TMY2, TF4 and Stand Washing

The anti-halation layer in TMY2 seems to bleed out for a long time for me. I've had a roll in a multiple changed stand wash this morning for like 3 hours and still got pink water. My TF4 is fine, just having been re-invigorated with a 25% change and I fix for 4 minutes with 30 sec constant agitation every minute. I don't run alot of rolls, so I'm just wondering when do you really stop? At what point does any residual stain become meaningless?

4 minutes is not enough fixing time for TMY2 in rapid fixer (ammonium thiosulphate at about 15%, i.e. the usual 1+4 dilution of rapid fixer concentrate), though it's plenty for any non-TMAX film. Fix for 8 minutes. After 8 minutes fix, I find the pink is gone with about 10 minutes of soaking including about 5 water changes. And make sure both your fix and your wash water are at least 20C; if it's cold then the diffusion rate is really slowed.

edit: and I agitate 20s per minute during the wash (and constantly for the first two water changes), so diffusion actually has a chance to work. It's not just sitting there for 10 minutes in still water, surrounded by a dense halo of fixer and dye that soaked out in the first 30s.

I don't know why TMAX films are much slower to fix, they just are. And they kill your fixer twice as fast.

This also may be one of those cases that Mason warns against in his book and which show that stand washing can be unacceptable. You may have just too little agitation or water changes. Although Greg Davis' test of the Ilford method of washing has shown me that it can be effective, I can see merit to what Mason and Haist say about "stand" washing.

PE

I 2-bath fix my TMY generously, giving at least 4 minutes in fresh fixer after the film is cleared in the first bath. When I fix using this method, the pink is totally gone and I get clear negatives within about 10 minutes of barely running water wash. Even if some pink remains, though, I don't consider it necessarily underfixed, because I think it's just dye rather than residual silver.

I fix for 8 min, followed by a 30 sec water rinse, 1 min hypo clear and Ilford method of washing (I do include a 3 min stand). Never an issue.

Just to pile on, I fix for 6 minutes (way more than twice the clearing time) in Ilford Rapid Fix and do the Ilford wash method with 5 mins of stand between each step. Never had an issue with pink or other colored negatives with TMY or TMZ.

I fix for 12 minutes in kodak rapid fixer (a few extra minutes just to be sure), and rinse it a few times over a couple minutes and let it stand in a tank of water for 20 minutes. Sitting 15 minutes or so in still water will bring some pink to the water at this stage. I figure if it's in the water, it's not in the film. A few more rinses over a couple minutes and I consider it good. Negatives are nice and clear with no pink/magenta at all.

There are many ways to skin a cat. TMY is for all practical purposes by far the film I shoot the most.

I use Ilford Hypam at 1+4, and fix it for a total of six to eight minutes. I then wash it for 30 minutes in a roll film washer. Afterward, if I let the reels sit in clear water for five minutes, I can detect no pink in the water.

Apply wetting agent and hang to dry.

Well I guess I'll double the fix time, refresh the fixer more often and maybe get some Hypo. We are just now coming out of the worst drought we've had in a long time and I prefer to save water. Thanks

I fix film in a fill and dump style Gravity Works washer. It's made for 4x5 in a basket with slots, but when I do roll film, I take out the basket, and put in an extra 1liter tank filled with water to take up space, and speed up fill and dump cycle. I run the water continuously for 8 - 10 minutes, but very slowly, so I get only 8 - 10 dumps in that time, plus a little constant turbulence. Seems to work well for me. This is with TF4 fixer, 2 bath scheme as BetterSense suggests.

I don't think that hypo clear agent is any more effective to remove the pink than letting it stand in water for the same period of time. Hypo clear replaces thiosulfate ions with sulfite ions. The pink/magenta dye is a sensitizing dye and is a much larger complex aromatic organic molecule.

When I washed my film with no hypo clear but using six changes of water with 5 minutes stand on each change, the last pink went out with the third change. That was after only four minutes fixing in fresh rapid fixer Ilford Hypam 1:4 (checked by clearing a bit of leader in under two minutes).

