Pyrocat Semi stand development problem

you've obviously got those magical silver fingers

sanking said:

Has anyone mentioned that when using stand or semi-stand development a water pre-soak of a few minutes is good practice? This will eliminate or minimize the possibility of air bubbles. When the emulsion is first wetted there is a fair amount of out-gassing and it is better to have this take place in the pre-bath than in the developer.


Sandy King

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I do some semi-stand development with Pyrocat HD and Delta 100 and do the presoak as Sandy mentions as well as a couple of nice hard bangs of the tank on the counter top before letting it stand. Have never had a problem with air bubbles.

df cardwell said:

OK, my curiousity is aroused.

Accepting that out gassing creates the potential for air bells,
(and why not ?) I wonder what are the factors which contribute to detectable bells ?
Because I DON'T get them !

1. Outgassing creates the potential for bells.

2. In 40 years of active professional photography,
and thousands of images, I've never detected the presence of airbells.

3. I print full frame plus black border, so they would be pretty evident.

4. NO PreSoak (why I don't presoak is not germain)

5. Steel 35mm & 120 reels (kindermann, nikor, hewes)

6. Sheets in trays, 7.6 liter tanks on hangars, Combi tanks.

7. 'Minimal agitation' for 40 years, in Rodinal, metol/carbonate, ABC pyro, PyroCat.

8. Conventional agitation patterns in every developer anybody else has ever used.

9. Distilled water, tap water, though out the USA, Canada, and Europe.

I've NEVER used PhotoFlo in the Developer,
I'm clean but not obsessive.

Maybe it is like lightning strikes and meteorites,
I just haven't been hit YET.

But there OUGHT to be something ELSE.

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG ????

(Please be polite and assume that
either me or my clients would have noticed airbells
or other negative defects)

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"WHAT AM I DOING WRONG ????"

With lightning strikes and meteorite hits, you can improve (or reduce) your probability of getting hit by selecting a more favorable location/environment.

Reference: The "Jacob's Ladder" device in the original Frankenstein Movie.

I HAVE THE SOLUTION!

What I did was I put my reels in the sink.
Let them stay for 1 hour. Clean them with a brush.
Put in 1 chloride tablet for the bath tub.
Let it stay for 1 hour.

Refresh the water, and let it stay over night.
Next day i cleaned them again with a nailbrush and dried them.

I did a test with a role of 120 film with semi stand as i did before. 15 min, initial 15 sec inversions and after 8 minutes 1 inversion.
Wetting agent was done after i got the film from the reel in a separate tank which is labeld now "WA".

There is absolutely nothing to see at the edge of the film.

So this is the solution for me.

Thanks all you analogists for the help.

Willie Jan said:

I HAVE THE SOLUTION!

What I did was I put my reels in the sink.
Let them stay for 1 hour. Clean them with a brush.
Put in 1 chloride tablet for the bath tub.
Let it stay for 1 hour.

Refresh the water, and let it stay over night.
Next day i cleaned them again with a nailbrush and dried them.

So this is the solution for me.

Thanks all you analogists for the help.

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That is great news. Thanks for reporting your solution. That is potentially useful information for many of us. I had no idea how deleterious wetting solution left on the reels could be.

Sandy King

Willie Jan said:

I HAVE THE SOLUTION!

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Willie - I'm really pleased you've managed to sort it all out - and you've managed to avoid buying new reels too.

Dumb question... what's a chloride tablet? Who sells them?

Additional remark:

My wife told me that using chloor with plastic reels can harden the plastic eventually.
But since I was planning to do this once and never put the WA in the tank i think its no problem.

jstraw said:

Dumb question... what's a chloride tablet? Who sells them?

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Im not sure what the right name is in english...
I use these tablets for my bath tub to clean the system.

But probably using some chloor substance will do it also. Maybe alcohol will do the trick also, but that's a waste...

I think that letting it stay for a night will loosen the chemicals from the plastic and the brushing is the best part in the whole process.
I used those things to clean your ears to get between the reels to see if some darker substance was there.

Chlorine tablets...

And I'm skeptical that this is truly the solution to this problem. Let us know in a year if it consistently works.

Kirk Keyes said:

And I'm skeptical that this is truly the solution to this problem. Let us know in a year if it consistently works.

