Staining developers - do they need distilled water?

[Jerevan]

I am thinking of using a staining developer (some sort of Pyro, I guess) but I don't have a good access to distilled water - do they absolutely need this? Am I playing with madness using normal, filtered water?

 

[hobbes]

Well, if you don't have tools to measure the quality of your tap water, just give it a shot and compare the results to a neg developed in distilled one - this will cost you just one 1l of demineralized/distilled water and two rolls of film, few drops of Pyro can be negligible at this point I guess

 

[mikebarger]

All water systems are different, but I mix 510 Pyro with tap water without problem. I agree with Dominik, give it a shot.

Mike

 

[Jerevan]

Yep, I will give it a try - a little practice beats any theory in this case. Thanks for the reminder, guys!

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I do Pyrocat HD in filtered but not distilled tap water. Never had a problem.

 

[Mike Wilde]

I mostly concur with Scott. I did/do have a problem getting all of the alkali to stay in soluton in the "B" with my home mixed from the PMK formula.

I used reveres osmosis water, but there is still (metaborate) stuff that settles to the bottom of the bottle, which must be shaken into suspension each time before I measure off what I need to do my best to ensure batch to batch consistency.

 

[jeffreyg]

I use distilled water with PMK Pyro. The water is readily available here and I don't trust our home water system which softens and removes iron. We also drink bottled water. I just wondered if collecting rainwater would be a decent substitute for Jerevan ? I have used our home water with ID11 and print developers with no problems though. I may be over cautious with the pyro.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

There's a LOT of other stuff in rainwater - plenty of industrial contaminants that could cause as many problems as what comes through the tap. Frankly, I'd be less concerned about unfiltered tap water than rainwater.

 

[GregY]

I've never had problems using tap water with either PMK or currently Pyrocat HD in glycol.

 

[pgomena]

The only problem I've had with tap water and Pyrocat-HD is with air dissolved in the water as it comes from the tap. My concern at the time was premature oxidation of the working solution. There's so little of the stock solution used to make the working solution that I didn't want it affected. Letting it sit overnight would solve that problem. The water in my area is naturally soft and iron-free.

That said, I usually use either distilled or de-ionized water to mix my working solution. I have it on hand for mixing photo-flo anyway. At the rate I use developer, the cost is not prohibitive.

Peter Gomena

 

[Kirk Keyes]

Pete - water at 20C will hold (i.e. be saturated) about 7 mg/L of oxygen, compared to cold water at 5C which holds about 9 mg/L of oxygen. So the difference in a liter at those two temps is just a couple milligrams total. That's not really much to worry about.

I probably have the same water suppy as Pete and I've never had an issue using tap water with staining developers. But as Pete said, we have pretty soft water here.

A quick test could be to take a liter of your tap water and add just the Carbonate solution (or whatever your pyro developer uses to raise the pH) and if you get a precipitate when you mix the two, then you probably have too many minerals in your water for mixing that developer and you would then want to use something else like softened or distilled water.

 

[msa]

While I agree with the previous posters, about giving it a shot with tap water, I will note that agitation before use is going to become essential if you want fully consistent stains.

Also, is distilled truly unavailable to you? Have you considered building a still? Solar stills are trivial to build, will net you enough for staining purposes, and cheap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_still

It'd be pretty easy to build a stovetop still too.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

It's more a matter of convenience - a gallon of distilled water from the store costs what, $2? $3? and takes a whole trip to and from to get. Building a still requires (minimal) mechanical skill, time, and money, and then you have to plan in advance to distill your water. Filtered tap water costs pennies on the gallon, and is immediately available.

 

[Kirk Keyes]

Filtered tap water does nothing to remove dissolved chemicals. It merely removes particulate.

 

[jgjbowen]

I know the OP has trouble obtaining distilled water, but I don't. The local supermarket sells it for $0.90/gallon. I look at it like this, with $40 worth of fim in the tray, I might as well mix the developer with $0.45 of distilled water.

