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Stop bath

Yes, the water stop prevents you from stopping deveopment in an instant- the gain, in my experience is slightly increased shadow detail that does not block the highlights....this is a bad thing? Not for me! My negatives look better after moving to TF-4 and a water stop...try it!
 
Mobtown,

if you wash only shortly, you live in danger of having dichroit fog on your negatives and prints. Thats why I "stop" with several water changes on film and with only slightly acid stop followed by alkaline/neutral fix on prints.

Dichroit fogs are more obvious on prints - you get a pink stain in the whites.

Morten,

no need to throw money out of the windows for the proprietary TF4 - any alkaline or neutral fix has the same characteristics and all of them are muuuuuch cheaper due to competition on the market. Look out for a fix labeled with "C41/E6 fix", they are used in minilabs and thus have to be cheap.

Brand names are Tetenal Unicolor Fix, Calbe FX-R (actually Fuji-Hunt chemistry), Agfa sells the FX-Universal with instructions for C41, E6 AND BW processes.

I currently use Calbe FX-R, got it for 6EUR/2l of concentrate, good enough for 10l of strong fix.
 

Am I understanding you correctly? Any C41/E6 fixer can be substituted for TF-4? As in PMK developed negs where TF-4 is considered mandatory, a C41/E6 fix will provide the identical fixation as TF-4?
 
Bruce,

I guess so, yes - AFAIK TF4 is nothing but another alkaline fixer, just like Amaloco´s H88 (or is it X88?). The only difference I am aware of is the price.

I am not that accustomed to PMK, so I did a google search on the question. The only thing I recalled that an acid rapid fix would diminish the stain.

In the following link there is a pretty clear statement:

http://www.digitaltruth.com/store/pmk.html

"An alkaline fixer solution such as TF-4 is recommended for achieving maximum pyro stain on the negative." - any of the given examples would fit that bill.

A friend is using the Tetenal Unicolor with Pyrocat HD, I use it with all my bw processes for reasons for cost (cheaper than acid fix), speed and comfort (smell and washing times).
 
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I'll just insert a shameless plug for OF-1 here - see Chemistry Recipes
 
"wash only shortly, you live in danger of having dichroit fog on your negatives "


Oh no! What is this - please elaborate.

I have putting my sheets of film into a tray of water (prior to fix) to allow shadow development to continue as I mentioned-works great- this causes some kind of fog?
Do I have an archival issue with these negs?

Matt
 
Matt,
the only time I experienced that kind of fog was with RC paper - it resulted in a pink stain in the white borders.

What happens is that development continues in the fix, fix and dev work against each other - my best guess is that the desensitizing or sensitizing dyes are responsible for the tone. But I have heard that it happened on film, too, there was a sample posted at photo.net a while ago.

The guy ended up with partially pink casted negatives that might influence the print in the way a staining mask does - imagine a evenly toned texture, partially stained and thus showing differences in the tones on the print.

But you are probably safe - you let the developing agents do their work on the emulsion and "die" before putting the negative in the fix.
 
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