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well Kirk, I can say that after 6 months it's consistently working for me. I haven't had one occurrence of the dread uneven edges since I did as Willie is doing now.

Since the cleaning I did now 3 film developments and no occurence of this problem.

Thank you. This has happened to me as well with Pyrocat-HD a couple of times lately. I will try your cure.

/matti

I went back to basics, cleaned the reels, 5x4 (Jobo) and 35mm/120 Paterson as Leon recommenced. Then processed 3 120 films it made zero difference.

Leon's wrong the bleach removes gelatin and other build up on the spirals not wetting agent. Did cleaning make any difference - no - not at all.

So with extremely clean spirals I filled my tank ith tap water (no film) and simulated the first minutes agitation, wow the photo says all after I took the lid off:

Look at those air bubbles, I tried various ways to get rid of them, agitation was no good, twirling the reel worked best, but only Paterson tanks allow that.

Actually a good wetting agent was the instant solution, however I tried I couldn't get those air bubbles any other way. I'll keep my spent Pyrocat dev and do a similar test soon.

Ian

Ian Grant said:

I went back to basics, cleaned the reels, 5x4 (Jobo) and 35mm/120 Paterson as Leon recommenced. Then processed 3 120 films it made zero difference.

Leon's wrong the bleach removes gelatin and other build up on the spirals not wetting agent. Did cleaning make any difference - no - not at all.

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You need to be careful and read back through the thread Ian.

In my original response to willie's question, i said

Despite running the old reels through the dishwasher and boiling them to try and get them clean, I couldnt get rid of the problem, so I cut my losses and bought a whole new set of reels and from then on, I removed the film from the reels before the final wetting agent rinse and I've never had the same problem again

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I made no suggestion for anyone to use bleach - that was willie's own method for cleaning his reels. I bought new reels that had not seen any wetting agent and this seems to have solved my problem, and after about 6 months of developing film, I've not had any recurrence.

Willie decided to try cleaning his reels, and, so far, has had some success. I hope for him that this continues and his problem is solved. I wish you luck in your continuing search for a fix to your problem.

I just tried a similar experiment as Ian with one Paterson reel that I have had problems with, and one AP reel that I know has been in frequent contact with wetting agent.

The Paterson reel showed similar bubbles to the ones on Ian’s photo – but there were no bubbles whatsoever on the AP reel. I repeated the process two more times with the same result.

I know that these “results” are tentative to say the least, but I find them rather interesting. Too bad I really dislike the AP reels.

When I put the film into the reel, it went very smooth and sometimes the film would not transport if I rotated the patterson reels like you do to get the film in. Now after the cleaning it feels like the surface is not that smooth and the film inserts very easily.

Second I read that the WA may not be foamy, because than there will be to much WA in the water. I now put 2cc H10(amaloco) in 1 liter in stead of just poaring a little bit out of the bottle which would be more than 5cc i think.

I will get a ear dropper to put the WA in and measure how many drops must be used..

I suspect the air-bubble problem is greatly acerbated by the local water supply which has a very high salt content and isn't drinkable.

As I said earlier in the thread commercial developers usually contain Calgon or a similar water softener and often some type of non-ionic wetting agent. For instance I think commercial ID-11 may contain 3.5 gms/litre Sodium tripolyphosphate, there's a reference to this in Ilford patents. The STP helps any wetting agent work more efficiently particularly with hard water.

My initial test using a roll of 120 film and Pyrocat in daylight indicate that making a very mall addition to the Pyrocat developer will cure the problem entirely regardless of the age of the spirals used. Try as I might with a very small amount of wetting agent added I can't get any air-bubbles to stick to the film or any of the 3 Paterson spirals I'm using here, one of which must be about 38 years old, and I get none with the Jobo 5x4 reels either.

Sorry Leon, I wasn't criticising you, it was others who mentioned the residue left on film spirals, I've always cleaned all mine with bleach every 6 months or so for many years now.

Yesterday's processing had me stumped, I used a 3 minute pre-soak and was extremely careful with the agitation and still had a problem. My daylight tests showed air-bubbles how air-bells were present, and created with inversion agitation.

1. Occurs even when a water pre-soak is used.

2. Wolfgang's suggestion of putting the spirals into a ready filled tank worked partially unfortunately inversion agitation added them later.

