Dumb newbie water question

[brianentz]

In processing your black and white film do you take any measures regarding the water itself. That is, do you use just your tap water, filtered water, bottled water, distilled water? I've been using bottled drinking water, but wondering if that's not the best.

 

[Bob-D659]

Tap water is usually good, depending on dissolved solids, particle count, etc. You do want distilled water for the final rise of negatives. Bottled drinking water isn't worth the money for chemistry, it usually has lots of dissolved minerals, otherwise it would taste like nothing.

If you have high mineral content water or lots of particles in it, then use demineralized or distilled water to mix up the chemicals.

 

[eddie]

I use distilled for film, and tap for paper.

 

[Diapositivo]

I use Roman tap water for all baths except stabiliser which I prepare with demineralized water.

I never tried to prepare all baths with demineralized water to see the difference. If your tap water is not "anomalous", you are supposed to use tap water.

Tap water in Rome has these characteristics:

http://www.ambientandoci.it/pagine/AMBIEN_429.asp

If your water is not far from that, it should work fine.

Fabrizio

 

[Sirius Glass]

I have had no problems with tap water in the Los Angeles or Washington DC area.

 

[AgCl4ever]

I have well water. As it comes out of the tap it leaves severe water marks on and, I believe, in the emulsion for film. I have had excellent luck with using a filter jug (Britta) for mixing developer, mixing fixer, stop (just water), the first rinse after fix, the last rinse, and for fotoflo. I do the main wash with tap water. I use filtered water for mixing developer, stop, and fix for prints. I wash prints in plain tap water.

 

[Newt_on_Swings]

I use glacial water from Alaska thats been blessed by a medicine man...

Truthfully I'm pretty thankful for my municipal water supply, its good quality, works well, no deposits. I still use a wetting agent regardless though for films.

I am sure an easy solution is to get one of those PUR triple filtration faucet mount filters for your processing area. That thing outputs some high quality H2O

 

[Worker 11811]

My water authority sources its water from Lake Erie. The water is clear; very little turbidity or dissolved solids. They use reverse osmosis filtration.
Total hardness is below 7.2 grains at the source and under 7.0 after treatment.

I still use distilled water for mixing stock solutions but tap water is fine for mixing working solutions.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

My water authority sources its water from Lake Erie. ...
I still use distilled water for mixing stock solutions but tap water is fine for mixing working solutions.

I think this is what many photographers do.

The water at my house also comes from a lake. During the summer it looks like weak tea and smells like weeds. I won't drink it. The film doesn't seem to mind. I dream of the time I lived in New York city. It had the best tasting water in the country.

 

[winger]

When I was on a municipal system, I used that water for everything with no problems at all. I'm now on a well and I use distilled for all film chemicals and somewhat filtered well water for prints. That's been working ok lately, but I did have some weeks a few years ago when I had to stop printing because the water had too much rust in it (I ended up having the filter stuff changed in the rust remover part of the softener system).

 

[tkamiya]

I have one of those Pure filter thing on my faucet. When I mix chemicals into stock solutions, I use water filtered by this thing. When I mix into working solution and washing, I use regular tap water.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Tap water for everything, even final rinse.

But I'm lucky in that we have excellent water quality.

 

[brianentz]

Thanks

Wow. Thanks everybody. I think I have my answer. I'll save my bottled water for my own personal thirst.