YMMV

 

[RobertV]

It all depends of the quality of your tap water. In the EU each water supplier is obliged to publish their analytical results on the internet.
Apart from that you can filter your tap water (e.g. Brita TM filter) which means an Anion- Kation filter and a Carbon filter in their Maxtra filter system. Result: High quality water and very suitable for photographic water. No stripes and drops, drying marks, Calcium, Iron out and when you have the filter system it's always available. One filter can handle approx. 100 ltr. So at the end cheap too.

Best regards,

Robert

 

[mikebarger]

That's a great Clorox product!

 

[Bob Carnie]

I have only used distilled water with PMK from day one. After reading the book on Pyro a few times a couple of points stuck with me.. I certainly am not qualified to give you the theory behind my methods, but we have been processing black and white film for photographers , since 1991. A lot of trix and hp5 , tmax have gone through our lab.
Our go to developers are equally split between two groups of photographers. The Pyro group and the D76 group. I have seen a lot of film with each group.

Distilled water allows the chemicals to attack the whole surface of the film faster than regular tap water in **** some **** locations.
Agitation in the first 15 seconds is absolutely critical for even flow .
Pyro is a hardening developer which in itself requires good agitation fast.
The hardening **tannin** efect of pyro is what makes this dev such a wonderful dev to retain highlight detail.
I mix my pyro exactly at the time of development and I split the run into two equal developments. We found this to be a real life saver when running more than three rolls at a time.*** maybe due to exhaustion*** but for tri x for example rated at 200iso we run two 7 minute developers of 1 litre each.
We also reuse the spent developer to stain, which seems to be unpopular, but in my lab it works fine.
Distilled water is then used as a final rinse with a pinch of wetting agent before hanging to dry.
I totally credit Mr Gordon Hutchings for writing a wonderful, informative book and it and the cookbooks by Mr Anchell have been our main source of info.
In the 80's I purchased every Zone Newsletter by Mr Fred Picker and a lot of what he wrote is still practiced in my lab daily.
Lately I have been getting some good mentoring from Ian Grant and Sandy King and these gentlemen have forgotten more than most of us know about film and its development.

The cost of this water seems to be worth it to us and I see foriegn film from all over and one of the most common problems is dirty film with weak shadows.
Film processed by us with the above method, have good highlight detail, and good shadow detail, clean and good to print in condensor enlargers with glass carriers.. ** the real test of film and cleanliness I must add**

We use this distilled method for all film and every run is one shot and never replenished.

I would think over the last few years I have been here on APUG the most common complaint about film defects would be IMHO would be solved by using distilled water with the devs and rinse, Agitate aggressively and quick pour in the first 15 seconds of development , and do not reuse chemicals but move to a one shot process, and be generous with the chemicals so the film is completely immersed in the tank and not kind of half way covered.:munch:

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Let's make a distinction between mixing dry chemicals for stock solutions and then mixing working solutions from that stock.

In the first case, distilled water is recommended unless your tap water is very pure. Especially for the alkaline "B" solutions, which are often quite concentrated and will not fully dissolve in anything other than distilled or extremely pure water. I cannot mix PMK stock solution B with my tap water in Vienna, even at half strength, without getting precipitate.

Now, for mixing working solutions, tap water is usually fine unless you have a lot of dissolved minerals (especially iron). Be aware, however, that the extra chemicals in some tap water will affect the activity of the developer. For example, PMK mixed with Vienna tap water (lots of carbonate) requires about 10% less development time than distilled water.

I'm surprise that the OP cannot find distilled water in Sweden. Usually, grocery stores or drugstores in Europe carry 5-liter bottles for steam irons, etc. I get mine at the local Billa (not sure if the chain is in Sweden though...).

Best,

Doremus Scudder
www.DoremusScudder.com

 

[RobertV]

I would think over the last few years I have been here on APUG the most common complaint about film defects would be IMHO would be solved by using distilled water with the devs and rinse, Agitate aggressively and quick pour in the first 15 seconds of development , and do not reuse chemicals but move to a one shot process, and be generous with the chemicals so the film is completely immersed in the tank and not kind of half way covered.

I can only agree. A lot of developing problems are water quality related.

The problem is always: How is the local tap water quality? If it's too bad you have different alternatives. For small quantities you can buy destilled or demi water but also here there are different qualities. Some type of films are more sensitive then others and the same about different type of developers.