REUSING MY CHEMICALS

[Blackbelt93]

i bought adorama house brand developer, fixer, and indocater stop bath and i was wonder after i have diluted it distiled water can i reuse them?

 

[ThomThomsk]

i bought adorama house brand developer, fixer, and indocater stop bath and i was wonder after i have diluted it distiled water can i reuse them?

I don't know who makes Adorama developer, but Googling suggests it may be the same as Kodak D-76. Is it in powder form? I use the Ilford equivalent, ID-11, as a one-shot developer, that is I throw it away immediately after developing one film. This gives consistent development times, and it is cheap enough not to worry about it.

Fixer certainly can be re-used. Occasionally I take a piece of scrap film that hasn't been developed and stick it in the top of the fixer. Measure the time it takes to clear the film, and double that to get your fixing time. When that gets to be more than about 5 minutes throw it away and mix some fresh.

Stop bath can also be reused. You have an indicator type, so it will change colour when the pH becomes too high to do its job (probably yellow to purple).

Thom

 

[Helen B]

You probably don't need to use distilled water to dilute any of your chemicals. I use distilled water with some developers, but mostly I use tap water. I never use distilled water for stop or fixer. After washing you can give a final rinse in distilled water to help prevent drying marks.

Adorama Film Developer is supplied as a liquid concentrate with very little information on the bottle, as far as I can remember from seeing the bottles in the store. It is likely that it is meant for one-shot use (ie dilute part, use the diluted developer once then discard) but I'm not sure. What does it say on the bottle? What developing times does it give? That might give us a clue about what it really is - it is likely to be something else repackaged.

Another way of assessing fixer life is to use the fixer until the clearing time (as measured by the method Thom suggests) is double that of the fresh fixer for the same film type. Some people also suggest fixing for three times the clearing time for T-Max films because they have a higher amount of silver iodide than other films, and silver iodide slows down the fixing process.

Good luck,
Helen

 

[dipstick]

At least with D76 you can reuse it by using a replenisher. But in order to reuse the developer you need to develop films frequently and monitor it constantly to keep the process stable. It saves you some money, but unless you have large quantities I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Blackbelt93]

thanks guys for all your help really
appreciate it