Is there such a thing as over-fixing ?

[nick mulder]

Hiya,

it would greatly speed up/help my workflow in the darkroom when tray-developing 8x10 negs if I could simply leave the first 1st, 2nd negs etc... in the fix until the last one is complete (I do 4 per session on average, 1 at a time) - conceivably the 1st could be in the fix for 2 hours or so...

Will this cause any problems with the neg and/or fix ?

(Bergger BPF-200 - Tetenal Superfix with a smidge of Ilford Hypam Hardener added ...)

thanks as always for your help,
Nick

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

yes..I'm sure 2 hours is too long

fixer can start to bleach away parts of your image

 

[smieglitz]

If you must speed things up, why don't you leave them in the stop bath (or a water holding bath after the stop) instead? Fixer will begin to bleach the image after awhile. With film i think you'd see a reduction in sharpness as well as a density reduction because of overfixing.

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

won't the emulsion begin to get too soft if it stays in a water bath after stop w/o being hardened by the fixer?

once when I was developing film..I realized I had no fixer...I called Kodak and they said I had about an hour before the emulsion would get messed up...so I jumped into the car and went to a friend's darkroom to fix the film

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

You can put them into a water holding tray before washing after the fix.

 

[25asa]

I recently got distracted while multitasking, and a roll of film was in the Kodak Rapid Fixer for 18 minutes - instead of the usual 4 minutes.

No Damage to report! The roll came out fine!

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

it's amazing sometimes the mistakes you can make and get away with it...

once when the developer step was done I accidentally took the top off the developing tank in normal indoor lighting....I quickly dumped out the developer...put in the stop....finished the process & didn't notice anything wrong with the film when I was done

yet another thing I like more about film than digital: "oops I deleted the file" just doesn't make as funny a story as "I was out of stop so I ran upstairs and grabbed some vinegar...turned out to be olive oil instead"....yadda yadda