Potential causes of yellowing papers

[Grim Tuesday]

It was immediately yellow for me, no changing as the lights went on.

I did notice a strong correlation of effect with time spent in the developer. There was almost no issue for papers developed for 60 seconds. For papers developed for 3 minutes the yellowing was strong.

These are anecdotal, because really on Saturday I was just trying to get a nice print. I am a scientist by profession -- I will do more strictly controlled and structured experiments this week because this is getting fun. Any particular requests?

 

[Photo Engineer]

Liquidol instructions suggest 1 minute development.

PE

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I noticed Doremus also tried developing for longer than 1 minute. Is it possible that this is the culprit? I should have also mentioned my developer was probably around 80 degrees F, due to the ambient temperature of the water it was mixed with. Liquidol is a much faster developer than my old one, Arista Liquid Paper Dev. I think it deserves a "bottle warning" if developing for longer than recommended causes an issue like this. I was under the impression that for the most part when developing paper the amount of time in the developer doesn't matter so long as it reaches completion.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Liquidol specs say (IIRC) 65 - 75 deg F for 1 minute.

If you go outside of that then what do the instructions mean?

Sorry, but we just could not test everything. But, that does not rule out a paper problem and that is why I asked my questions of Doremus Above. After all, there is a safety margin and this is within those margins.

PE

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Doremus, I have never seen this and the developer formulation is not outrageous. It is basically a paper version of HC110 without all of the special treatments that they use. This is the only case I have heard of AAMOF.

Please try this for me. If you have some alkali (Carbonate or Hydroxide will do), make up a tiny amount of saturated alkali and place a drop on the paper in the light. Let me know what happens. It is usually one of the following: (yellowing, browning, blackening or nothing). If it is one of the first 3 try fixing it.

Thanks.

PE

Ron,

I'm away from the darkroom for some time now, but I'll do the test when I get back and let you know. I am pretty careful with my fixer capacity though (two-bath fixing, maximum 36 8x10 per liter of fix one), so I kind of doubt that the cause is inadequate fixation. Plus, other papers didn't exhibit the yellowing. I'll have to recreate the yellowing in order to do the test, so I'll have to get the Liquidol and the Adox MC-110 back out too.

Just a note: Although I indicated 2.5 minutes of development time, that's just my usual with Bromophen or D-72. I really don't think I went much over 90 seconds with the Liquidol.

Best,

Doremus

 

[Photo Engineer]

I don't think it is a fixer problem. I'm still working on this.

PE