Pink/Magenta Stain (not blue, which is a different issue)

[Kilgallb]

Kodak recommends putting the film back in the fixer then rewashing.

 

[Rudeofus]

It has nothig to do with silver.

It has everything to do with retained silver as described (there was a url link here which no longer exists). Since sensitizing dyes stick to silver quite well (or they wouldn't work), complete removal of silver ions is key to overcoming/avoiding this dreaded magenta stain. UV light may kill the dye, but not the retained silver, and the longevity of your negs will inevitably suffer.

 

[zehner21]

I also wash the film with warm water (warm, not hot).

 

[Rudeofus]

I also wash the film with warm water (warm, not hot).

Yes, this works quite well. Since TMAX films are properly prehardened, they withstand 38°C/100°F water washes without any issues. But still: the film shouldn't be overly pink after fixation, and a post treatment with sun light is no substitute for a strong fixer.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I solved the pink TMax problem by using Tri-X and HP5+ instead.

 

[lensmagic]

Hi, Kodak, in Publication F-4016, "Kodak Professional T-Max Films," on page 9, says:

Your fixer will be exhausted more rapidly with these films than with other films. If your negatives show a magenta (pink) stain after fixing, your fixer may be near exhaustion, or you may not have used a long enough fixing time. If the stain is slight, it will not affect image stability, negative contrast, or printing times. You can remove a slight pink stain with KODAK Hypo Clearing Agent. However, if the stain is pronounced and irregular over the film surface, refix the film in fresh fixer.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Based on Kodak's (and other's) recommendation, I would like to use hypo clearing agent to remove the TMax pink stain. Steven Anchell, in The Darkroom Cookbook, 2nd ed., gives a formula for hypo clearing agent, which calls for sodium sulfite and sodium bisulfite. How necessary is the inclusion of the sodium bisulfite for use on TMax films?

Ido a two-bath fix,followed byHCAanda10min wash.no pink sftain is left after thatand even if,it has no negative effect anyway

 

[polyglot]

The pink is sensitizer dye. Yes, UV and acid will kill the dye - you'll see the fixer come out very pink after doing some Acros and then after a few minutes will clear up.

Tmax needs more fixing than traditional films. I give it 8 minutes in Rapid Fix 1+4 with constant agitation, followed by 10 minutes wash with constant agitation (and regular water replacement) and it comes out clear. Same goes for Acros and probably any other T-grain films you might find.

 

[NB23]

It has everything to do with retained silver as described (there was a url link here which no longer exists). Since sensitizing dyes stick to silver quite well (or they wouldn't work), complete removal of silver ions is key to overcoming/avoiding this dreaded magenta stain. UV light may kill the dye, but not the retained silver, and the longevity of your negs will inevitably suffer.

I repeat: After a regular archival wash, the remaining pink will disappear with time or quite quickly if left in the sunlight. And this has nothing to do with a bad wash.

 

[lensmagic]

Some soaks in water as part of the wash normally removes the remaining dye in TMax films. If you want to use a hypo clearing agent and want to mix your own, you can just mix a 2% sodium sulfite solution in distilled water. To this you can add 1-2g sodium bisulfite if you wish. The addition of bisulfite is to make the sulfite solution less alkaline, but it is not really required.

Mr. Anchell says that (as you point out) the sodium bisulfite lowers the pH. He recommends the inclusion of the sodium bisulfite in order to prevent softening of the emulsion of film. Do you think omitting the bisulfite runs the risk of softening the film emulsion?

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Hmmmm... we used to have a looooooooong sticky thread made up of all the threads on this topic. I wonder if it blew up in the database somewhere.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Hmmmm... we used to have a looooooooong sticky thread made up of all the threads on this topic. I wonder if it blew up in the database somewhere.

How about moving this to the sticky so that we can avoid repeating the samethings again and again redundantly too.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

How about moving this to the sticky so that we can avoid repeating the samethings again and again redundantly too.

It seems to have gotten unstuck, and doesn't come up easily on a quick search. There are also others that could be shoveled together, when I have a free moment.

Update: Still looking for the mother of all pink stain threads in the archive, but meanwhile I've merged the latest to a particularly useful one started by PE, and made that the current sticky thread on this topic.

 

[lensmagic]

It seems to have gotten unstuck, and doesn't come up easily on a quick search. There are also others that could be shoveled together, when I have a free moment.

