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Sodium bisulphate as a fixer

wartree

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Apr 12, 2010
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35mm
can sodium bisulphate be used as a fixer ?
 
i just found 1.5 kilos of it in powder for at roughly 4 euros from in a hardware supply store
 
You mean bisulphite right? I've seen reference to either bisulphite/metabisulphite, or sulphite being able to use as a fixer if youre desperate.

In any case, wear a dust mask and take proper precautions when opening a bottle or jar of metabisulphite/bisulphite, it gets airborne very quickly and if you breathe any of it in you'll feel like you have chronic asthma for a while.

You can make sodium thiosulphate from sodium sulphite and sulphur if you're really desparate, and sulphite can be made from metabisulphite, not sure if you could use metabisulpite for the reaction directly or not.

Go look at a pool supply shop, they should have anhydronous sodium thiosulphate.
 

thanks for the help but it is really Sodium bisulphate or also called sodium hydrogen sulfate
 
lets say i develope in a roll in the middle of processing i check the film before it is fixed, do i see anything changed at all.
I know i shouldnt do this, but does the developer shows anything right away or is it the fixer who reveals the film
 
you should see the image if correctly developed, fix just makes the film clear by removing unused silver halide.

you can take it out of developer inspect in light if you've thoroughly washed or did a stop bath and wash before doing so, don't do it in sunlight, film darkens quickly in sunlight. In room light you have more than enough time to inspect and place it in the next step such as fix.
 
i used caffenol for the first time, i put coffee and sodium carbonate, but i couldnt get nothing, i guess something was wrong, maybe the roll itself was exposed to sun before and i didnt know, cause i just expeimented on a roll i had laying around, and i really didnt know what it had, or if it had been unrolled before.
 
i used sodium carbonate from a pool supply, that is supposed to be ph booster.
 
does sodium bisulphate have any photographic aplication.
By the way does sodium percarbonate have any too?
 
Bisulfate won't fix anything.

Bisulfate becomes sulfate + sulfuric acid when in solution. TTBOMK, sulfate is pretty inert, it's only use is to keep the emulsion from swelling in tropical developer formulas. Sulfuric acid is used with dichromate to make bleach for reversal processing and for making tray cleaner (just a more concentrated version of the bleach).
 

caffenol isnt a very active developer on its own, make sure you follow one of the established recipes first time, the developing time is around ~25 min last I checked.
 
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