Ilford Pan F Plus pink stain after fixing.

It has been many years since I have used Pan F. Yesterday, after fixing and washing, the clear film base was magenta, pink. This to me means under fixing, so tested my fixer and did a snip test - just cut a couple of inches of film, fixed, not developed and washed. Still pink. Fixed again, washed again, no change. Using an old Wat-air film washer - air brought into the washer to agitate the film and to know off tiny air bubbles. Yes I am dating myself with that old washer. All fixers were mixed in distilled water.

Tested my fix, tested good. Remixed my fix, developed, fixed and washed, still pink.

I have been mixing my own fixers - F24, F34, a rapid version of F24, TF-2 and TF-3 and tried just plain hypo. All of the Pan F tests were pink.

So, attempting to solve my own issues, I purchased Kodak's rapid fixer, no harder and Formulary TF-5. All tests still pink.

Is the current Pan F base now pink? Any ideas?

Thanks to all.

Wisner said:

It has been many years since I have used Pan F. Yesterday, after fixing and washing, the clear film base was magenta, pink. This to me means under fixing, so tested my fixer and did a snip test - just cut a couple of inches of film, fixed, not developed and washed. Still pink. Fixed again, washed again, no change. Using an old Wat-air film washer - air brought into the washer to agitate the film and to know off tiny air bubbles. Yes I am dating myself with that old washer. All fixers were mixed in distilled water.

Tested my fix, tested good. Remixed my fix, developed, fixed and washed, still pink.

I have been mixing my own fixers - F24, F34, a rapid version of F24, TF-2 and TF-3 and tried just plain hypo. All of the Pan F tests were pink.

So, attempting to solve my own issues, I purchased Kodak's rapid fixer, no harder and Formulary TF-5. All tests still pink.

Is the current Pan F base now pink? Any ideas?

Thanks to all.

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It can have a fairly tough to shift residual dye. Have you tried an extended (maybe an hour) water soak?

No I have not tried an hour water soak. I am washing for 10, minutes. I have tried 20 minutes and 30 minutes. The pink, at the longer times, are the same as the 10 minute wash time. Acid or alkaline fixer also makes no difference in the pink "base stain"

Or, are you suggesting a one hour water pre-soak.

Thank you for your reply.

I always give a HCA soak, followed by a half hour soak in room temp water before I do an Ilford fill and dump wash. This also applies to TMY, and Acros sheet film.

Thank you for your reply, will try it out.

The only issue I see is the longer a film is wet the higher chance more grain clumping will occur, or at least that is my understanding from a master printer. That was from some 40 years ago. This person was making very large images from 35mm, Tri-X in D-76 1:1. Some of the images were 40 inches in length. At viewing distance, wow. His method was the minimum exposure to retain shadow detail, coupled with the minimum processing for highlight detail, and keep the wet time to the absolute minimum. He also advocates printing with condensers for the best sharpness and using grade 3 as the standard for the lowest apparent grain.

I find HCA reduces the time to clear the stain. I’ve modified the ilford wash method with 5-10 minute soaks in between so probably 20-30 minutes of total soak time works for me on Delta 100 and TMY.

Wisner said:

the longer a film is wet the higher chance more grain clumping will occur

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No.

It's as simple as that.

People can be good printers without having a clue about their materials, sounds like your guy was one of them.

With appropriate enlarging lenses, you should be able to get razor sharp cleanly defined grain from TX in regular D-76/ ID-11 1+1 at 40+ inches across without problems - and you don't need anything other than the basics of competent process controls.

Now you learned that pink does not equal underfixing. It is just an OCD.

leave the negs in sunlight a little bit and it’ll go away. Or better yet, just accept it and move on.

Not sure I understand, OCD not sure what that is?

Obsessive compulsive disorder? The pink is from the sensitizing dyes: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/pink-magenta-stain-not-blue-which-is-a-different-issue.69462/

While they may be ok to leave in the film, I prefer to wash the film until they are removed. You might just need a longer wash time if you want to remove it completely.

