I messed up. No fixer! Are my negs ruined?

AsdaFan · Mar 28, 2022

I poured the used Dev in to the fixer jug with undiluted fixer in! I drained the last few drops from the bottle and carried on as normal. The negs look ok but will they quickly fade after they're dried?

I don't plan on keeping negs as I just scan them so maybe it will be ok? The negs are currently drying so fingers crossed.

choiliefan · Mar 28, 2022

Refix them when you get a fresh batch.
They'll be fine.

pentaxuser · Mar 28, 2022

So just to be clear,Asdafan. These negs have not been fixed at all?. Have you used any stop bath i.e. water fill and dumps or acid stop bath? What do you mean by draining the last few drops from the bottle and carried on as normal?

it may just be me who is confused but It might help if it was made clearer exactly what happened after you poured the used developer into the undiluted fixer

Thanks

pentaxuser

AsdaFan · Mar 28, 2022

I had a few drops of fixer left in the bottle so I used what I had after pouring out the developer and washing it off. I washed in water for a few minutes before a final wash in Adoflo.

bdial · Mar 28, 2022

What do the negatives look like? For example, do you see whiteish/grey opaque areas or clear areas?

Based on what you have described, a few drops of fix wouldn't be enough, and your negatives are basically not fixed at all. If this is the case, fix them as soon as possible, and it wouldn't hurt to keep the film spooled on the reel and in your developing tank. The good news is that after development and a stop bath, the film isn't very sensitive to light.

pentaxuser · Mar 28, 2022

AsdaFan said:
I had a few drops of fixer left in the bottle so I used what I had after pouring out the developer and washing it off. I washed in water for a few minutes before a final wash in Adoflo.

OK I think I understand. You poured the spent developer into the undiluted fresh fixer presumably set aside for dilution for fixing the film. This undiluted fixer was then ruined by the developer so was dumped but that only left you with a few drops of fixer which you then diluted but to an extent that probably rendered the fixer as next to useless when you tried to fix the film with that massively over-diluted fixer.

If I have got this right then I agree with bdial that the film isn't fixed at all and I'd keep it in the total darkness until you are in a position to fix properly. If you've scanned the negs already and the scans look OK and you have no intention of keeping them anyway then there is an argument that it now doesn't matter

However I believe that unless you now intend to never develop film again and even if you have exposed these negs to a lot of light such as scanning demands it will be instructive for you to keep the negs in total darkness until fresh fixer arrives and then re-fix. That way you will know how long unfixed but washed/stopped negs kept in darkness or scanned can last

It will be instructive for me and maybe others here to learn how long the gap was between dev and fix and digital photos of your negs at that point will be very useful

It's a pity that this happened but at least you and others here, me included, can learn a lot from your mistake

Thanks

pentaxuser

MattKing · Mar 28, 2022

Welcome.
Please show us the negatives - a backlit cel phone shot where we can see the edge printing and the spaces between the frames would be good.
I'm still a bit unclear. If you put the just developed negatives into a mixture of developer and fixer, you might have essentially ended up with a monobath, which can do the fixing you need. But if you put the film into what essentially is water with a tiny amount of fixer, it won't be fixed. Seeing the negatives may provide a clue.
Refixing in fresh fixer may help, and should definitely be tried, but a lot depends on whether there was any developer left in the emulsion when the film was exposed to light. If there was traces of developer still there, the film will be fogged by the light plus developer, and re-fixing won't solve that.
If you had left the film still with some developer on it in the dark, you could have refixed and other than some over-development and associated fog, it would have probably come out okay.

Sirius Glass · Mar 28, 2022

We all make mistakes sooner or later. Fewer with more experience.

Welcome to ~~APUG~~ Photrio!!

Ayne · Mar 28, 2022

AsdaFan said:
I poured the used Dev in to the fixer jug with undiluted fixer in! I drained the last few drops from the bottle and carried on as normal. The negs look ok but will they quickly fade after they're dried?

