferricyanide and sodium thiosulfate is typically used before the "wash" and the film is hung to dry

RalphLambrecht · Jul 19, 2017

MattKing said:
An hour is pretty short. I prefer to let my film dry over night. I'm particularly concerned about the effect of varying humidity on the completeness of drying.
Would I be correct in assuming Michigan experiences a little bit of humidity variability?
I use Kodak Photo-flo 200, and I do use alcohol, but not to speed drying. I use it to permit making up an intermediate 1 + 7 stock solution, where the 7 refers to 7 parts alcohol. I then dilute the stock solution 1 + 24 with water immediately before use. The alcohol in the stock solution prevents the solution from unwanted growing things. Having the intermediate stock solution allows me to easily achieve more accurate dilution control.
A long time ago I worked in newspaper darkrooms. We did use a combination of alcohol rinse and forced warm air drying to speed drying of time critical negatives, but in that environment negative condition and longevity was definitely not of high importance!

letting the film air-dry overnight is pretty common. Being afraid of dust,I use a filtered drying cabinet where the film is bone-dry within 30 minutes; never need it faster than that but I have microwaved 4x5 film in 60s and that worked too.

Patrick Robert James · Jul 19, 2017

I have dunked black and white film in Isopropyl Alcohol undiluted to get it dry faster. It works. Don't apply heat though. The emulsion will turn milky, although if I recall it will eventually go away. Cheap stuff. Give it a whirl.

Steve Smith · Jul 19, 2017

Patrick Robert James said:
I have dunked black and white film in Isopropyl Alcohol undiluted to get it dry faster.

Does it displace the water, leaving just the alcohol to evaporate?

Steve.

AgX · Jul 19, 2017

tron_ said:
I've heard it can affect the dyes in color film too so that is obviously of concern for me too as I process both color and black and white.

The idea is to use a watersoluble volatile solvent that when the wet film is immersed into it, will substitute the water in the emulsion practically completely and at drying will evaporate in shortest time.

Issues are compatibilty as well with the base as with dyes.

Flamability practically should be of lesser concern.

guangong · Jul 19, 2017

A little bourbon after hanging up the film to dry will make the drying time seem shorter. Don't put Photo-flo in drink...causes drink to pass over tongue to quickly.

Stephen Jeffery · Jul 21, 2017

I use 70% isopropyl as a final rinse for sheet film. It displaces most of the H2O. Mostly it reduces the chances of dust on negs. I still let negs dry overnight. Periodically I filter the alcohol to remove particles. The alcohol also removes any residual magenta stain.

voceumana · Jul 21, 2017

Alcohol and water are mutual solvents in any quantity--they disperse equally and evenly throughout the volume of liquid. So the alcohol displaces the water in the emulsion, and it evaporates faster leaving less water in the emulsion, so the film dries faster.

Early on I tried to dry films fast, and I got damage to the emulsion; then on, I allow film to dry overnight and have never had a problem.

You want to make sure that the alcohol you used doesn't have any other ingredients (other than water).

Drying Times and Alcohol Use

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removed account4

RalphLambrecht

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AgX

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voceumana

Drying Times and Alcohol Use

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