Stop Bath.. How important?

[Photo Engineer]

John, that is why R&D in photography was fun for me, and why I can suggest to some people what tracks might lead to bad results. BTDT.

PE

 

[nolanr66]

it doesn't matter, none of it ...
if someone wants to have a good time, why not?
if someone wants to chart log curves of their film, why not?
if someone wants to process their film in their own urine, why not?
its too bad there are so many people that think having a good time
is out of the question, and everything has to be so rigid/set in stone.

in the end the only thing that matters is what matters to the person with the film and camera

Thank you. The way I see it is I am just taking pictures of the family and stuff. I am going to get some great shots and I am going to have a bit of fun with it. That's why I am shooting B/W. Otherwise I could just buy a digital camera and snap away and wind up with nice shots of the kids and our trips anyway while not having any fun at all. Actually after lunch I am ready to process a roll using my crackpot ideas and I guarantee I am going to have fun. If the film comes out blank or there are aliens in the background then I will re-evaluate. The roll is shots of my Grandson (1y/o) at JJ"s Burgers in San Juan Bautista, Ca. He is the little man and a joy to our lives.

 

[eddie]

Actually after lunch I am ready to process a roll using my crackpot ideas and I guarantee I am going to have fun. If the film comes out blank or there are aliens in the background then I will re-evaluate. The roll is shots of my Grandson (1y/o) at JJ"s Burgers in San Juan Bautista, Ca. He is the little man and a joy to our lives.

If there's any chance you want the photos to be seen by your grandson's grandson, you might want to reconsider some of your workflow. I would think these are the exact type of negatives you'd want to assure become family heirlooms.
I'm all for experimenting, having fun, and playing around, but these negatives may prove valuable to future generations of your family.

 

[nolanr66]

The HP5 film is drying and the negatives look pretty good to me. I did get a surprise omitting the final wash as I just went straight to my bucket of room temperature dish soap water and I sloshed the reel around a bit and the water turned a light pink. I guess you do not see that kind of thing with a normal final wash. I need to get a closer look at the negs but probably I will use a regular wash for 1 minute just to wash out the pink color. However I feel confident it's not a problem as the negs look real nice so far.

Eddie, thank you for commenting. The truth of it is my 6 kids could care less about my negatives.. I am sure they will be happy to have the photo albums but none of them is going to spend their life scanning negatives. They are all very busy with their own affairs. I will make some prints from my current roll and put some 4x6 photos on the piano. I encourage the kids to grab some but they do not. They sit there for about a week and I put them in a photo album where they are safe for decades.

 

[chuck94022]

Just for the record, I have no problem with having fun with this stuff.

My possibly crass previous post was due to the sense that the OP was soliciting advice, and then when that advice was delivered by folks I consider some of the top thinkers and doers in this craft, the OP appeared to treat it with disdain. I just found that a strange way to treat folks I've come to deeply respect and appreciate.

But to the OP, by all means have fun.

 

[Photo Engineer]

I would guess that with no wash at all, just a dip in dish soap, your negatives will probably turn brown in the near future.

I have no objection to fun. After all, a major part of my job at EK was doing what you are doing. See my post above though.

PE

 

[nolanr66]

Actually I was not seeking advice. I was just chatting about trying something different and politely. Some responses to me were friendly and encouraging and some were not.

However my negatives on the roll are not good at all. Contrast went south and probably the dish soap was something to put to rest along with skipping the final wash as the negatives seem to have a layer of I guess soap over half the image. It's a vertical thing. Anyway I am going to resume normal processing except for the stop bath.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

I've become more careful as I spend more time with my hobby, so I actually stop developement first with a tempered water rinse, and then I use the stop bath.

My philosophy is: Developing takes me somewhere between 8m and 14m for the developers I use, fixer takes 5 minutes, and stop bath takes a whopping 30 seconds. The time lost in using a stop bath versus water is equal. The cost of stop bath is almost zero. We know that a stop bath is not detrimental to the process. So the question is: why not use a stop bath? It is no trouble at all.

