what type of water is the best to mix developer

[Ben_hur]

Stupid obvious question probably...I have always used distilled water to mix my developer (d-76/id-11 and some microphen and perceptol) is this the best water to use. Some very experienced photographers told me it was a waste and that normal tap water or bottled drinking water would be fine. what are your views?

thanks

R.

 

[richard ide]

I would say that if you can drink it, it should be fine. The exception might be if a water has a very high mineral content.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I think if you live in a municipality that has hard water, you might want to used bottled water or filtered water. I have a darkroom in Sacramento, California where the water is excellent and it's great out of the tap for drinking and photo chemicals.

 

[RobertV]

I think a very good question. Tap water worldwide has a big variety in quality, hence you have to check the individual tap water at you supplier of water. Within the EU the water supply company is obliged to publish the labority test in their public publicationes, often the internet.

Important is the amount of carbonates and metal ions in the water. Some developers react very bad on metal ions like all low contrast document developers and e.g. Xtol from Kodak. Except from possible black dots within the negative the lifetime of these developers are shorten very much.

To high carbonates will change the pH traject of a developer and will cause stripes and drying marks on the negative when drying. A wetting agent can only prevent this to a certain level, above you have to use demi water, destilled water or reverse osmose water.

By cooking water some carbonates are gone and you will reduce the solved oxygen in the water too. A good first step for suitable photographical water. By using a simple an-kation filter (Britta) you will get rid of the metal ions too.

So depending on your water quality you can use tap water or switch over to the mentioned alternatives.

best regards,

Robert

 

[5stringdeath]

68 degree water

 

[Ben_hur]

I live in Malta which has very hard water. I think ours ranks as one of the hardest waters, so i think it would be safest to use bottled water or distilled water for my photography...most interesting is the suggestion to use distilled water as a final rinse to eliminate drying spots totally. thanks for the hint...

thanks

Reuben

 

[Chazzy]

I use distilled water for Xtol. If I were using D-76, I would probably use tap water.

 

[Rick A]

I use distilled water to mix all my chems to stock dilution then regular tap water to working solution.

 

[Ian Grant]

Ben get a drinking water filter, Britta or similar, these are cheap and good enough for the amount of water needed to make up developer & final rinses when washing films.

Ian

 

[Mike Richards]

Demineralized Water

Very hard water here in Greece; mineral deposit drying spots will happen if you use tap water. Tried the demineralized water for ironing found at Lidl; using it for developer and fixer chemical mixing and final rinse with a couple of drops of wetting agent. This completely solves any spotting problems. And it's about € 1.59 as I recall for a 4 liter plastic jug.

 

[tkamiya]

I have a faucet mounted Brita Pure filter. I use it to mix all of my chemicals. Much cheaper than buying by jugs.

 

[Andrew Horodysky]

To be on the safe side (and for consistency), I've been mixing in distilled water, at 68 degrees.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

I dont know whether your bottled water presents a chemical analysis on the jacket or not.
I was a member of american library at ankara and I found a book listing the chemicals and their effects on film.
I remember brom was making fog.
I wasted half hour at market and selected the least bromide content water

 

[hrst]

Bromide reduces fog if anything. It's used for this purpose in developers. However, I don't think bromide content in water would have any effect. It's been said that the metals, especially iron, may affect shelf-life and cause XTOL's sudden death syndrome.

 

[Athiril]

The liquid kind, you might have problems with the solid or gaseous kinds.

 

[steven_e007]

I usually use tap water for most developers without problems and I live in a hard water area.
A few developers are more fussy so I used de-mineralised water. I was reading an article by Michael Maunder (is he a member of APUG?) where he says that for high acutance developers distilled or deionised water is a must. He goes on to say "... do not be tempted to use water coming out of a domestic water softener, and never use softening agents such as Calgon... the softening agents will interfere in a quite unacceptable way"

There was some confusion about what distilled water was in another APUG thread. Where I come from, distilled water is VERY expensive and very difficult to get hold of. (It seems to be much cheaper in the US). We have something called de-mineralised or de-ionised water, much cheaper and easier to find (used for car batteries and steam irons), which is water which is purified in ways other than by distillation (filtering, I presume). I've always found this absolutely fine for mixing any developers.

'Distilled water' is water converted to vapour and then condensed back to pure water. This is an expensive process. It appears in some countries bottles of water that are labelled 'distilled' water may actually be what we would know as 'de-mineralized' or 'de-ionised'- or mixtures of waters purified in different ways - rather than pure distilled water. I think it may depend on a country's trade description or product labelling laws - I don't know the situation in Malta, but it may not be necessary to seek out and pay through the nose for 'distilled water'.

 

[stillsilver]

I use distilled water for mixing chemicals (stock and working strength) just for the sake of consistency.
I use tap water for washing.

Mike

 

[Doremus Scudder]

My tap water in Vienna is hard enough to make about a 10% difference in my developing times with PMK as opposed to those in Oregon, where I have very soft water. There is a similar, but lesser affect with other developers. The tap water works fine, but I do have to compensate for the added activity of the developer. If you are just working in one place, this will be just another of those personal variables we talk about so often here. If you develop with lots of different qualities of water, then either test for different times or standardize on bottled/distilled water.

That said, I simply use the tap water for dilution and all working solutions and washing up until the final rinse with Photoflo, which is done in distilled water. It is not a question of "optimum" water quality, but rather whether the water quality has a detrimental effect on the processing. Often, it doesn't However, I have found that final rinses with hard water can leave mineral stains (if you have a water softener, you may get salt crystals...). That's why I use distilled for the final rinse. I imagine any good demineralized water or filtered soft water would do as well.

Note that many stock solutions are better mixed with distilled water, due to the differences in solubility of chemicals in near-saturated solutions. I once made the mistake of mixing PMK B-solution with the Vienna tap water.... not much of it went into solution. I had a liter bottle 1/3-full of precipitate.

Hope this helps,

Doremus Scudder
www.DoremusScudder.com

 

[Ben_hur]

Thanks to all who replied.

I can confrm from my chemistry training, that deionized or demineralized water would probably be more than sufficient for photographic chemistry processing. Distilled water is usually only used in labs and in the preparation of pharmaceutical products where you need an absolutely pure liquid.

thanks once again

REuben