Pulling the trigger

[white]

Done with school for a little while, so I won't have access to their darkroom anymore. I've never bought chemicals before, so I'm just wondering if the brand of fixer and stop matters.

For a developer, I am going with Adox Adonal. Should I even bother with a stop, or just use water?

Also, is it a good idea to pick up photo-flo and perma wash?

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[KenC]

For printing, I would recommend using an actual stop bath, i.e., one containing acid. The amines from the developer will make the stop tray slimy after a while and the prints will be harder to handle and harder on the fixer. Another reason is that if you want to stop development on a print before maximum density, plain water won't do that very well, especially after it's become very basic from developer. Acetic acid stop bath is cheap, and if you really want to scrimp you could use white wine vinegar, probably about 10-20% of the stop bath volume. For film developing it's less critical because you're not re-using the chemicals (you're not, are you?).

As for photo-flo, I always had trouble with it in film development and finally settled on rinsing the washed film twice in distilled water, which you should be able to find in a good supermarket and then just hanging it up and wiping it off once. The distilled water should remove any calcium and magnesium salts from hard water and any other salts, and the film then should dry spot-free.

[ann]

with film i would certainly use a stop bath.

there is a better product than photo flo, called LPN, expensive little bottle, but a drop or two in a qt. of distilled water does a wonderful job.

perma wash for film, no, for RC papers, no, for fiber papers yes.

[djacobox372]

That's a good choice for developer. I personally prefer hc-110, but the rodinal clone would be my 2nd choice (1st choice if you're going to be stand-developing).

You don't need a stop, water works fine.

As for washing the film. I just use the ilford multiple wash method using tap water. I then use distilled water with a little bit of photo-flow for the final wash.