Pre soak/pre wash why or why not?

retina_restoration said:

I'm betting the OP is SO glad he asked this (perennially irritating) question. lol

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Yes, I am pleased I asked the question, the replies have been informative. Arguments aside it has been interesting. People who have had problems with uneven development have experimented with a presoak and found it worked for them. I have never had issues with not presoaking roll films. I have learned from the responses that when processing sheet film in trays a presoak helps to prevent the sheets from sticking together. I have never rotary processed sheet film, if I ever do I will try a side by side comparison presoak/no presoak. As the saying goes, "there is more than one way to skin a cat".

retina_restoration said:

I'm betting the OP is SO glad he asked this (perennially irritating) question. lol

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I've spent much of my life interacting with various engineers and chemists, and even mfg corp CEO's, including in coatings industries. They do what they do. But it can be amazing how much practical sense a few of them don't have. Dumb ones pontificate; but smart ones farm out their ideas and prototypes to serious end users for sake of feedback. It's a two-way street.

Answers in this case can vary because we don't all necessarily use the same style of darkroom equipment, or even same types of film. Just like establishing personal film speed ratings and contrast levels, and development times, there are other variables you need to test for. Tech sheets and factory recommendations are just a starting point.

Vetus said:

Yes, I am pleased I asked the question, the replies have been informative. Arguments aside it has been interesting. People who have had problems with uneven development have experimented with a presoak and found it worked for them. I have never had issues with not presoaking roll films. I have learned from the responses that when processing sheet film in trays a presoak helps to prevent the sheets from sticking together. I have never rotary processed sheet film, if I ever do I will try a side by side comparison presoak/no presoak. As the saying goes, "there is more than one way to skin a cat".

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A really profound conclusion; Bravo!

I appreciate this type of thread as it helps define how others approach photography.

Pre-wash. There has been a lot of debate, but much of it is not grounded on any chemically rational discussion. For color development, pre-wash warmed the film, reels and tank to the operating temperature, and for that reason alone, pre-wash becomes standard operating procedure. B&W development makes pre-wash much harder to justify, to the extent that justification is required. Temperature control of the tank system is rarely required, but that remains valid where needed. Arguments made for even infusion of developer are made but not supported by any demonstration of truth, and it makes the assumption that developer will displace water in the emulsion more evenly than a dry emulsion will absorb it, which is ridiculous on its face. There is the old argument that pre-wash needlessly extends "wet time" for the whole development process, which is deemed bad. That may be the case with old, thick emulsion sheet film, but is unlikely to be a relevant concern for modern, thin emulsions. Pre-wash will remove and discard anti-halation dye in the emulsion, which is meaningless to the development process itself. If you use one-shot developer, pre-wash is obviously a waste of time for that purpose, as the developer is discarded after use. For those who reuse their developer, such dye accumulation can be emotionally disquieting, but that is a "you problem". For certain types of developer, pre-wash can be chemically disruptive. An example would be a divided developer, which is dependent on the amount of "first bath" being absorbed into the emulsion to regulate the development process. Having to displace pre-wash water from the emulsion can only risk uneven development overall. My personal evaluation is that I use a pre-wash for all color processing to regulate initial temperature. For B&W, I always use a one-shot developer to maintain consistency, and I never pre-wash. I've got better uses for my time.

How about visibly rational discussions, Randy? The proof is in the pudding. And how do you dispense with the logistical question of getting a stack of sheet film quickly and evenly into a tray of developer, and not sticking to each other, without a decent pre-wet?

Randy Stewart said:

it makes the assumption that developer will displace water in the emulsion more evenly than a dry emulsion will absorb it, which is ridiculous on its face

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You must have never processed film in light, noticing how it wets. It's not ridiculous at all.
Why do you think a wetting agent is added by e.g. Fuji to their color developers? If dry film wetted perfectly evenly, surely they wouldn't bother with it.

Maybe I should have split my original question into more of a survey and asked do you presoak when:
Developing roll film in small tanks and inverting.
Stand processing
Semi-stand
Steve Sherman's EMA
2 bath
C41 rotary
B&W rotary
Deep tank

Sheet film
Tray processing
Slosher tank
Dip and dunk
Rotary
Tubes
Paterson orbital
Mod54
Taco

I may have missed some methods of developing but I now realise how ambiguous my original question was.

Vetus said:

Maybe I should have split my original question into more of a survey and asked do you presoak when...

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You could try that. But you must be pretty new here if you think that will stop people from having an opinion on stuff they never tried.

Vetus said:

Maybe I should have split my original question into more of a survey and asked do you presoak when:
Developing roll film in small tanks and inverting.
Stand processing
Semi-stand
Steve Sherman's EMA
2 bath
C41 rotary
B&W rotary
Deep tank

Sheet film
Tray processing
Slosher tank
Dip and dunk
Rotary
Tubes
Paterson orbital
Mod54
Taco

I may have missed some methods of developing but I now realise how ambiguous my original question was.

