Ilford Chemical Volumes

I've been trying to support Ilford as they seem to be the best bet for the future of B&W film. I live in Canada these days, and thus have been afflicted with US gallons. Remember these conflicting childhood aide-memoire rhymes:

UK: 'A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter' - true for the 20oz imperial pint
US: "A pint's a pound, it's the same the world round' - no it isn't! You idiots use a 16oz pint.

Along comes metricated Ilford and sells me a litre of chemical to be mixed with four litres of water. Problem is, my US-made Datatainers hold a US gallon, which is 3.75 litres. I can take 800ml of Ilford fixer or wash aid, and mix with 3,200ml water, and discard the 250ml surplus and fill these containers to the brim. Sadly, Ilford doesn't give the number of films I should expect to fix with their litre of undiluted fixer (on the label of the bottle), so I can't figure out how many films to fix with 80% of it (clearance time for film leaders doesn't work for sheet film). My current 'fix' (pun intended) is to pour all the litre of fixer or wash aid into my US gallon container, add as much water as will fit, and assume it's good for 20 films or 20 pairs of 4x5 negs. If I'm then throwing it out prematurely, that will be to the good of Ilford's bottom line.

It would be very helpful if Ilford would include information on the bottle's label for folk in north America, who have to convert amounts, cope with odd volumes, and cross their fingers for the results. If Ilford sales in north America exceed those in Europe, it might be worth altering the volumes sold to match, but I'd rather hold out for the USA to metricate (even get behind SI units, a mere 55 years behind the times!) I still intend to buy Ilford chemicals, but it would be nice if they could help me out a little when I do so.

Chris

Hi Chris,

In the Rapid Fixer documentation, Ilford states that 1 liter (@ 1+4) of working solution will process 96 4x5 sheets
Your 3.75l jug should process 360 sheets

HTH

Francois.

drmoss_ca said:

Along comes metricated Ilford and sells me a litre of chemical to be mixed with four litres of water. Problem is, my US-made Datatainers hold a US gallon, which is 3.75 litres. I can take 800ml of Ilford fixer or wash aid, and mix with 3,200ml water, and discard the 250ml surplus and fill these containers to the brim.

Click to expand...

I do not get your point at all (slow on thew uptake as usual...)

Instead of discarding your surplus 250ml concentrate you either could use it to make another solution in a smaller container or save it until you got 750ml surplus in total and make a solution for your 1gallon container.

drmoss_ca said:

I've been trying to support Ilford as they seem to be the best bet for the future of B&W film. I live in Canada these days, and thus have been afflicted with US gallons. Remember these conflicting childhood aide-memoire rhymes:

UK: 'A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter' - true for the 20oz imperial pint
US: "A pint's a pound, it's the same the world round' - no it isn't! You idiots use a 16oz pint.

Click to expand...

afflicted is a good choice of words ... I just follow the mixing instructions in the manufacturer's units. Then I put the chemicals in one liter Jobo bottles or collapsible half [US] gallon bottles. Ever since I "discovered" the metric system, I have been frustrated that the US has not actually switched over [metric system is the legal system in the US, we have never changed over]. As an electrical engineer I worked in the metric system to design the circuits and the systems in the metric system to then work with the mechanical engineers in inches, feet, rods, furlongs and drams.

Why make up the entire litre of rapidfix? It isn't recommended to be used that way unless you can use it to capacity in a few days. Just mix up a litre, or however much you use at a time in the tank or tray, and when it gets too slow or out of date make up some more?

Here is my Canadian solution:

Use a 5L jerrycan. Holds perfectly your diluted liter of 1+4 Rapid Fixer.

I have no idea about Ilford being the future of anything. They're a business like any other business. I DO know that I mixed up a gallon of Kodak Rapid Fixer a year ago. I dump my fixer back into it after fixing the films, and a year later its still going strong. I just do a clip test and hypo ck now and then. Why use anything else? Great product. I got my $12 worth of fixer many times over.

Here is my approach: don't worry about the 250ml difference, fixers aren't precision mixtures. Pour the 800ml (or 750ml or 1000ml) of fixer concentrate into your gallon jug, then add water until the jug is full and be done with it. To illustrate my point, here is a table of film (Tri-X) clearing times for different concentrations of some rapid fixer (old Adofix):

[table="width: 500, class: grid, align: center"]

Dilution (concentrate+water)
Clearing Time (seconds)


1+1
146


1+2
47


1+3
38


1+4
40


1+5
48


1+6
51


1+9
63

[/table]

Very high concentrations are bad because they are slow, and low concentrations are bad because they have very poor capacity, but everything between 1+2 and 1+5 should give you an excellent fixer. Since your fixer will be 1+3.7 instead of 1+4, you will have slightly higher capacity per volume, but you should have similar capacity to what 4 liters of 1+4 fixer would give you.

drmoss_ca said:

It would be very helpful if Ilford would include information on the bottle's label for folk in north America, who have to convert amounts, cope with odd volumes, and cross their fingers for the results. If Ilford sales in north America exceed those in Europe, it might be worth altering the volumes sold to match, but I'd rather hold out for the USA to metricate (even get behind SI units, a mere 55 years behind the times!) I still intend to buy Ilford chemicals, but it would be nice if they could help me out a little when I do so.

