Is everyone using Photoflow wrong, or is it just me and my professor?

gealto2 said:

highly diluted Photoflo which I believe we all agree grows mold.

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No we don't agree.
A solution of working strength Photoflo will be a welcoming environment for mould growth, because the water plus a surfactant is a welcoming environment for that when you leave it somewhere where there is a lot of mould around - I expect that the reason that happens is that surface tension of the water restricts that growth, and when you use any surfactant that surface tension will be lessened.

Uh,er, a microbiologist might differ from that hypothesis. I was always getting in trouble when the botany professor demanded that you call certain types of molds proto-plants, but in the microbiology classes you were required to call them something else, which was not even necessarily the same terminology professor to professor, if the Mycology class was factored too. Right or wrong about the nomenclature, molds are quite skilled getting into things.

I should bring this up with a young Bioengineering phD friend I often chat with, just to try to jump start my memory of such things from back in far less informed days. Just for fun I did read through my old college Microbiology textbook a couple years ago, along with my wife's much newer Medical Microbiology textbook, preparing to use the microscope she gave me for my birthday. I had a nasty enough encounter with long dormant spores when I contracted Valley Fever at the age of 17.

What water mold manages to live on has long stymied me - seemingly nothing. But they must find some kind of nutrients there, in seemingly plain water.

Craig said:

I have a 118ml (4oz) bottle of Photo Flo that has a price sticker form a camera store that closed 30 years ago and there is no mold in the bottle.

I've never seen mold in Photo Flo, so I'll keep on using it, instead of experimentation with various dish soaps that have unknown chemicals in that I have no idea what the effect on film in long term storage might be.

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Likewise, I've got a bottle of Kodak PhotoFlo that I've had for about 30 years that I still use with no problems. One to 2 drops at a time...

I challenge anyone to induce concentrated Photoflo to grow mould.

MattKing said:

the internet tells me that the Palmolive dish washing detergent contains at least the following:

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Matt, you don't need to search the internet. It's obvious it contains Palm and Olive.

So one should also try salad dressing, or something like that?

DREW WILEY said:

So one should also try salad dressing, or something like that?

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Not the cream dressings, but the vinaigrette should be just fine.

Don_ih said:

I challenge anyone to induce concentrated Photoflo to grow mould.


Matt, you don't need to search the internet. It's obvious it contains Palm and Olive.

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What about Popeye?

Popeye is now the Secretary of the War Dept. What does that have to do with photography unless you are advertising canned spinach?

Y'all reading too much and being obcessive. Use Photoflo as it is, straight from the bottle, no mixing, no mold, no problems. Acquire an eyedropper bottle, rinse and fill with straight Photoflo. Simply add a drop or two to your tank after washing but still filled. Swish around for a few seconds and dump. As a surfactant, it needs little time to break surface tension and leaves films spot free.

A little research:

Looking at MSDSs; Photoflo appears to be ~25-30% of the same surfactant as Triton X-100. The rest is propylene glycol and water. Triton X-100 itself is 90-100% the same surfactant; same diluents. I believe the brand name Triton I used to use was 100%; the other MSDSs I found refer to components of analytical reagent kits.

I have never had mold in purchased Triton. I have never had mold in purchased Photoflo.

I have had mold in highly diluted Triton (<10%). I have never stored diluted Phototflo.

I propose that mold is an issue with storage of diluted solutions of Photoflo. I believe others have seen this also.

Due to discussion in this thread, and reviewing of past impressions, my problems with contamination of negatives may have been due to foam issues - foam not dissipating, but drying in place. Someone here discussed foam as problematic, which led me to this thought.

Others have discussed water quality. I had extremely hard water - before living in Wisconsin I had no problems with Photoflo. I saw (I think) one post discussing foam and dissolved solids interactions (?). Could it be something like this?

I use Ilfotol once at 1:200 and then pour it into my windshield washer fluid bottle. There is enough alcohol in the washer fluid to prevent mold. It cleans the windshield better too. I also use it for prints.

Does that include bugs from your windshield too?

It helps the bugs dry with any spots.

UnderwoodPhoto said:

Y'all reading too much and being obcessive. Use Photoflo as it is, straight from the bottle, no mixing, no mold, no problems. Acquire an eyedropper bottle, rinse and fill with straight Photoflo. Simply add a drop or two to your tank after washing but still filled. Swish around for a few seconds and dump. As a surfactant, it needs little time to break surface tension and leaves films spot free.

