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Old 9th August 2020, 04:09 PM
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Bob Bob is offline
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Arguably the best reason for using stop bath for paper is that it prevents the acid developer from being carried over to the fixer (which costs many times the price of citric acid ). Water will remove some of the developer but it will need frequent changes and will be much slower for the developer to diffuse out of the emulsion.

Some stop bath is based on acetic acid (vinegar smell) and others on citric acid (no smell at all). I strongly recommend no-smell versions! If you don't want to mess about buying citric acid off ebay, Ilford's Ilfostop is citric acid based and other producers have low-odour stop baths also based on citric acid. Best to get one with an indicator dye so you can reuse it from session to session without worrying about it dying on you.

Ah yes, in case it was not clear, you can reuse stop and fixer - no need to throw them away at the end of each session. But keep film and paper chemicals separate - don't use fixer previously used for paper with film for example, or vise versa.

Last edited by Bob; 9th August 2020 at 04:18 PM.
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