So I use a stop bath.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

it doesn't matter, none of it ...

You are certainly allowed to view your own photography as not mattering in any way whatsosever. That is your right. But do not assume that is, or worse, should be, the case with everyone else.

A reasonable default assumption here is that if someone joins a site like this they likely did so because at some level they do care about their photography. That it does matter. Why else would they be here at all, given the topical focus of this site?

So when our friend began posting with what was obviously (and objectively) very bad photographic processing technique, knowledgeable members stepped in to provide helpful advice on better technique. The above default assumption being that his results mattered to him. And when this helpful advice was repeatedly rejected, confusion arose.

Now, however, the member in question has cleared the air. He has explicitly informed us all that, similar to your explicitly stated viewpoint above, he also does not care about his photography, or at least care about the processing portion of it and those harmful consequences that will arise as a result of very bad technique. According to him none of that matters.

So I think at this point we should all simply respect his (and your) right to not care, to believe that "it doesn't matter", and to cease offering any further good faith advice. If he (and you) don't care about your photography, why should anyone else?

Ken

 

[pentaxuser]

.

Eddie, thank you for commenting. The truth of it is my 6 kids could care less about my negatives.. I am sure they will be happy to have the photo albums but none of them is going to spend their life scanning negatives. They are all very busy with their own affairs.

If an old man's(me) experience is anything to go by I think your kids many years from now might care a lot about your negatives. I too use a water wash between dev and fix and believe that it works but unless you dump fixer after fewer fixes than fixer is capable of then at least a couple of cycles of water inversion and dumps makes sense before fixer.

Photoflo or wetting agent is so cheap that, I believe it makes sense to use the proprietary brands on a "just in case" basis.

Best of luck. Your negative will be more important than you or your kids now think.

pentaxuser

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

If an old man's(me) experience is anything to go by I think your kids many years from now might care a lot about your negatives.

Speaking only for myself, I am acutely aware that those relatives of mine to whom my someday ancient negatives will be most profoundly appreciated have not yet, in fact, even been born. And as we all know, it is the negatives, not the photo album prints, that carry the irreplaceable original images.



Ken

 

[nolanr66]

Well I am sorry that I posted. I just wanted to try something different and see how it worked out and it appeals to me to conserve water. I can see posting here about that was a poor choice. Anyway it seems from my 2 rolls of film that the stop bath is not important and I can skip that in the future. The dish soap idea seems to be a bust and worst of all it seems necessary to waste water in quantity. Anyway good luck to you all. I will log off and say Good bye.

 

[Truzi]

We have photo albums from before my parents were born. Some photos are missing, others were damaged from decades of people throwing the books around or the mountings failing, and some photos simply disappeared. Luckily I have my grandfather's negatives. Luckily he processed them in a way that made them last, so I can eventually re-print certain photos. Of his 7 decedents who were alive when he was, six of us care about the prints, but five would try to have them restored, or merely preserved, because they don't understand what the negatives can do. I'm the only one who cares about the negatives. The last doesn't care about anything that is not in "the now."

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for experimenting and having fun. Family and pets are great subjects when experimenting, but I make sure images I want to keep are not experimental ones.
Put another way, if I want photos of my mother, I make sure I have some that are not out-of-process. That way, if my experiments fail in the long-term, I still have other, lasting, negatives. I have a lot of test and experimental negatives, but also have in-spec ones from the same time periods (not the necessarily the same shoots).

By all means, have fun - but make sure the experimental negatives are not the only ones of your grandson at any particular stage in life. For example, I have some Digibase CN 200 I will attempt a reversal of to make stereo slides... and I don't expect them to turn out well (though hope they will). If they are good and last, great, but they are not the only photos of those subjects from last December. The "keepers" have already been processed.