I don't plan on keeping negs as I just scan them so maybe it will be ok? The negs are currently drying so fingers crossed.

Make strong salt water and soak your film in it until you find fixer, it will help.

pentaxuser · Mar 28, 2022

Ayne said:
Make strong salt water and soak your film in it until you find fixer, it will help.

What constitutes "strong" and why does a strong salt water solution protect the film more than say a full fresh water wash or an acid stop bath followed by a fresh water wash?

Although you haven't said it directly, I take it that the soaking in a strong solution of salt water takes place in total darkness such as a developing tank?

Thanks

pentaxuser

gone · Mar 28, 2022

I would think that you need to get those negs fixed, as of yesterday. Put them in a totally dark container and get some fix for them ASAP, you might be OK.

Bill Burk · Mar 29, 2022

pentaxuser said:
What constitutes "strong" and why does a strong salt water solution protect the film more than say a full fresh water wash or an acid stop bath followed by a fresh water wash?

Although you haven't said it directly, I take it that the soaking in a strong solution of salt water takes place in total darkness such as a developing tank?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Maybe salt water can act like fixer but it takes so long (24 hours? A week?) that nobody ever seriously considered making it a part of any process.

AsdaFan · Mar 29, 2022

I had heard of the salt water thing but I'm not sure if it actually works. Just to clarify, the developer was poured into the undiluted fixer but not used so essentially the negs are not fixed. I've scanned them all using my EM10 so at least I got them before anything happened.

I've attached the front and back of a neg from a quick phone scan.

snusmumriken · Mar 29, 2022

AsdaFan said:
I had a few drops of fixer left in the bottle so I used what I had after pouring out the developer and washing it off.

Glad you have been able to capture the content digitally.
In the circumstances you describe, I think I would have mixed the stop bath with the combined developer/fixer concentrate to make an acid but developer-contaminated fix bath, and given it extra time in there, re-fixing when supplies arrived. (This assumes you weren't using an alkaline fix, of course.)

bdial · Mar 29, 2022

fix them as soon as you can, keep them out of light, for good measure, and you should have useable negatives, and a successful learning experience.

One of my learning experiences way back was when a friend and I were processing a couple of rolls.
Our protocol was to keep only one chemistry bottle out at a time, swapping it with whatever was next as needed.
So, when the developer was done, I poured it back in the bottle, handed him the tank for doing a stop bath at the sink, and swapped the developer bottle for the fix. He turned from the sink, swapped the fix for the developer, as he hadn’t seen me change bottles. The film got another 5 or 6 minutes of development. We opened the tank to find unfixed, well developed film.
Gave the film another stop rinse, put in the fix for real, and all was well, aside from some extra density and contrast.

AgX · Mar 29, 2022

bdial said:
...fix them as soon as possible, and it wouldn't hurt to keep the film spooled on the reel and in your developing tank. The good news is that after development and a stop bath, the film isn't very sensitive to light.

Keeping wet film for a time, even in the dark, is no good idea either.

Ayne · Mar 29, 2022

AsdaFan said:
I had heard of the salt water thing but I'm not sure if it actually works. Just to clarify, the developer was poured into the undiluted fixer but not used so essentially the negs are not fixed. I've scanned them all using my EM10 so at least I got them before anything happened.

I've attached the front and back of a neg from a quick phone scan.

The salt water works, it will stabilize your film until you get your hypo.

Donald Qualls · Mar 29, 2022

AsdaFan said:
I had heard of the salt water thing but I'm not sure if it actually works.

I actually saw/hear in a video about Talbotype how this works (hot salt water was what Talbot originally used to stabilize his paper negatives, "photogenic drawings", before Herschel put him onto thiosulfates, then called hyposulfites). Apparently, it converts undeveloped halides to an insensitive form of silver choride. This halide will still print out over enough time and light exposure, but does so far less rapidly than what's in, say, a salt print before fixing.

