Yellow stain after fixing

Alain Deloc · Feb 21, 2025

Hello there, I recently discovered an issue on my black and white developed films. Usually, after fixing and washing, I am wiping the film with soft paper towel in order to help the film to dry faster and also to clean any developing leftovers. I am using now TMax Dev. with Ilford Rapid fixer. So after wiping I am getting a yellow stain on paper as in the attached photo. It appears after any film, so stock is not related. I developed with and without stop bath -> same thing, so it's not the stop bath. My Ilford Rapid fixer is diluted from concentrate, a big 5 Liters bottle which I bought in 2021.
Do you think it could be the fixer?

koraks · Feb 21, 2025

Alain Deloc said:
also to clean any developing leftovers

If you wash the film after fixing it, this shouldn't be necessary. I personally do wipe the shiny side of 35mm film to prevent drying marks, but that's a different matter.

Do you reuse the fixer? Is it still clear and colorless at the moment you use it?

Alain Deloc · Feb 21, 2025

koraks said:
If you wash the film after fixing it, this shouldn't be necessary. I personally do wipe the shiny side of 35mm film to prevent drying marks, but that's a different matter.

Do you reuse the fixer? Is it still clear and colorless at the moment you use it?

I am reusing in general. But this stain appeared with freshly mixed fixer, so reusing is out of question. I thought about this too and that's why I mixed a fresh bottle of fixer. And of course, is clear and colorless.

koraks · Feb 21, 2025

The same question still applies:

koraks said:
Is it still clear and colorless at the moment you use it?

Also, just to verify: how do you wash the film after fixing?

Alain Deloc · Feb 21, 2025

koraks said:
The same question still applies:

Also, just to verify: how do you wash the film after fixing?

With plenty of tap water in the tank. Filling the tank and discarding the water for many times. I am using the same washing method for many years. It's just that recently these yellow stains started to appear at the end. Not sure if it's the developer.. ?

koraks · Feb 21, 2025

That's odd Alain, I can't quite explain it. I hope someone else comes along who recognizes the problem.

Does the yellow stuff on the tissue paper have any particular smell? Perhaps when it's dried out?

pentaxuser · Feb 21, 2025

Alain, just before you wipe the negatives can you see anything on them that might be the cause of this brown the paper?

When you sau you have discovered this stain recently does that mean that at some previous period there was no stain on the paper and if so were you doing everything you do now?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Alain Deloc · Feb 21, 2025

No, nothing visible on negatives. Yes, I think I started to get this stain during autumn 2024. But I developed hundreds of rolls in the same manner, for many years. It might be sulfur.. in fixer?

koraks · Feb 21, 2025

Alain Deloc said:
It might be sulfur.. in fixer?

Yes, that's one of the things I considered - however, in my experience, when fixer throws down a sulfur precipitate (which it indeed does upon deterioration!), it tends to be very pale yellow or even appear as white. Whatever is on your film, looks surprisingly brown. Anyway, this is why I asked whether the fixer is clear and colorless when you use it (even if it's unused before).

loccdor · Feb 21, 2025

Recently, with E-6 development, I noticed I was getting powdery yellow buildup in the film gate of my Essential Film Holder during digitization. So something yellow/orange (it did look like Blix powder) was clinging to the film in a small degree and getting removed when it went through the narrow opening. But there was no smell to the film, which normally there is when there is fixer residue that needs to be washed off. And I do the Ilford method with 7 tank fills and dumps including agitation at the end of the development cycle.

I only noticed it with one development batch... after that it stopped happening. Maybe I flubbed up a step somewhere. I'll probably never know. Crystalization somewhere in the chemicals? It's a cold time of year and perhaps things can fall out of solution easier?

jeffreyg · Feb 21, 2025

Are you on well water or city water? We are on well water so I use distilled water to mix chemistry and I have an inline water filter for my darkroom as well as a softner system for our house. We have a fairly deep well but even so the raw water source has iron and who knows what else but no chlorine. Despite all that I haven’t run into any staining. Try wiping with some untreated cotton on some of your wet processed film and also the paper that stains to see what happens.

pentaxuser · Feb 21, 2025

You might also try using the second and third fingers of the hand to get off the excess of water and see if the brown stain appears on the inside of your fingers. Another method would be to use wetting agent after washing and then shaking the film vigorously and then hang the film up to dry so nothing touches the wet film

Everything you have described including no sign of any stain on the negatives suggest that in some way the paper is the problem If there was no problem for many years and then there was a problem that started some 4-5 months ago and provided it has been a consistent problem then it suggests there was a change or changes in your procedure or materials

pentaxuser

MattKing · Feb 21, 2025

Could it be related to a problem with the ventilation - some sort of airborne contaminant?

