Partial quote..
I don't understand that bit myself, so hopefully I am on the correct course.
At the end of dev, fix and wash, I transfer the loaded film spiral to a separate bowl of fresh water with a tiny amount of wetting agent. My wetting agent does not go anywhere near the tank. Then the emptied spiral is given a thorough good wash.
If you are adding wetting agent to the tank for the final rinse is, there a possibility that the tank is assumed to be clean after all the rinsing,and not being thoroughly washed clean of the wetting agent?
So you end up with the developer wetting agent, plus the residue wetting agent from the previous final rinse.
I have been very lucky and never had a frothy brew.
It seems you want to know how you should pre-soak, not how we do it. So might I be so bold:
You need to remove the surfactants from the film to both prevent accumulation in your replenished developer and prevent uneven development. Not fully removing enough of the surfactants will cause uneven development. Really, you are after a pre-wash, not a pre-soak (the terms are not interchangeable).
So, you need to proceed like your were washing film. A fill-and-dump regime if you're using tanks or a running-water or multi-tray regime if you're using sheet fill seems necessary to me. A longer time than what is needed to saturate the emulsion would also seem in order.
I'd start with a five-minute soak with changes of water and gentle, continuous agitation. Tap water is just fine; if you can wash your film with it, you can pre-soak in it as well. Use the same temperature as the rest of your process.
If you still have foaming problems with your developer or uneven development problems after that, then you'll need to extend the pre-wash.
Best,
Doremus
Partial quote..
I don't understand that bit myself, so hopefully I am on the correct course.
I wonder, would it be worthwhile to include Harmon Washaid, normally used on papers?
It seems you want to know how you should pre-soak, not how we do it. So might I be so bold:
You need to remove the surfactants from the film to both prevent accumulation in your replenished developer and prevent uneven development. Not fully removing enough of the surfactants will cause uneven development. Really, you are after a pre-wash, not a pre-soak (the terms are not interchangeable).
So, you need to proceed like your were washing film. A fill-and-dump regime if you're using tanks or a running-water or multi-tray regime if you're using sheet fill seems necessary to me. A longer time than what is needed to saturate the emulsion would also seem in order.
I'd start with a five-minute soak with changes of water and gentle, continuous agitation. Tap water is just fine; if you can wash your film with it, you can pre-soak in it as well. Use the same temperature as the rest of your process.
If you still have foaming problems with your developer or uneven development problems after that, then you'll need to extend the pre-wash.
Best,
Doremus
I wonder, would it be worthwhile to include Harmon Washaid, normally used on papers?
Illuminating thread! I’ve been wondering how others do this.
What’s the difference between presoak and pre wash? When would you do one vs the other?
No, because that is intended to remove the residual fixer compounds. At the stage of processing you are contemplating, there isn't anything for it to work on.
Thinking of the foaming, are you making sure the tanks are scrupulously clean so there is no wetting agent carry over, and are you also observing the capacity? D76 can only be replenished a finite amount and there is a hard limit to the amount of film that can go through a replentished solution before it must be dumped.
I would consider myself very unlucky if I was not able to enjoy a frothy brew at least once a week. And unless things have changed since I was last there, you have some very good frothy brews on your side of the Atlantic. ;-)I have been very lucky and never had a frothy brew.
Illuminating thread! I’ve been wondering how others do this.
What’s the difference between presoak and pre wash? When would you do one vs the other?
Well, it's nit-picky semantics actually, but here's the distinction. You would soak film to wet the emulsion with water and let it absorb as much as it can so that the gelatin was in its fully hydrated state before developing. Some think this helps with evenness; it definitely helps keeping sheet film from sticking together. Pre-soaking before development is not really necessary if the film can be immersed quickly and evenly in the developer.Illuminating thread! I’ve been wondering how others do this.
What’s the difference between presoak and pre wash? When would you do one vs the other?
Well, it's nit-picky semantics actually, but here's the distinction. You would soak film to wet the emulsion with water and let it absorb as much as it can so that the gelatin was in its fully hydrated state before developing. Some think this helps with evenness; it definitely helps keeping sheet film from sticking together. Pre-soaking before development is not really necessary if the film can be immersed quickly and evenly in the developer.
A pre-wash would be to remove something from the emulsion before development, in this case, the surfactant that the manufacturer puts in the emulsion to aid in developer penetration and even development with machine processing. The idea is to remove that so it won't cause foaming by building up in the replenished developer. Sure, the emulsion gets soaked and saturated with water in the process, like a pre-soak, but that's not the goal; the goal is to remove something.
Removing something from the emulsion, like a surfactant, will likely take longer than it would take for the emulsion to swell completely with water, and might need some agitation to help the process, hence my recommendation to use a longer pre-wash than a soak and to agitate as well.
See, there are some differences
Hope that answers your question.
Doremus
for color paper
I am determined to continue developing with replenished D-76 because I like how the negatives look. However, the surfactant that Ilford puts on HP5, FP4 and, PanF, eventually causes the developer to foam up like a bubble bath. It has been suggested that a proper pre-soak is one way to prevent this. That leads to the question - How?
For those pre-soakers, how do you do it? What kind of water? Tap? Filtered? Distilled? Something else?
Do you agitate, or let it sit?
How long do you pre-soak?
Anything that I can't think of...
This isn't about whether or not - that dead horse has been beaten to a bloody pulp.
Thanks,
Peter
Hi Peter,
... Ilford has put a wetting agent in the emulsion for a reason.
RA4 color paper has a surfactant added to it. Hence, pre-washing the paper serves no purpose. Pre-soaking may help if you otherwise have problems with unevenness. Keep in mind that color paper is by its nature not intended to be pre-anythinged. Which doesn't mean you can't - just that you'd be solving a problem you introduced on your own end that's not inherent to the product as such.
Uneven developing is the problem why I pre-soak. Otherwise I will have streaks due to uneven developing in drums. Also, the paper in rolls is often curled the "wrong" way, and is not always easy to get evenly to fit against the walls of the drum. To counteract this problem, I presoak and use a bigger amount of chemistry than minimally needed. As I replenish, the amount of chemistry used is not an issue.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?