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I think it’s nothing to do with ambiguity. There are die hard fans of certain methods and die hard enemies of certain methods.

It seems pre soak is that. So is stand development actually. It seems people who had problems with development find solution in pre soaking and people who had problems with pre soaking do not use pre soaking anymore.

There are certain people who has more experience than my age, and there are people who has tried presoaking only handful ampunt of time.

Always discussions….

Fatih Ayoglu said:

There are die hard fans of certain methods and die hard enemies of certain methods.

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Yes. It's one of those topics where something works great for one person, while another person has horrible experiences with it. There's no arguing about it, you'd say, so what do we do - that's right, argue the point. There's no end to it!

I think the simplest solution to the pre-soak / no pre-soak argument is:

Do whatever makes you happy and don't worry about what the other guy is doing.

foc said:

I think the simplest solution to the pre-soak / no pre-soak argument is:

Do whatever makes you happy and don't worry about what the other guy is doing.

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Agree, but it does help me to make a decision based on my own research and what other more experienced photographers are doing and why.

Sure but what I see generally is, "if it works, do not change it or if it's not broken don't fix it" and sometimes that thing might be even against tech sheets and the funny part is, there are times tech sheets are being treated like a Bible and other times, it's been said the sheet is non sense. Go figure

Fatih Ayoglu said:

Sure but what I see generally is, "if it works, do not change it or if it's not broken don't fix it" and sometimes that thing might be even against tech sheets and the funny part is, there are times tech sheets are being treated like a Bible and other times, it's been said the sheet is non sense. Go figure

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Humans always like to experiment and push boundaries, we can't help ourselves from doing that, it's our nature

Let’s not forget air bells.

When I joined Photrio, then called APUG, I was introduced to the prewash discussions and prewash wars. At the time I had occasional rolls of film with uneven development, including Kodak and Ilford. After reading the comments and an extended PM discussion with PE, I tried prewashing. I found for my use that all occurrences of unevenness, spots and other abnormalities ceased to occur in my black & white and color film processing completely for all brands of film when developing in plastic tanks, stainless steel tanks, trays, and Jobo processors.

Vetus said:

Humans always like to experiment and push boundaries, we can't help ourselves from doing that, it's our nature

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Humans always like to hypothesize and push opinions (AKA "engineering judgement"), we can't help ourselves from doing that, it's our nature!

It's all good; context and source considered.

Randy Stewart said:

Pre-wash. There has been a lot of debate, but much of it is not grounded on any chemically rational discussion. For color development, pre-wash warmed the film, reels and tank to the operating temperature, and for that reason alone, pre-wash becomes standard operating procedure. B&W development makes pre-wash much harder to justify, to the extent that justification is required. Temperature control of the tank system is rarely required, but that remains valid where needed. Arguments made for even infusion of developer are made but not supported by any demonstration of truth, and it makes the assumption that developer will displace water in the emulsion more evenly than a dry emulsion will absorb it, which is ridiculous on its face. There is the old argument that pre-wash needlessly extends "wet time" for the whole development process, which is deemed bad. That may be the case with old, thick emulsion sheet film, but is unlikely to be a relevant concern for modern, thin emulsions. Pre-wash will remove and discard anti-halation dye in the emulsion, which is meaningless to the development process itself. If you use one-shot developer, pre-wash is obviously a waste of time for that purpose, as the developer is discarded after use. For those who reuse their developer, such dye accumulation can be emotionally disquieting, but that is a "you problem". For certain types of developer, pre-wash can be chemically disruptive. An example would be a divided developer, which is dependent on the amount of "first bath" being absorbed into the emulsion to regulate the development process. Having to displace pre-wash water from the emulsion can only risk uneven development overall. My personal evaluation is that I use a pre-wash for all color processing to regulate initial temperature. For B&W, I always use a one-shot developer to maintain consistency, and I never pre-wash. I've got better uses for my time.

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Black & white film prewashing was scientifically, controlled and rationally addressed at length by PE. I suggest you do some research and read PE's work.

Fatih Ayoglu said:

Sure but what I see generally is, "if it works, do not change it or if it's not broken don't fix it" and sometimes that thing might be even against tech sheets and the funny part is, there are times tech sheets are being treated like a Bible and other times, it's been said the sheet is non sense. Go figure

Click to expand...

Some things to keep in mind are the purpose of the tech sheets and the "attitude" of the maker with respect to customer risk. In my experience Kodak publications have tended to be pretty conservative with respect to protecting their customers from problems. So the general audience for such information will most likely be "safe" following the instructions. For example you are not likely to have your developer go bad nor to be overused if you work according to the tech sheets. Other major manufacturers have tended to do a similar thing. Whereas an aftermarket sort of chemical supplier might suggest their developer capacity as several times greater. They are likely just going farther "out on the limb," so to speak.