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+100

gealto2 said:

When I was in college 55 years ago, I took a few photography classes for fun. My professor harped on NOT putting Photoflow solution in the roll film developing tank with reels of film. He claimed that it damaged the reels and cans because it leaves a residue that is hard to remove. This is also a problem with the film itself, that this solution will remain in the emulsion and cause future problems. He taught that this should only be a surface treatment. So he taught removing the film from the developing reels and swishing it through the photoflow soution a single time with the photoflow in a bowl in the see-sawing motion that once was using from developing film at home. I've continued this treatment method, which makes me favor bulk loading 35mm rolls 30 exposures long since my arms aren't long enough to handle 36 exposure length rolls.

In recent years, I see on Youtube nobody is doing it this way and nobody talks about this. They just dump some photoflow in their developing tanks with water and film in them, and swish it around for a while. I think my professor was right. The water on the surface is what causes streaking on negatives, not the water that has soaked in to the emulsion being released later through drying. The emulsion dries from the outside surface so it would be unlikely to contribute to spots and streaking. Photoflow solution can't be very good for the long term storage of negatives. I've never had any spots or streaks on my negatives when done our way, so it works for me. I may be OCD, but this bothers me enough to talk about.

Comments and discussions are very welcome on this topic.

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Well, the answer is almost everyone is doing it wrong. I thought so. This is probably a minor point however tru it may be. I just checked and the Google AI has it wrong.:

To use Photo-Flo, mix a few drops (or about 1.5ml for 35mm) into a liter of distilled water as the final step after film fixing and washing; agitate gently for 30 seconds to a minute to lower water's surface tension, then remove the film and hang to dry without wiping to prevent water spots and achieve clean negatives, discarding the solution after one use.

This proves my professor and me have it right, since this AI is always wrong.

The word "surfactant" means surface actant. It only does it's job on surfaces. By soaking film in PhotoFlo or any surfactant including dish detergent, it soaks quickly into the emulsion where it can do no good. It will soak into the emulsion pretty quickly and stay there forever in a liquid form after your film dries. TritonX oxidises, so is not stable like most surfactants. Since the full strength product contains water, it will also have oxygen present, as well as the air above the liquid in the bottle.

According to Google AI, TritonX has a shelf life of only 2 years. With further reading, that would be for medicinal use, since TritonX is used in medical drug formulas. Again this proves how worthless Google AI is since it takes things out of context all the time. Whatever it is, I don't want it in my emulsion, so I move my film fairly quickly through it so that film is submerged for maybe half of a second so tha whatever it is does not soak into the emulsion but stays on the surface, which is the only place it can do anything good. This is what my professor (actually, I think he was only an instructor) taught me 55 years ago.

gealto2 said:

Well, the answer is almost everyone is doing it wrong. I thought so.

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Oh, who cares? People can soak their film in cat pee if they want. If you're going to disregard the recommendation of Kodak (manufacturer of film and long time advocate of photoflo in the final rinse), no one will expect you to believe anyone else. I'll put more faith in Kodak and the decades of research and product design than in your nameless instructor or your dish soap. Should I congratulate myself, too?

Almost no one is doing it wrong. Why? Because it doesn't matter, anyway.

There's this thing that happens on forums where people start threads by asking a question, and then argue with the answers. I am not sure why, but it is a conversational mode.

Many people get good results by using a very dilute solution of Photo-flo, say 1:200 as recommneded, immersing the film briefly (like 30 sec), and then hanging it to dry. This is what I do, I don't agitate the film while in the Photo-flo, I just dunk it and take it out. I moved to a city with very hard water, and so I started using distilled water for the developer and for the Photo-flo since it's the last water to touch the film. I use tap water for the stop, fix, wash, wash-aid.

I have had fungus develop on diluted Photo-flo but never on stock Photo-flo, despite keeping a bottle for years. I live in a very dry environment, but the Photo-flo is wet, so I don't think it's merely the desert deterring the mold.

reddesert said:

There's this thing that happens on forums where people start threads by asking a question, and then argue with the answers. I am not sure why, but it is a conversational mode.

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So true...

djdister said:

So true...

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XKCD nailed this years ago:

reddesert said:

There's this thing that happens on forums where people start threads by asking a question, and then argue with the answers. I am not sure why, but it is a conversational mode.

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It's called education. Both yours (and others reading it) and mine. I explained this in the original posting. That's how forums work. There are often no correct or incorrect answers only opinions. Many don't trust corporate answers, especially from those gone bankrupt. Some just believe what "authorities" tell them. Other want to know the WHY. My question was about HOW, not about WHAT people use, and almost nobody responded to it. I tried to give the WHY. I never told anybody to do anything, only to explain WHY I do drying aid the way that I do. People make statements on forums as well as ask questions.