 

[removed account4]

Well I am sorry that I posted. I just wanted to try something different and see how it worked out and it appeals to me to conserve water. I can see posting here about that was a poor choice. Anyway it seems from my 2 rolls of film that the stop bath is not important and I can skip that in the future. The dish soap idea seems to be a bust and worst of all it seems necessary to waste water in quantity. Anyway good luck to you all. I will log off and say Good bye.

don't be sorry you posted nolanr66
enjoy the ride, experiment to see what
works for you and move on. its obvious from your
experiment dish soap didn't work, so use fixer
and fixer remover and a better wash next time.

some folks like to dispense advice and not let others learn from their
own mistakes, that is great, for some, but its nice to see
what happens whan you do the experiments yourself.
unfortunately people don't like it when you do your own thing.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

The trouble with such experiments is sometimes you come up with the wrong conclusion. I'm reminded of the story:

There once was an scientist doing an experiment on the reactions of fleas. He had trained a flea to jump on command. The scientist would command the flea "Jump flea!" and the flea would jump. Then the scientist would proceed to pull off one of the fleas legs with a pair of tweezers and write a comment in his notebook.

The scientist did this many times until the flea had only 1 leg left. The scientist said "Jump flea" and the flea made it's best effort to jump, which the scientist recorded in his notebook.

After he pulled off its last leg, the scientist again commanded the flea to jump, and after repeating the command many times without the flea responding he jotted down in his notebook, "After the flea looses all of its legs it becomes completely deaf."

 

[removed account4]

You're absolutely right, John! Somehow I missed the drift in the thread from the OP's search for a workflow correction to "how to have fun." My fun is when I successfully achieve a workflow that yields the print quality I desire. I've found, though, it comes from learning from those who've already done the research rather than re-inventing the wheel. If someone's goal is to simply have fun, that's his business. He can use his camera as a hammer for all I care, or splash around in the bath tub, or play in the sandbox with no other interest than just messing around. He might just stumble upon E=mc^2.

thanks silverorO
not worries.

 

[RPC]

Well I am sorry that I posted. I just wanted to try something different and see how it worked out and it appeals to me to conserve water. I can see posting here about that was a poor choice. Anyway it seems from my 2 rolls of film that the stop bath is not important and I can skip that in the future. The dish soap idea seems to be a bust and worst of all it seems necessary to waste water in quantity. Anyway good luck to you all. I will log off and say Good bye.

Assuming you had already read the previous posts in this thread, what sort of responses were you expecting? Complete support? You should have realized you might be opening up a can of worms, and expecting what you got instead of being disappointed.

 

[MattKing]

I'm sorry that nolanr66 thinks that posting here was a poor choice. I know I was trying to help him/her, and those who might read the thread afterwards.

One of the frustrating things about the stop bath issue, is that it is a little like film photography in general - you don't always see the ramifications of what you do until later.

Some times just a little bit later, some times a lot later.

So those of us who have been around a while, or have worked with inexperienced people for a while, generally like to help others avoid some unnecessary pain.

Not to tell them not to experiment, but rather to tell them about what sorts of experiments are likely to give unexpected results down the way a bit.

And in a fair number of cases, tell them about things we tried in the past that gave results that surprised us.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

The trouble with such experiments is sometimes you come up with the wrong conclusion. I'm reminded of the story:

There once was an scientist doing an experiment on the reactions of fleas. He had trained a flea to jump on command. The scientist would command the flea "Jump flea!" and the flea would jump. Then the scientist would proceed to pull off one of the fleas legs with a pair of tweezers and write a comment in his notebook.

The scientist did this many times until the flea had only 1 leg left. The scientist said "Jump flea" and the flea made it's best effort to jump, which the scientist recorded in his notebook.

After he pulled off its last leg, the scientist again commanded the flea to jump, and after repeating the command many times without the flea responding he jotted down in his notebook, "After the flea looses all of its legs it becomes completely deaf."