Chris

Click to expand...

The reason that Agfa went out of business is that it ignored the NA market in its later years.

Actually the US has converted to the metric system. For example the inch is now officially defined as being exactly 2.54 cm in length rather than the older more cumbersome value. Other units are similarly redefined in metric units.

drmoss_ca said:

US: "A pint's a pound, it's the same the world round' - no it isn't! You idiots use a 16oz pint.

Click to expand...

Small world:

I mix up and use 1.25 litres of working strength film fixer at a time. I use a 1+4 dilution, so that requires 1/4 litre of concentrate and 1 litre of water.

That 1.25 litres is the size of the bottles I use - they started out in the USA as containers for Trader Joe's sparkling water.

According to Ilford's data sheet for Ilford Rapid Fixer, 1.25 litres of 1+4 working strength film fixer has the capacity to fix 30 135-36 rolls of film, which is equivalent to 120 4x5 sheets.

So a 1 litre bottle of Ilford Rapid Fix is enough to make four batches of 1.25 litres each, and has the capacity to fix 480 4x5 sheets.

The 1 litre and 2 litre pop bottles make excellent containers for working strength fixer (in Canada we call them pop bottles, in the USA they tend to call them soda bottles).

An empty 1 litre Ilford Rapifd Fix bottle also works well as a storage container for working strength fixer.

To the OP, I would say:

1) don't mix up the entire bottle of Rapid Fixer concentrate at the same time - the concentrate lasts longer than the working strength fixer;
2) you need to check your arithmetic on the capacity figures;
3) the grocery store is a great source of containers for fixer, as is the kitchen store and the Dollar store; and
4) a US gallon is actually 3.78 litres (if it makes a difference).

Ironically, even the Kodak chemistry that is labelled in US measurements is now being shipped in containers sized in metric - the 1 quart Rapid Selenium Toner bottles have 1 quart of toner in them, but the bottles themselves say 1 litre on the bottom.

momus said:

I have no idea about Ilford being the future of anything. They're a business like any other business. I DO know that I mixed up a gallon of Kodak Rapid Fixer a year ago. I dump my fixer back into it after fixing the films, and a year later its still going strong. I just do a clip test and hypo ck now and then. Why use anything else? Great product. I got my $12 worth of fixer many times over.

Click to expand...

I have the same experience

Freestyle has the 5 liter jugs.

This is it.http://www.freestylephoto.biz/6875-Arista-5-Liter-Storage-Bottle-Black

I know I always use a 2 litre jug to mix up rapid fixer, and keep the rest of the concentrate in the original bottle. That does mean that every couple of batches "cross the boundary" of using some concentrate from the old bottle and some from the new bottle, but I trust ILFORD to be consistent enough that there should not be a problem.

It is only the Americans, that still stick to the old fashioned way of mixing stuff, so just get with the program. I just wish that HC-110 did not need to be mixed one part to 31 parts of water. My 5 reel Jobo Tank needs 1280ml of developer and so I end up getting a calculator out to figure out how much syrup I need.

You know this site right ?
http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php?doc=volmix

Francois.

cmacd123 said:

I just wish that HC-110 did not need to be mixed one part to 31 parts of water. My 5 reel Jobo Tank needs 1280ml of developer and so I end up getting a calculator out to figure out how much syrup I need.

Click to expand...

cmacd123 said:

I just wish that HC-110 did not need to be mixed one part to 31 parts of water. My 5 reel Jobo Tank needs 1280ml of developer and so I end up getting a calculator out to figure out how much syrup I need.

Click to expand...

I suck at math, but I don't mind using a calculator. I did this last weekend for 900ml.
1+31=32 parts total
900ml/32 = 28.125 ml of HC-110, the rest water.

Easy, right? Well, the sad part is it took me forever to figure out the simple formula. Seriously, I'm that bad at math. I played with numbers for a while before I realized how simple it was.

Nice link - I may use it. Though I've not had as many problems since I started mixing in metric.

Even in the US, you can buy mixing and storage containers that are marked in metric. My beakers for mixing chemicals are marked in just about every system - I only use the metric markings. I rarely mix more than 2L of fixer at a time. I have a gallon datatainer that holds it after use, but it's mixed in a 1L beaker. The beauty of metric is how much easier the math is. HC-110 drives me nuts, too.

Jason Brunner is your friend if the HC-110 arithmetic bothers you: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

It always surprises me when I look at the tape measure section of a store in the USA and none of the tape measures have metric markings. All of the tape measures I see in Canadian stores have both metric and imperial markings.

MattKing said:

Jason Brunner is your friend if the HC-110 arithmetic bothers you: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

It always surprises me when I look at the tape measure section of a store in the USA and none of the tape measures have metric markings. All of the tape measures I see in Canadian stores have both metric and imperial markings.

Click to expand...

You have to look carefully or ask.