what type of water to mix ARISTA RA4 chemistry with?

[oliver h rosenberg]

Hello all,

Recently I jumped from a community darkoom (where I was using a Bessler) and I built my own color darkroom (LPL 4500II) and I have noticed none of my CMY settings give me the same results. I am hand processing, and the temp can tend to fluctuate (keeping chemistry in buckets), so I am going through extensive tests for filtration and timing to try and discover the sweet spot for the enlarger.

But one thing I recently though was perhaps the water Im mixing the RA4 chemistry with is affecting the colors (tending to get red and brown cast -and yes I add more M, but then the prints can turn an ugly yellow green). Anyway, Just curious what is the best water to use. I have been using "Distilled water" in gallon jugs from Poland Springs. I thought this would be the cleanest water. The community darkroom had a filter on the tap water. Would there be a big difference between distilled water, filtered water, and regular bottle water. I live in NC so i'm sure there are all sorts of funky minerals in just regular tap water.

Thanks!

Oliver

 

[koraks]

I use tap water, but it's fairly clean around here. If you have used distilled so far, there's no reason to expect any improvement from using a different kind of water. Your problem is likely elsewhere in your workflow.

 

[cmacd123]

yes, distilled is the type of water that folks switch to if they supect that they have a water problem.

temperature control can throw off colour balance, and different filters may give different results.

 

[mshchem]

Do you have a light leak in your paper safe?
I have a RO system for water. The water here is very hard, softener makes for too much sodium carbonate.

 

[oliver h rosenberg]

Do you have a light leak in your paper safe?
I have a RO system for water. The water here is very hard, softener makes for too much sodium carbonate.

no light leak. All new boxes. the color just tends to be muddy. not rich yellows, piss green yellows, or brown reds. I keep tweaking my levels, but something seems off somewhere. even got a new bulb.

 

[btaylor]

I use tap water, it’s pretty hard here but I have no issues. I use the Freestyle silverprint chems. I don’t know how you are evaluating color, but a shot of an 18% gray card will be very helpful. If you can replicate the color in your print you will be mostly there. Don’t expect the marked values of CMY to match up that closely between the Beseler and LPL, just use what works. Are your borders white?

 

[guangong]

In general, water should be no problem with regard to mixing photo chemicals if the water source is consistent, so that it plays no part in variations of results. The advantage of distilled water is that it is pure water from wherever you get it. Tap water and well water can vary from place to place.
Color processing is very temperature sensitive. If I were you, rather than worry about water, I would invest in a way to keep temperature ( and processing times) constant. BW processing is more forgiving. I have even heard of film being processed using sea water in emergency.

 

[halfaman]

Tap water analysis are usually open information to the public. You can check them against Kodak recommendations:

https://imaging.kodakalaris.com/sites/uat/files/wysiwyg/pro/chemistry/z131.pdf (pasge12)

In my place tap water is well beyond the established limits.

 

[Bikerider]

The water from my area comes from surface reservoirs and can be a either a clear colourless liquid or very pale brown which is a sign that water has landed on the peat bog areas of the Northern Pennines before percolating down to the reservoirs. This can change day by day depending where the supply comes from. This pale brown water is, so I believe very slightly acidic, more so than the clear liquid. Whatever I use I have no problem with developers, either colour or mono, so I would suggest the problem is at your end, not with the water supply.

What I have heard, purely anecdotal, is that some contamination can come with the pipes the water uses to get into your home. Iron pipes under road outside your house if they have a crack this may introduce something you know nothing about. Or those inside older houses which may have pipework made from lead or have a lead content may also cause problems. As I said that is purely anecdotal and have not experienced myself

 

[oliver h rosenberg]

. If I were you, rather than worry about water, I would invest in a way to keep temperature ( and processing times) constant. BW processing is more forgiving.

I agree temperature is important. usually I put the tub of developer in a bucket of hot tap water just to heat it up before I start a round of printing. I have noticed that the prints need less time in the developer when its warm to touch, compared to when the developer cools down an hour later. That being said, this was the same way I was working for years in the past, and I still got better results w the Bessler than the LPL. Its really strange and quite frustrating to have to throw out all my CMY notes which were working so well. The colors just tend to be muddy instead of bright or pastel like I have gotten them in the past....