So, no, salt water won't "fix" your film, but it will reduce the rate at which it deteriorates, hopefully enough to not show too much fog when you manage to get some more fixer in.

I've also seen reference to how much salt you need, but I don't recall it for certain. Seemed like a lot, so I'd probably try to get close to saturated solution. You should be able to dissolve a cup of salt in a quart of water at room temperature, eventually.

NB23 · Mar 29, 2022

Wash well and keep in total darkness until you can refix.

like respooled and inside the tank. Dry.

Don’t keep it soaked too long, the emulsion will transform into goo and detach.

pentaxuser · Mar 29, 2022

Well, without wishing to be a dismal Jimmy, the OP has had his film in light long enough to scan it and from what I can see the negs will definitely be darkroom printable/ capable of being scanned and inkjet printed as they are shown to us but the question is: Are they deteriorating as we speak given how much light they have already been exposed to. Is it now a race against time to fix them and if they are deteriorating has the maximum damage been done already i.e. is there still any point in placing the negs in total darkness?

The negs appear to have lost a lot of shadow detail but that may be for reasons other than the effect of light.

Thanks for the explanation of the salt solution, Ayne and Donald. Have you actually tried this, Ayne, in a similar situation to that which the OP found himself to be in? Even if it works there appears to be 2 drawbacks as I see it 1. It means leaving the negs in water for however long it takes to obtain fresh fixer and that appears to have dangers attached to it

2. Given the immersion risk no-one seems to know how well this works nor what the risk to benefit this involves

Unless of course you have experience of this which demonstrates this actually worked with none of the adverse consequences postulated above in other's posts?

Thanks

pentaxuser

AsdaFan · Mar 29, 2022

Ok so seeing as I was going to dump these negs I thought I'd experiment with the salt fix. I saw a video of a guy saying 300g salt in 1L of water. I've done a rough meassurement and put some salt and warm water in the tank and mixed as well as I could. I had a little peek and there is some milkyness to some of the negs now. I'll leave them swimming until for 24hrs like suggested in the video. I'll be interested to see what happens.

mshchem · Mar 29, 2022

Start over. New everything. Enjoy life

Donald Qualls · Mar 29, 2022

AsdaFan said:
Ok so seeing as I was going to dump these negs I thought I'd experiment with the salt fix. I saw a video of a guy saying 300g salt in 1L of water. I've done a rough meassurement and put some salt and warm water in the tank and mixed as well as I could. I had a little peek and there is some milkyness to some of the negs now. I'll leave them swimming until for 24hrs like suggested in the video. I'll be interested to see what happens.

I for one look forward to what you find, either way.

Sirius Glass · Mar 29, 2022

bdial said:
fix them as soon as you can, keep them out of light, for good measure, and you should have useable negatives, and a successful learning experience.

One of my learning experiences way back was when a friend and I were processing a couple of rolls.
Our protocol was to keep only one chemistry bottle out at a time, swapping it with whatever was next as needed.
So, when the developer was done, I poured it back in the bottle, handed him the tank for doing a stop bath at the sink, and swapped the developer bottle for the fix. He turned from the sink, swapped the fix for the developer, as he hadn’t seen me change bottles. The film got another 5 or 6 minutes of development. We opened the tank to find unfixed, well developed film.
Gave the film another stop rinse, put in the fix for real, and all was well, aside from some extra density and contrast.

Excellent developing protocol. I like my bottles up and only use the front bottle. I have avoided mix ups and mishaps ever since.

pentaxuser · Mar 29, 2022

Donald Qualls said:
I for one look forward to what you find, either way.

Yes me too. Frankly I was surprised that having brought the unfixed negs out into daylight and then subjected them to a scanner's light that the negs that we were shown were as good as they are

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I messed up. No fixer! Are my negs ruined?

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I messed up. No fixer! Are my negs ruined?

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