Likewise, I don't think the fix step has anything to do with clearing the pink other than it is a water solution and the first solution after the developer. So a longer initial time in fix (say 8-10 minutes) is just a longer stand in water.

As with all water soluble molecules leaching into solution (stand washes), the time beyond a certain amount (the classic 5 minutes) is less critical than the number of changes. To fudge some numbers for sake of illustration only, say there is a 1% dye concentration (1:100) in the film at the commencement of the first change of water. Then enough might diffuse out so that there is 1:1,000 (10x reduction) after five minutes in both water and film. In other words, equilibrium has been achieved and ions are diffusing into the film at the same rate they are diffusing out. Then the water is changed and let stand another 5 minutes, at which time there is 1:10,000 at the end of the second stand; 1:100k at end of 3rd; 1:1M at end of 4th, 1:10M at end of 5th and 1:100,000,000 at end of sixth.

Monito, my washes start with an immediate rinse and then one for a couple of minutes. Then I progressively increase the wash time up to generally an hour total. On this last roll I washed it alot more due to forgetting the time and then doing a run to the store, so the film sat in the last wash for about 30-40 minutes with a total time of about 3 hours. On dumping the water was a light pink. I think that if you left your film in the last wash for 30 minutes you may still see some dye. I could be wrong ,but why not try for the hell of it and see. I do know that a five minute stand wash will look clear after 4 or 5 of them as I've done enough of them before, but a 30 minute didn't for me.

waynecrider said:

I think that if you left your film in the last wash for 30 minutes you may still see some dye. I could be wrong ,but why not try for the hell of it and see. I do know that a five minute stand wash will look clear after 4 or 5 of them as I've done enough of them before, but a 30 minute didn't for me.

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I'll try to remember to do the experiment on the next TMax. It could that the dye molecules are so large they diffuse much more slowly.

An hour seems like a long time for the film to be wet (plus the rest of the process). Ive always thought that "wet time" should be kept to a minimum, for grain quality, etc.

When you remove fixer from a film emulsion, you want water to slowly flow by it. To have it sitting still may actually do more harm than good because you will not have fresh water in contact with the emulsion, but rather water with some degree of fixer contamination.

Washing film or paper is a matter of either agitating with frequent water changes, or a steady trickle of fresh water.

George Collier said:

An hour seems like a long time for the film to be wet (plus the rest of the process). Ive always thought that "wet time" should be kept to a minimum, for grain quality, etc.

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George;

There is a long contentious thread, now closed, on this subject. Grain does not change with the wash according to articles presented. If they moved or changed after development, then astronomical photography would have been impossible.

PE

Thanks for this, PE, I've never heard it before. If you trust the articles, then I should as well. What do you mean by the comment about astronomical photography? Is the image so small relative to the grain that grain pattern can affect it?

Astrophotography uses blink comparison where two photos are shown in rapid succession back and forth repeatedly so you can look for some little bit that moves between them. That would be a planet or some other moving celestial object. If the grain shifted, then whole sections of photos would blink.

Well, what I have presented information on is grain migration or alteration of granularity by the process. In Astronomical photography, when two stars (binary) are photographed, if they are not at the exact distance, then the data is wrong. Friends in the business tell me that if grains migrated, then binary stars would appear closer or further away than they actually are and our data would be off.

See the other thread for the actual references and photo-micrographs of emulsions taken down through the film and as cross sections.

One person purported to have proof that I was totally wrong, but he has yet to post his "proof". I have since discussed this with several people formerly from EK, and their experience agrees with mine.

PE

PE, would you be willing to post a link to or a title of the thread you are referencing?

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Making me do the search? I like to leave it an exercise for the student!

PE

If it helps, I really appreciate it. I have been looking for some information (not very successfully) that I thought might be buried in that thread, based on your comments in this thread. It turns out that I was wrong, but I am 34 posts into the thread, and I am utterly hooked. Thanks again.