Magnus said:
thanks for your reply, you speak of the "keep" qualities of Euro HC110, only 1 month in an opened bottle ? ... Thats a bit of a bummer, is there no way to extend ?
I don't go through 1 liter of HC110 in a months time, at dilution H this would mean 10 liters or 40 films ... hmmm
Any idea of why the US and Euro HC110's are so different ?
There certainly is a way to extend the life. First, that 10 L of working solution is enough for, at most, 40 rolls of film; might be as little as 20 if you develop 120. And with measures to minimize the amount of air closed into the bottle with the stock solution, you should be able to stretch it for up to 3 months. The *best* method, IMO, is to get some small glass vials with high quality cap seals that just barely hold 25 ml; when you open the 500 ml bottle, divide up all the solution into the vials. Each vial then contains enough of the original liquid to mix 250 ml of Dilution H. Each vial, with little or no air space, should have a shelf life of at least three months, but it's probably prudent to test the working solution after mixing each time -- just drop the clipped 35 mm leader into the graduate, and watch for it start turning visibly gray in 2-3 minutes.
Bad news is, the vials will probably cost more than the bottle of HC-110 did.
Other methods that have worked for people are to drop glass marbles into the bottle to replace the volume as you draw off to mix your working solution, so as to keep little or no air space in the original bottle, or to spray a shot of "canned air" or butane lighter fuel into the bottle before closing it, to displace the air. Marbles are sold cheaply as children's toys, at least in the USA, Australia, and UK; can't say for other parts of the world. Butane is cheap some places, regulated and expensive others, and is flammable, hence slightly hazardous to use.
As to why the Euro HC-110 is made already at working solution strength, I would have to presume it's a matter of either environmental or shipping regulations in effect in some or all EU countries -- Kodak certainly didn't do it just because they felt like it, because it surely costs them something to produce the same developer in two different forms, and the form you have is (in my opinion) inferior to the form we get here in the USA, specifically due to the difference in keeping qualities -- ours keeps nearly forever as concentrate because there's no water in it, so the developing agents aren't susceptible to oxidation.
As others have pointed out, the US version is available in many European locations, so it's also possible that the 500 ml "stock solution" version is being or has been replaced by the American style concentrate, or vice versa, or that both are distributed (or that they're distributed in different locations). Here, if I buy the concentrate in a bottle bigger than 500 ml, I get it with a label "for commercial photo labs only" or something similar -- even though it's the exact same stuff inside, and quite a bit cheaper per ml.
In any case, if you take appropriate measures to keep air away from the HC-110 you have, it should last long enough to let you use it up instead of failing before you finish it...