Ben 4 · Feb 21, 2025

Given what we know so far, I would bet on the water, the quality of which might well have changed. You can do a simple test by trying it with distilled water (or washing and wiping an unprocessed film).

Sirius Glass · Feb 21, 2025

Have you used Hypo Clearing Agent as a rinse and then wash after fixing?

Alain Deloc · Feb 22, 2025

Sirius Glass said:
Have you used Hypo Clearing Agent as a rinse and then wash after fixing?

No, but I never used and I didn't had this in the past.

Alain Deloc · Feb 22, 2025

pentaxuser said:
You might also try using the second and third fingers of the hand to get off the excess of water and see if the brown stain appears on the inside of your fingers. Another method would be to use wetting agent after washing and then shaking the film vigorously and then hang the film up to dry so nothing touches the wet film

Everything you have described including no sign of any stain on the negatives suggest that in some way the paper is the problem If there was no problem for many years and then there was a problem that started some 4-5 months ago and provided it has been a consistent problem then it suggests there was a change or changes in your procedure or materials

pentaxuser

oh! Indeed, that's a great idea to try. I am going to develop today few rolls. I will use my fingers for one roll and I am going to try some make up cotton disks for the second one.

koraks · Feb 22, 2025

pentaxuser said:
no sign of any stain on the negatives

A very thinly spread out layer of scum may not be visible on the film, but if it ends up all bunched together on a piece of virgin white tissue, it'll stand out like a sore thumb.

Ben 4 said:
I would bet on the water

There'd have to be a LOT of iron in the water for something like this to appear. Even untreated water from a backyard well I wouldn't expect to thrown down this much iron. Anyway, easy enough to try - do a test run with bottled water from the store.

retina_restoration · Feb 22, 2025

koraks said:
There'd have to be a LOT of iron in the water for something like this to appear. Even untreated water from a backyard well I wouldn't expect to thrown down this much iron.

You've never seen MY well water! It gets treated before it comes into the house - it HAS to be to be usable. The original farmhouse here still has the bathroom sink from the 1920s and it is permanently stained brown from the well water they used, before any treatment system was installed.

koraks · Feb 22, 2025

No contest on the sink getting brown; that's unsurprising. But a sink sees a lot more water over the years than a strip of film during a normal processing cycle.

jeffreyg · Feb 22, 2025

As I mentioned we have a system that treats the water before it enters the house and it is professionally serviced every month. Our sinks have not stained. The inline filter for the darkroom has a very fine cartridge that I periodically change. It starts out white but when I change it it's black. it also is rated to remove iron (there's more in our water than H20 ). We drink bottled water even though the house water has no taste. We have a second less deep well for the pool and irrigation system and where it happens to spray a wall the wall stains brown.

Sirius Glass · Feb 22, 2025

Sirius Glass said:
Have you used Hypo Clearing Agent as a rinse and then wash after fixing?

Alain Deloc said:
No, but I never used and I didn't had this in the past.

Hypo Clearing Agent may prevent the yellow staining, not cause it.

Rudeofus · Feb 23, 2025

Sirius Glass said:
Hypo Clearing Agent may prevent the yellow staining, not cause it.

Question remains, how HCA would prevent a yellow residue on film, and of course also, why fresh and pH checked fixer would leave such a residue to begin with.

Sirius Glass · Feb 23, 2025

Rudeofus said:
Question remains, how HCA would prevent a yellow residue on film, and of course also, why fresh and pH checked fixer would leave such a residue to begin with.

HCA can facilitate removing any residual fixer formally know as hypo from the film. That could possibly help the OP with the problem under discussion.

koraks · Feb 24, 2025

Sirius Glass said:
HCA can facilitate removing any residual fixer formally know as hypo from the film.

Hypo clear is superfluous on film. Film is not a fibrous base that requires an extensive wash. The gelatin emulsion as thin enough to get away with a very brief wash, just like RC paper.
Fixer is also definitely not known formally as 'hypo'. It's in fact an archaic term and was distinctly informal (as an abbreviation of 'hyposulfate of sodium') even when it was in regular use. It's also a misnomer for Ilford Rapid Fixer since that's evidently not 'hyposulfate of sodium'; the term 'hypo' was not originally associated with ammonium thiosulfate. The distinction is not just linguistic, but also practically relevant, since ammonium salts generally have much better mobility in solution and thus wash out more easily.

The use of HCA is not necessary on film. Even so, if HCA would do anything in this case, it would be a workaround for a deeper rooted problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Yellow stain after fixing

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