Murder in the Darkroom... my Pan F+ is all snowy :(

[Helen B]

Slightly late to this thread - sorry.

I used to live in Singapore and worked in a few SE Asian countries. I used D-76 at up to 29.5°C without any problems, but 24°C is safer with some film types. Unless you are pushing film I would recommend using dilute D-76 at those temperatures - 1+1 is good. 1+3 is also good, but you need to be careful about minimum developer volume (about 150 mL of D-76 stock per film). Dilute XTOL is also good, but I didn't like using that above 24°C.

If you want to use a tempering bath you can use a heated one (much easier to find than a cooled one) with a freezer pack in the water. Some people use ice, but that can lead to less stable temperature control because of the speed with which the ice melts. Freezer packs have a slower rate of heat transfer from the water, so the heater/thermostat can do a better job of maintaining the correct temperature. You will need to change the freezer pack every so often.

If you use dilute developer you can keep some water in the fridge to mix. I used a three-part mix: cold water, tap water and room temperature stock solution. I wrote a little Excel spreadsheet to figure out the chilled water : tap water mix from the three temperatures and the required developer dilution. Sometimes, because of the route the water pipes took, 'cold' tap water would be at about 50°C. You can use one-shot fixer made from chilled water/tap water mix as well - simple hypo (sodium thiosulphate) in water is OK. I usually just brought the small amount of fixer to working temperature with a water bath.

That only leaves wash water. Use six rinses of water no more than 2 degrees (closer is better) above the fixer temperature. Mix chilled water with tap water. Do not use running tapwater as a rinse - you might get too great a temperature difference which will cause reticulation. This is not always obvious: it can appear to be no more than an increase in graininess.

I dry on the reels - I use stainless steel reels - with filtered air. It's easy to make a forced air film dryer from a computer fan or two, with a filter made from aircon filter material.

Best,
Helen

 

[Robert_Maxey]

In any case - I'm a strong believer in Kimwipes as the means of getting all the water off the film before drying - it is a lintless tissue designed for chemical labs. Fold it lengthwise a few times into a 1-2cm wide strip, fold it over the hanging film and gently run it down the film (usually use two strips because toward the bottom of the film the tissue gets soaked and is no longer doing any good). I know, I know, folks here are going to jump and shout about how you're not supposed to touch wet emulsion and all that - I swear I have never, NEVER seen a single scratch or scuff on my film and I think I'm well beyond 2000 rolls using this technique. Check out | Orlov Photo to see examples.

Cheers.

Let 'em scream, film squeegees in one form or another have been in use for a long time.