Getting chems to the right temp.. gotta be an easier way.

darinwc · Jun 19, 2007

Whenever I develop film, it takes me quite a while to get the chemestry to the right temperature. I have to put them in the fridge to cool down to just the right temp. if they get too cold I plug up the sink and run warm water until they are just right.

But this process is really aggrivating and maybe why I procrastinate developing my film so much. What alternatives are there to get the chemestry to the right temperature?

This also applies to printing.. and its allways tough to keep the chems at the right temp while doing alot of printing.

tim_walls · Jun 19, 2007

I've got to admit I don't worry too much for black & white - of course I'll be accused of being slapdash...

For B&W film, as long as you're in the right ballpark it's normally easy to work out the adjusted dev time from the datasheets. For prints, you're normally developing to completion (or by eye) anyway, so I worry even less.

I expect to get shot now . Colour is a different matter, of course - tempered waterbath is my solution for that.

Snapshot · Jun 19, 2007

That's why I switched to one-shot developers. I can figure out what temperature the water needs to be to get the developer to the right temperature. I've also been blessed with a basement storage room that hovers around 68F to 70F for most of year.

Monophoto · Jun 19, 2007

I use HC110 as my standard film developer. I mix the stock solution from the concentrate, and then mix a working solution each time I need to process film. I put the required amount of stock solution into a container, and then add water that is adjusted to the desired processing temperature. Because there is so much more water than stock solution, the temperature of this mixture is essentially the same as the temperature of the water used to make it.

For prints, I just do everything at 'room temperature'.

KEK · Jun 19, 2007

I don't have to worry about cooling down to much since i quite using powdered chemicals a few years back, but back then i never mixed just before i wanted to use them ,always the day before and let it cool down overnight.

My darkroom is in my basement so i'm looking to heat up the chemicals. I bought a fish tank heater and played around with it and marked the temp settings on the dial. It works great for heating up the film chems or keeping the chems at a constant temp. when i'm printing.

Kevin

percepts · Jun 19, 2007

you have a darkroom which is kept at a constant temperature. A reservoir of water kept in that room will also be at a constant temperature. Chemicals stored in that room will also be a constant teperature. That is the same temperature that you develop at. i.e. no need to heat up or cool down chemicals. Just keep them in room at constant temp and worry about keeping room at constant temp using heating system or air conditioner.

m_liddell · Jun 19, 2007

The distilled water I use and all chems are stored at room temperature. At it's coldest they are around 19C and hottest 24C. Well within the range to use a chart to adjust dev time. How is this a problem?

efreddi · Jun 19, 2007

I use a self mixed developer on the rout of Patrick Gainer - a stock solution of glycol, ascorbic acid and phenidone, then I just have to mix the borax in the water and to add few cc of this PC-glycol solution. I do it always at room temperature and it's one shot developer. So no troubble
Regs

Elia

Mike Wilde · Jun 19, 2007

Things can get too warm for small tanks..

Getting the chems in and out of a daylight tank and for it to be repeatable can be a problem if the time is like 2:30 for the developer.

I usually dilute 1:1 with d-76, and my Canadian basement darkroom is cooler than 20, much so in the winter, so actually I microwave the distilled before mixing to get a time that isn't 20 minutes or so in February.

When living in sub tropical Australia I would float a zip lock bag with a few ice cubes inside in a jug of developer, then keep the tank standing in a plastic tray with a mix of water from the fridge and tap in it to keep the temp reasonable. There were nights when it got as cool as 27, and days could get up to 42..

Mike Richards · Jun 19, 2007

Maybe my B&W film solution is too simple, but I have very few problems. I live in a very hard water area, so I use distilled water for the chemicals. As soon as I decide to do some film, I check the temperature of the distilled water, and then put warm or cold tap water (with ice if necessary) in a dishpan that is perhaps 1-2 degrees beyond the point where I want to moderate the chemicals. Then I mix the developer, usually Rodinal, in a measuring cup and put it in the dishpan. For stop, another measuring cup of water with a few drops of indicator stop go into the dishpan. Same with fix: I use Tetenal 1:7 one shot.

Only then do I go about the rest of the process. Changing bag, load the reels, set up timer, etc etc. By the time I'm ready to process, usually a good half hour later, the chemicals are very close to the correct temperature.

Agree with tim -- printing time by inspection negates the need for close temperature monitoring.

Jon Shiu · Jun 19, 2007

Hi, to get the film developer cooler I have a small plastic water bottle in the freezer to stir in the developer to cool it down (or just throw in a few ice chips). For warming up, sit your developer graduate in a small tub of hot tap water.