It would appear that no-one who has responded has used Pan F recently in order to confirm or deny that it now has what appears to be a very stubborn pink dye in it . So stubborn in fact that it seems to refuse to depart. I have to say this is unusual for Ilford and certainly several years back when I last used Pan F I saw no pink dye or any dye in Pan F

By all means try what has been suggested but if it were me, my curiosity about what is clearly unusual would make me contact Ilford and ask them about it. I thought TMax 400 took quite a lot of washing to rid it of its blue/black dye but nothing like the extraordinary stubbornness of your Pan F

One final thought: If Ilford has recently changed the dye or included pink dye in Pan F and has found it this stubborn I am surprised that it has made no mention of it. I watch the occasional YouTube video by a Brit in the Isle of Wight just off the south coast of England. He made a video of using Pan F which I think I watched and I can't recall any mention of a stubborn pink dye when he processed it which he usually does on camera

It is very strange

pentaxuser

@pentaxuser I have used Pan-F and seen the dye. It comes out if you give sufficient washing. The problem that people don't get is that there are many reasons why residual dye remains - pH of developer and fixer and temperature of wash water - and contact with the wash water (diffusion time) all matter. C-41 fix seems to get most residual dyes into a state where they can be most easily washed out.

pentaxuser said:

It would appear that no-one who has responded has used Pan F recently in order to confirm or deny that it now has what appears to be a very stubborn pink dye in it . So stubborn in fact that it seems to refuse to depart. I have to say this is unusual for Ilford and certainly several years back when I last used Pan F I saw no pink dye or any dye in Pan F

By all means try what has been suggested but if it were me, my curiosity about what is clearly unusual would make me contact Ilford and ask them about it. I thought TMax 400 took quite a lot of washing to rid it of its blue/black dye but nothing like the extraordinary stubbornness of your Pan F

One final thought: If Ilford has recently changed the dye or included pink dye in Pan F and has found it this stubborn I am surprised that it has made no mention of it. I watch the occasional YouTube video by a Brit in the Isle of Wight just off the south coast of England. He made a video of using Pan F which I think I watched and I can't recall any mention of a stubborn pink dye when he processed it which he usually does on camera

It is very strange

pentaxuser

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I've been using it in 120. Most recent was two weeks ago, developed in D-23 1+3. Pink was very subtle, and vanished as soon as I have it a soak in HCA. I think the subtle pink is due to high sodium sulfite in D-23. There is more pink to deal with when I develop with Pyrocat-HD, but as long as fix is doing it's thing, and a HCA bath is given, no pink.

Thanks both. So was our OP simply unlucky in not being able to get rid of it after 30 mins or do we now have Pan F that requires nothing less the full hour's pre-soak? This does seem a long time.

pentaxuser

Refix for twice as long and then check. Fix longer if necessary and then properly rinse.

Thank you all for your replies, I will go back and look at the suggestions. My issue is I was the chief photographer for NASA for a little over 20 years. I am very good at diving into photographic problems, I had to be. I have tried acid fix and alkaline fix. I have fixed for as long as 20 minutes and washed for that long as well. In frustration I left a roll of Pan F in the washer, no water running, overnight, the pink stain was still there.

I have been a pyro user since the invention of PMK so can't use HCA and can't see a pink stain, the yellow stain hides the pink stain. I have been making my own HCA since since I started using Rodinal with Pan F. I will purchase ready made HCA and see what happens, so I can check that off my list. I am on well water, very nice with a PH of 7 and soft. I have tested development times with distilled water and my tap water, the development times are the same with both types of water. I do use distilled water for all chemicals, including fixer.

It does appear, as Pentacuser has pointed out, that so far, no-one, that has posted, is using Pan F in 35mm. I have not been a huge Pan F user, however, with Efke 25, 50 and Agfa 25 gone I am a little lost for a slow fine grained conventional emulsion. I have tried Rollei 25, not a big fan.

Tabular and cubic films are easier for me to remove the pink stain from than the Pan F I am currently using. The 120 version of Pan F does not show this issue. So, as you can see I am at a dead end, which is why I floated the question to phototrio.