A bit about my experience - as a young photographer I thought I knew quite a lot about b&w processing, etc., but color was something of a black art (this was circa 1970ish). To learn more about color I began working in a large lab, entry level sort of stuff, low pay etc. I was fortunate to get into their QC dept, and a whole new world of experience opened up. Being in the US we were primarily a Kodak house, and had a senior Kodak TSR (tech service rep) in the building typically 2 or 3 afternoons each week, much of it spent in the QC office area. So both I and the senior QC tech often had the opportunity to listen in on some of the conversations.

What I found was that there were higher tiers of support and that Kodak would solve virtually any sort of problem we had. This was done primarily through the TSR interface, and often there were in depth CIS (current information summaries) available. A comment - the CIS documents commonly available today are mostly just the tip of the iceberg; with corporate non-disclosure agreements in place the depth of information was much greater. In later years when certain things were beyond the TSR's expertise it was not unusual for him to put us in direct contact with Kodak's own experts. Again, the secrecy agreements and a mutual trust were key to this.

Additionally many of the "standard" photography/lab problems were addressed through a bi-monthly (?) mailing called Kodak TIPS, "Technical Information for Processing Systems." Six or eight pages, or whatever, addressing whatever new issues may have come to light. For example, some labs experienced such and such a problem with product xyz using the such an such machine, so the suggested workaround is (whatever it was). I would imagine that most of the prewash issues discussed in this thread had been previously addressed in the TIPS publication. Sometimes product changes would be made to deal with certain issues and these would also be announced via TIPS.

The point I'm trying to make is that the publicly available tech sheets may not tell the whole story and consequently some people may need (or choose) to deviate from that.

One last comment from my younger days... probably about early 80s I recall that we had some sort of issue with some b&w process (I'm thinking perhaps also some discrepancy in the tech data). Our TSR at the time was a senior guy with deep inside connections at Kodak. He had an upcoming trip scheduled to Rochester, so he planned track down some people and get to the bottom of things. Couple weeks later he's back. He says there had been a push to cut staff (early retirements, etc.) and says, "All those older guys, the ones who knew everything about black & white, are retired and no one else knows the answers to these things." This was the first time I ever saw Kodak fail to answer something adequately. I expect it's a similar situation with current data sheets, that any seemingly "wrong" information may never be resolved.

And to expand just a bit: engineers and scientists generally understand the "margins" or "safety factors" for their requirements, "desirements", and recommendations. Sometimes these margins are disclosed but often not due to proprietery knowledge/data, trade secrets, or "nonya" (none of your business). And there is almost always diversity of opinion based on corporate or personal stances. Some stances are very conservative and others less so. In almost all cases... these margins and safety factors tend to be hotly contested by various stakeholders.

In the development of engineering standards, these differences of opinion can go on for years and years and decades... sometimes even after the proponent is long gone but their stance just keeps getting repeated because "it has previously been written; it's "legacy knowledge/wisdom". Very common.

There were officially published Kodak guidelines which were criticized by their peers from the start, yet remained entrenched in the data base for decades. Anyone who has seriously interacted with large manufacturing corporations realizes that there are all kinds of tensions and rivalries within them, with decisions often being made rather arbitrarily by someone higher up the food chain who is not themselves an expert in the contested question. Then you add the marketing factor, and its own priorities explaining things, and you get a whole other layer of ambiguity.

Gosh knows how many times in my own career I had to jump through hoops to get to people really in the know,
including in coatings industries. One layer of BS after another, with often the CEO being the worst of all, because they don't like their suit and tie misinformed ignorant opinions being questioned. Of course, there have always been notable exceptions to that stereotype, but if it weren't frequently true, so many manufacturers wouldn't have collapsed so suddenly in recent decades.

And often, in huge octopus-like corps, one division doesn't know how to communicate with another. The right hand and the left hand work antagonistically. This was particularly the case with Kodak, 3M, and Dupont, though I could cite numerous other egregious examples too. Some survived anyway, many didn't.

Maybe it's time for a new thread with a new debate. Do you tray develop sheet film emulsion up or down? I'm strictly of the emulsion-up persuasion in order to avoid air bell haloes. But this could also apply as a relevant factor in unevenness of development, and hence be one more consideration in the prewet or don't prewet contest itself. One has to factor all of their own personal development protocol variables.

I like how Ilford mentions that prewash may cause some issues, but fails to mention that those same issues (uneveness) can happen without using a prewash.

I have a heavy glass graduated beaker from Kodak. On the bottom reads "For Photographic Use Only" and also says, "Kodak". However it also cleverly seems to read, "Use Kodak Only". Great marketing.

Like Geritol, cough syrup, etc ... "For medicinal use only".

DREW WILEY said:

Like Geritol, cough syrup, etc ... "For medicinal use only".

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And like many prescription medicine bottles, "For oral use only"... as if one would do otherwise.