Jon

CBG · Jun 19, 2007

For solutions that get reused like stop and fix and wash aid etc, a simple way to work is to put all your bottles of solution all in a big plastic tub of tempering water, and just go away for a while. The tempering bath might be cooler or warmer than room temp, depending on what direction you want to push your solutions. The advantage is the chance to let the tempering bath work for you while you are elsewhere. The disadvantage is that you might overcorrect the temp if you go away too long and need to re-correct it.

Best,

C

Changeling1 · Jun 19, 2007

Collect a number of plastic film canisters and fill them with water and put the caps back on. Put them all in the freezer Once the water is frozen you can drop several of these into the solution and they will bring the temp. down fast without diluting the solutions as ice alone would do. Be sure to rinse the canisters well after using them so they don't contaminate any other solutions.

gainer · Jun 19, 2007

I have a small Microwave oven in the darkroom. A few seconds will cure cases where the solution is too cold. As another mentioned, I use a happy poke (or glad bag) of ice cubes to cool solutions a few degrees.

spark · Jun 19, 2007

I do B&W at home. Developer is the most important, if the fixer or stop is a few degrees cold or hot it should not matter much. I use diluted developer with distilled water, and store some distilled chilled, some at "room" temperature. Mix the developer with about half the water from the room temp bottle, check the temperature. If it needs to be colder use more distilled from the fridge, if it needs to be warmer then heat some distilled water in a microwave. This sounds more difficult than it really

ann · Jun 19, 2007

we have serious issues during the summer keeping the water a 68 degress for developing film. THe easy solution, keeping a gallon of cold water in the fridge. It takes about 2 minutes to mix the tap water with a small amount of the cold water.

This is in a school lab situtation , not at home, but believe me '; if we can do this in a gang lab situation, it is simple and easy.

srs5694 · Jun 19, 2007

As many others have suggested, within a fair range of temperatures it's easy to adjust development times based on the temperature -- so if the correct time is 8:00 at 20C and the measured solution temperature is 22C, you can adjust the time down. I've got one numeric table from Ilford and a graph (from Kodak, IIRC, but I don't have a URL handy) that I keep in my darkroom for this purpose. If you keep your solutions and some bottled water in your darkroom, they'll be close to room temperature at all times.

If you routinely develop in extremely high or low temperatures, you might look into developers designed for the purpose, known as tropical or low-temperature developers, respectively. Anchell describes these in his Darkroom Cookbook. I'm sure you can find other sources of information about them, too. In fact, Anchell's got a table (on p. 59) that shows how much sodium sulfate to add to D-76 or D-72 at various temperatures to keep a constant development time.

One problem with trying to adjust the temperature of your developer is that the temperature will drift, particularly over long development times. To minimize or prevent the drift, a water bath can be used, as some have suggested, but this is a minor hassle. In my experience, it's simpler and easier to just adjust the development time, at least within the range over which this is acceptable.

pnance · Jun 20, 2007

Like some others, I put the bottles in a small tub of water to move the the temperture in the right direction. I find it moves fairly fast, I put the thermometer in the developer so I can pull them out at the right time.

Thomas Bertilsson · Jun 20, 2007

I keep my darkroom at 70*F which means that's the temperature of my chemistry in there as well. I also keep a 5 gallon tank of water in there that I use for mixing chemistry. Rinsing film or archivally washing paper does not require exact temperature control, so I'm good. It's pretty easy. Just buy a $50 radiator (electric or hot oil will do) and a line voltage thermostat. Since most darkrooms are in the basement, it's usually colder there than the rest of the house, so the heater bumps it up a couple of degrees to get to the setpoint of 70*F. Small investment for so much headache lost.
- Thomas

pelerin · Jun 20, 2007

Mike Richards said:
Maybe my B&W film solution is too simple, but I have very few problems. I live in a very hard water area, so I use distilled water for the chemicals. As soon as I decide to do some film, I check the temperature of the distilled water, and then put warm or cold tap water (with ice if necessary) in a dishpan that is perhaps 1-2 degrees beyond the point where I want to moderate the chemicals. Then I mix the developer, usually Rodinal, in a measuring cup and put it in the dishpan. For stop, another measuring cup of water with a few drops of indicator stop go into the dishpan. Same with fix: I use Tetenal 1:7 one shot.

Only then do I go about the rest of the process. Changing bag, load the reels, set up timer, etc etc. By the time I'm ready to process, usually a good half hour later, the chemicals are very close to the correct temperature.

Agree with tim -- printing time by inspection negates the need for close temperature monitoring.