 

[removed account4]

Assuming you had already read the previous posts in this thread, what sort of responses were you expecting? Complete support? You should have realized you might be opening up a can of worms, and expecting what you got instead of being disappointed.

when darkroomexperimente started this thread
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)
was he(she?) pounced on by people who claimed to know so much more
and dissuaded him/her from experimenting and posting ( for 14 pages ! ) and seeing what worked or didn't work?

all too often people on this website get so attached to their hardcore-orthodox way of doing things
that they refuse to let someone do what they want.
big deal the OP posted he was going to use dish soap and not wash his film.
it isn't like the world ended, but unfortunately folks treat it like it was some sort of
horrific thing.
does it matter that much that nolanr66 ruined a roll of film in an experiment?

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I know I was trying to help him/her, and those who might read the thread afterwards.

I just wanted to reemphasize the above crucial point. It is at the heart of so many of my own responses as well.

Too often here on APUG we have contributors who for whatever reasons decide to publicly swear by the results they obtained by developing something in yak piss. Or horse snot. Or fish poop. Or god knows what else. All in the name of needing to differentiate themselves and their "processes" as somehow being unique from the rest.

One of the serious problems with these "experiments"/"published results" is that at some point down the line a relative newcomer is going to come here, search in good faith, and read those so-called results. Maybe it's someone into digital who wants to see what all the fuss over film is all about. Or maybe an older parent's son or daughter who found dad's old Minolta SLR in the closet.

They will come here because of APUG's reputation for deep and accurate member knowledge regarding traditional photography. Then they will see someone's angry insistence that yak piss is just as good—no, better—than Kodak D-76. Along with equally emotional insistences that anyone who disagrees is somehow being abusive. Or is stopping all of the "fun". Followed then by dozens of subsequent pages of posts by more knowledgeable members trying to undo the factual damage for posterity.

Words have meanings, and meanings have consequences, and consequences can last a long, long time online. Especially when a site is Google-indexed. Not a bad thing to keep in mind...

Ken

[Edit to the moderator(s) reading this thread: Perhaps we should consider something like creating a new Experimental Processes sub-forum into which all of the yak piss threads could be directed? At least that way when beginners read them for the first time they will automatically have a little bit of built-in explanatory context attached? Just a thought...]

 

[Photo Engineer]

John, your work is unconventional, but my work is conventional with unconventional experience. We can speak to both sides of the "aisle". There is room for both, but lets not let one or the other weigh in on this.

PE

 

[eddie]

While I'd agree the dish soap idea was not something I'd ever recommend, I think Nolan should experiment in whatever way he'd like. Everyone is drawn to use film for different reasons, often looking for different results. There is an orthodoxy which crops up, here, on a regular basis. There is no single right way... no single right camera... no single right developer...no single right photograph. The beauty in our choice to use film/darkroom is in the vast options it offers. The creative advantages lie in it's flexibility. That's what we should be conveying to new visitors. And, we should be encouraging their experimentation.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

In principle, yes. But in reality, no. At least not at the beginning. I fail to see the learning curve advantage in suggesting a beginner start by trying to develop his or her first rolls of film in yak piss. Or in an edible developer. Or in Dektol. Or without a stop solution. Or with contaminated fixer. Or with no final wash.

Early confusion does not breed a deeper and more intuitive understanding of a new subject. Or engender much of a desire to continue the learning process. There are good reasons that high school physics instructors do not begin with relativity. Or with voodoo magic.

Ken

 

[eddie]

When I learned photography, and when I taught photography, it was the "old fashioned way". My students were stuck with one film, one camera, and one developer for the first semester. That was my rule, and I still recommend it today. Still, even that regimen has been argued both for and against, here, which is OK. Telling people there's only one way to do something will turn many off. In Nolan's case, he's been here over 10 years, so I doubt he's just beginning. I'd guess he has the basics down, and wants to try new things.