Update: Still looking for the mother of all pink stain threads in the archive, but meanwhile I've merged the latest to a particularly useful one started by PE, and made that the current sticky thread on this topic.

Hi, my question had to do with the chemical composition of hypo clearing agent. I ask that my question be put back where it was.

 

[MattKing]

Hi, my question had to do with the chemical composition of hypo clearing agent. I ask that my question be put back where it was.

You might want to re-title the reinstated thread too.

The answer so far seems to be that the bisulfite affects the pH.

For us who don't know the answer, how does that matter to those who want to just use sodium sulfite?

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

How many subtly different and overlapping threads do we need on any given topic? This one in particular seems to appear regularly, and it is a challenge to come up with some aspect of it that hasn't been discussed at great length. It could be worth splitting the thread, if the narrow specificity of the topic could be maintained, but I have my doubts. Indeed, looking at the actual responses, virtually none of them address the topic of the role of bisulfite in the hypo clearing agent, so splitting the thread would require deleting most of the responses to keep it on topic.

I checked with Sean, and he thinks the old thread may have been deleted when a few very long threads were causing database problems, so here we go again.

 

[Xmas]

Could we have several short locked stickies

HCA benifits negative
HCA benifits silver bromide paper
HCA recipe scratch
HCA water quality

Eg my scratch HCA precipitates think the bisulphite preempts this.

You do need to lock the stickies sorry for post.

 

[MattKing]

Thanks Michael.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Hi, my question had to do with the chemical composition of hypo clearing agent. I ask that my question be put back where it was.

Hypo Clearing Agent helps remove hypo. The pink or magenta stain is from silver not hypo.

 

[Bill Burk]

Might as well ask...

For TMY-2, I use fresh (acid) fix, but no Hypo Clearing Agent.

When I first put sheet film in the wash, it makes the water noticeably pink. I transfer the film tray-to-tray filling and draining the wash water in my 5x7 inch trays (and the wash water is about 20-degrees C). At each transfer the tray I drain is less and less pink. In about 20 minutes the water I pour out is clear and that gives me confidence that I have rinsed out the dye.

Should I then continue to wash the film longer (perhaps wash for twice the time to clear)? Or (considering these are complete changes of water... seems like an effective wash) am I fairly clean after 20 minutes?

 

[Photo Engineer]

Use a retained hypo test solution and a retained silver test solution to get that information out of your film Bill.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Interestingly a U.K. based author called Harry Fearn, of "Better in Black and White" fame wrote about this as far back as 2000. TMax 100 and 400 were his favourite and thus his stock films. He fixed for as long as he developed which was between 10 and 11.5 mins for 400 and 100respectively.

It would seem that there is something different about these Kodak films. I have never seen this phenomenon with Ilford or Fuji films.

It would seem this is the price you pay for the benefits of using these films. It would appear to be a true price in that the films exhaust fixer quicker than comparable( or not comparable if you think Kodak Tmax films to be better)films or is the jury still out on the quicker fixer exhaustion aspect?

pentaxuser

Let's keep in mind that the pink stain has absolutely no negative effect on image quality.It's purely a cosmetic issue.get over it!

 

[Photo Engineer]

Well, if the stain is nonuniform or varies from film to film, it can affect VC papers!

But, what it does is give you higher speed at the same grain through either dye layering or 2e sensitization or both. And, it is easily removed.

PE

 

[Kilgallb]

I went back to some of my earlier TMX negatives (2005). I found several with the uneven pink stain. I did a refix for 7 minutes and rewashed and eliminated the stain. I have been more careful lately and now fix Tmx for 10 minutes and throw out my fixer more frequently . (Every 32 sheets of 4x5)

Unfortunately, I'd did find two (out of a or 250) with the pink stain that also had the tell tale sign of brown stains.

You cannot ignore the pink stain. Refix and rewash is the answer.

 

[Xmas]

I went back to some of my earlier TMX negatives (2005). I found several with the uneven pink stain. I did a refix for 7 minutes and rewashed and eliminated the stain. I have been more careful lately and now fix Tmx for 10 minutes and throw out my fixer more frequently . (Every 32 sheets of 4x5)

Unfortunately, I'd did find two (out of a or 250) with the pink stain that also had the tell tale sign of brown stains.

You cannot ignore the pink stain. Refix and rewash is the answer.

In fresh fixer...