Not to quibble but... for film, especially with dilute developers, would it not be best to mix the developer last? If you use a SS graduate to mix the developer even many degrees of temp change can be affected in short order.
Celac

Mike Richards · Jun 21, 2007

pelerin said:
Not to quibble but... for film, especially with dilute developers, would it not be best to mix the developer last? If you use a SS graduate to mix the developer even many degrees of temp change can be affected in short order.
Celac

I mix all the solutions within a few minutes, but usually the developer first since that is the one that is temperature critical. I'm sure you are right about SS graduates being fast, but I use plastic measuring cups because they are cheap and effective. Done all this so many times that I have a sense of what it will take to reach the right temperature. A half hour or so of temperature compensation after mixing does not seem to affect the potency of the developer.

I realize this doesn't sound scientific enough for purists, but that's part of my point. It doesn't need to be super-scientific or "CSI mode" to get good and consistent result.

Alan9940 · Jun 21, 2007

darinwc said:
Whenever I develop film, it takes me quite a while to get the chemestry to the right temperature. I have to put them in the fridge to cool down to just the right temp. if they get too cold I plug up the sink and run warm water until they are just right.

But this process is really aggrivating and maybe why I procrastinate developing my film so much. What alternatives are there to get the chemestry to the right temperature?

This also applies to printing.. and its allways tough to keep the chems at the right temp while doing alot of printing.

Hello darinwc,

Since I live in the desert southwest (USA) I'm pretty much ALWAYS cooling down chemistry! Tap water exists the faucet around 85 degrees for a good part of the year.

I pretty much always use distilled water to mix my chemistry, especially the developer. I keep one container in the fridge and one at room temp. This allows me to mix the cold and warm distilled water to the proper temp for development. And, since I always mix chemistry fresh and use one-shot I'm never cooling anything down. The other trick is keeping the water in my Jobo processor at, say, 68 degrees when processing B&W film. My solution here is that I keep a breadloaf size chuck of ice, sealed in a freezer type ziplock bag, ready to be placed in the upper bath area of my processor. This does an excellent job of cooling the water as it circulates through the processor, the heating element of the processor is warming it up as water passes by the other end, so my set temp remains quite constant even in a rather warm room of the house.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

kwmullet · Jun 21, 2007

Thomas Bertilsson said:
I keep my darkroom at 70*F which means that's the temperature of my chemistry in there as well. I also keep a 5 gallon tank of water in there that I use for mixing chemistry. Rinsing film or archivally washing paper does not require exact temperature control, so I'm good. It's pretty easy. Just buy a $50 radiator (electric or hot oil will do) and a line voltage thermostat. Since most darkrooms are in the basement, it's usually colder there than the rest of the house, so the heater bumps it up a couple of degrees to get to the setpoint of 70*F. Small investment for so much headache lost.
- Thomas

This is my approach too. One design constraint of my darkroom was that I be able to keep it constantly at "processing temperature". I've shot for 68F, but usually my darkroom stays at 72, which seems to work well. I've got two one-gallon jugs of tap water that I use during processing and washing film, and when one is empty, I fill it with cold tap water (close to 72) and by the time I empty the other jug, the first one has gotten close to room temp.

Before this darkroom was ready to use, we processed film in the kitchen sink and used Diafine just for that reason -- very lax temperature requirements.

-KwM-

darinwc · Jun 21, 2007

Thank you for all the advice! I dont have a basement, but I will add that as a requirement for my next house =]

I live in a warm environment. What will probably work best for me is to keep one bottle of water in the fridge and one at room temp. Mixing the two to get the right temp when I develop.

We usually keep the house at around 75 degrees. I will have to experement with just using the room temp water to develop and adjust the times.
Question: will that throw off the curves or change contrast??

tim_walls · Jun 21, 2007

darinwc said:
We usually keep the house at around 75 degrees. I will have to experement with just using the room temp water to develop and adjust the times.
Question: will that throw off the curves or change contrast??

75 Fahrenheight is about 24 Celcius - there's no denying that's warm, but I'd say certainly not too warm. By way of example Kodak quote 6.25 minutes for TMax 100 in TMax dev at 24C, as compared to 7.5 minutes at 20C. The only caution in the Kodak datasheets is that developing times less than 5 minutes may lead to un-uniform development.

I'm pretty sure (from memory) 24C isn't outside the range of the development time charts which Ilford publish in their datasheets, either.

Personally, I'd say that around 24C, provided you adjust the development time appropriately, you shouldn't see any ill effects. I wouldn't go any warmer than that, though. Best bet though is to read the datasheets - both Kodak and Ilford publish excellent information on their websites. (Kodak Databank is here and Ilford's is here (follow the 'more info' links and then select the fact sheet for the film from the 'Fact Sheets' menu.)

Getting chems to the right temp.. gotta be an easier way.

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