3. Tapping the tank worked but this needed to be quite hard to remove all the air-bells.

4. Twisting the spirals worked the best, you can do that with Paterson tanks but not Jobo.

5. Wetting agent eliminated the problem entirely.

6. Never had it happen with commercial developers, Rodinal, X-tol etc

I've been processing films for over 40 years and until recently never had these problems with air-bells, I'm now sure that it's a combination of the water I'm using and the developer. There are plenty of Patents from all the major manufacturers showing they were aware of these problems even in the 1930's and as a result add water softening agents and non-ionic wetting agents to commercial developers.

When I make up my next batch of Pyrocat HD I'll add the wetting agent and Calgon or Sodium Tripolyphosphate to the concentrate.

Ian

Ian Grant said:

Sorry Leon, I wasn't criticising you, it was others who mentioned the residue left on film spirals, I've always cleaned all mine with bleach every 6 months or so for many years now.

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Hey Ian - no offence taken. I just wanted all to be sure who was suggesting what here.

You and Uhner make a point that hadn't considered before. I changed my old Patterson and Jessops branded reels for Kaiser branded reels (a make and design I hadnt used before) and this may be the key to my success.

I dont get the same problem with my old reels and home mixed non-catechol based developers (Beutler, D23, D25, D76H) (which also do not contain water softeners/wetting agents) when I extend periods between agitations. So I am confused as to why the pyrocat would be the only developer to react in this way in hard water. Perhaps you know the answer to this?

either way - keep us informed of how you get on, the problem is infuriating!

I might add which developers I have had problems with (when agitating by inversion and developing 120 film on Paterson reels that has been in contact with wetting agent):

I have encountered problems with Pyrocat PC, Rodinal, R09, and a friend who develops his films at my house have had problems with FX 39.

I have never had any problems when using D76, Neofin Blau or homebrew FX 1. Nor have I had any problems with 135 films in any developer.

Uhner, I used Rodinal extensively for about 20 years and never had a problem, but that was in the UK, my water at home varied depending on how much came from local bore-holes - very hard water, or from the Birmingham water supply (which is from Wales) and soft.

In the UK the only developer I've had these air-bell problems with was Pyrocat, and only very occasionally may be two or three times , here in Turkey I've realised the problem is fairly constant. The Pyrocat is from the same batch so it's not the developer itself, it has to be the water.

I suspect that certain developers may be more prone to this problem than other, it isn't just Pyrocat as others have indicated. Water quality varies and it's probably only a few of us who have a water supply that causes these problems.

Ian

Ian Grant said:

Water quality varies and it's probably only a few of us who have a water supply that causes these problems.

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That is also my impression – and it might explain why a friend of mine in Sweden can’t understand my problem, or my whining…

One thing that has made the problem hard to grasp has been that it has been infrequent. Sometimes my negatives have been affected, oftentimes not. At one time I started to feel like a Swedish experimental archaeologist who was studying small-scale traditional iron smelting in Africa. He and one informant had performed the smelting process several times successfully, always following the same exact procedure. However, one time and without warning the process failed even though they thought they had done everything by the book. The archaeologist naturally asked the informant what he thought had gone wrong, and got the answer that a menstruating woman must have been close to the furnace.
When the archaeologist later recalled the situation he said that the explanation given by the informant was as good as any he could think of…

I am getting these exact same bubbles with my paterson tank and plastic reel. Been getting them for awhile on and off, but I thought it was a leaking film back! I am glad I stumbled upon this thread, as there are many good ideas on how to solve the problem. I do not use a wetting agent in any of my processes, so my reels are spotless. I think the best solution I have seen so far is to use the agitation stick on the paterson system tanks, and to do a 'dip' into the developer instead of pouring with other systems.. Any other ideas? The agitation stick could give possible uneven development!

Is adding photoflo to the dev working for any of you? How much are you adding?

Uneven development, or streaking, can be a problem when agitating by twisting the reels. My recommendation is to agitate by inversion for the first thirty seconds of development (given that that is your usual procedure) and then twist the reel a few times in order to dislodge any air bubbles. Then twist the reel during all subsequent agitation cycles.

Either that or buy some stainless steel reels and continue to agitate by inversion.