Thank you Osella for the link to some postings talking about the pink stain. I agree with all of the statements and have tried everything that has been suggested. The link in the articles, goes to Kodak but is dead. As the NASA chief photographer I had direct contact with Kodak's scientists and engineers, I do not know the Photo Engineer who wrote a good deal of the articles you supplied a link to but have followed his writings, he is very knowledgeable.

Back to the darkroom and beat my head against the wall and try everything suggested to see if I can solve this. I am not one to accept poor results. Yes, OCD is there, I will fight this until it is solved or I realize there isn't anything I can do.

One last point, I have given several rolls of Pan F to photographic friends, gave no instructions other than use and process. Their films have the exact same pink stains. All friends used different developers and fixers as compared to mine. I have several 100 foot rolls of the film, the emulsion numbers are different. I have tried 3 different emulsion numbers, all show the pink stain issue.

Again thank you to all.

I did a bit more research and was directed to the usual suspects of various forums and while some respondents confirmed a slight pink tinge after washing there were those who reported seeing no such tinge. I belong to the latter group. However if the tinge is very slight then it may be that the OP is particularly attuned to tinges compared to me

However one of the most relevant posts was as far back as 2005 on another forum and came from the Late Roger Hicks who said that Ilford had told him that it was from sensitising dyes and would fade after exposure to light. I noted later in my search that in general this probably is the most commonly proposed solution by people from several different forums. So placing the negs in a clear neg file and leaving it out in daylight is the sure solution

So yes it is there and the solution after normal washing exposure to daylight. It may be my process was ideal for eliminating it and at the same time fooled me into thinking the tinge was never there as follow. I usually develop at night then hang the film in a Durst UT100 dryer in tungsten artificial light which may disguise the pink tinge. The dryer has clear sides. The films often hang in this for at least a day and sometimes longer. The dryer is south facing so the film is hanging in full daylight for maybe 10 /12 hours and even a day or more which adds up the exposure. By the time I cut the film down and place in a neg file and binder the daylight/sunlight has done its work

pentaxuser

I use TF4 fixer normal time (5min), which is alkaline, followed by normal plain water wash about 10 to 20 min, and don't have any residual dye. Presoak only 2 min. This kind of stain UV fades anyway. I don't know what the fuss is all about; it has very little effect when printing.

"I have been a pyro user since the invention of PMK so can't use HCA and can't see a pink stain, the yellow stain hides the pink stain."

I've used PMK as well as Pyrocat-HD. I could sometimes see pink in the rebate.

DREW WILEY said:

I use TF4 fixer normal time (5min), which is alkaline, followed by normal plain water wash about 10 to 20 min, and don't have any residual dye. Presoak only 2 min. This kind of stain UV fades anyway. I don't know what the fuss is all about; it has very little effect when printing.

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Funny... I pulled out some older negatives and they still have pink cast. But you're right. It has little effect when printing or scanning.

It is just after 50 years of being a photographer, pink means poor washing and or fixing. No, the pink isn't causing an issue, just my experience of what, in the past, pink means. Just attempting to have clear film which is what it should be. Won't put too much more work in to this as the pink isn't causing any darkroom printing issues.

Wow, thank you Andrew, knowing that someone else is seeing this issue is nice to see, thought I was going crazy. I will report back to this thread after I go back and try everything suggested one more time.

Wisner said:

Wow, thank you Andrew, knowing that someone else is seeing this issue is nice to see, thought I was going crazy. I will report back to this thread after I go back and try everything suggested one more time.

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The weirdest film I ever worked with as far as pink goes was Acros sheet film. It looked clear in water bath, but after soaking for 15 minutes, the water had a pink tinge to it. I'd change the water, let it sit there for another 15 minutes, and still the water was a bit pink... weird.

Acros clears fine for me. The only film that has about .02 - .04 M density stain remaining after washing for me is FP4 sheet film. But that eventually fades, at least after several printings. Many enlarger light sources have quite a bit of UV output

Andrew O'Neill said:

Funny... I pulled out some older negatives and they still have pink cast. But you're right. It has little effect when printing or scanning.

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Please, correction: It has ZERO effect.

Pan-f has this new pink color. I ignore it.
Tri-x has this unwashable pink hue while tmx washes out easily.