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  #21  
Old 19th January 2010, 02:38 PM
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A baptism of fire
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  #22  
Old 19th January 2010, 02:50 PM
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Peter Hogan Peter Hogan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bill spears View Post
It won't be until months or years down the line when you'll notice if those gorgeous prints you made weren't properly fixed !

No comment!
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  #23  
Old 19th January 2010, 03:33 PM
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Stoo Batchelor Stoo Batchelor is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Hogan View Post
Quality is my particular soapbox,
From a man who prints on Resin coated paper, but then that's another thread .

In regards to your comments on using fresh chemicals for every printing session, well arn't you the lucky one to afford such luxuries. There has not been a darkroom that I have been in where there is not three bottles on the shelf marked, Dev, Stop, Fix. Usually they have chemicals in them that have been carried over from the last printing session. The only difference with my Nova Slutty thing is that when I come to the end of a printing session I just put some cling wrap over it and put the lid on.

It's always been my understanding that chemicals have a life where 'X' ammount of prints can go through them before they expire. Why throw good chemicals down the drain! Plus, by using them to their max you are being kinder to the environment when you do eventually discard them.

It's all about being sensible and not pushing your chemicals too far, IMHO of course.

Stoo
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  #24  
Old 19th January 2010, 03:38 PM
Roger Hicks Roger Hicks is offline
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In other words, Peter, there's nothing at all wrong with using Novas provided you're sensible about chemical usage. Quite like trays, really!

I entirely agree, for the reasons you gave, that adding developer more or less at random over long periods is not a very good idea. But from the way you phrased your original post, it was quite possible to read your words in a way that damned Novatanks out of hand, and implied that there were special problems with the chemistry in a Novatank -- which simply is not the case. By all means counsel intelligent use of the Novatank, but don't damn it.

Oxidation and bromide build up are both rather more complex than you imply: consider the use of ID11 or D76 in deep tanks. These were protected with floating lids (much like Novatanks) and were very seldom drained, instead being topped up with replenisher (admittedly not developer). Quite soon they reached a steady state as a 'seasoned' developer, the most predictable and reliable of all developers (source: Ilford).

In the long term, aerial oxidation (not quite the same as the 'oxidation' reactions in development) will do for the developer, but that's true in any case.

I also agree that anyone who over-uses his fixer is asking for trouble, and that using the same fixer for film and paper is very foolish indeed -- film can tolerate MUCH higher silver levels in the fixer than FB paper -- but these are shortcomings of the photographer, not the Novatank. It's silver levels, of course, that set the limit to fixer usage for paper, which is why the capacity of fixer is substantially independent of dilution. Use Ilfofix at 1+3 instead of 1+9 and you'll get faster fixing, but the same capacity in sheets/litre.

Across a week or two, if you do half a dozen prints today, half a dozen tomorrow and another dozen a few days later, the exhaustion of the chemicals in a Novatank is purely a question of throughput. Ilford's own figure for Multigrade dev is 50 sheets of FB 8x10/litre, 100 sheets of RC, and these figures can only be extended by the draw-off-and-top-up procedure. I don't remember the Nova instructions, but as far as I recall, they don't recommend that you draw-off-and-top-up forever, and I'm pretty sure that they never recommended arbitrarily draining off half a litre and topping it up when you remember.

Likewise it is wasteful and foolish to throw away perfectly good fixer after only a few prints (Ilfofix capacity 40 FB/litre, 80 RC/litre). In other words, used intelligently, the Novatank offers considerable savings in time and money, without any compromise whatsoever in quality.

The time savings are at least as important as the space savings for many people -- seconds to remove the floating lids, seconds to top up and replace them, then wipe up the drips, instead of pointlessly and wastefully mixing new chemicals at the beginning of every session, then dumping them and washing the trays at the end.

Cheers,

Roger

Last edited by Roger Hicks; 19th January 2010 at 03:44 PM. Reason: grammar
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  #25  
Old 19th January 2010, 03:52 PM
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A point bearing in mind (and correct me if I'm wrong) regarding the recommended number of sheets of paper that can go through a particular solution.... is whether the prints are high key or low key, or how wide the print margins are ?
A 10x8 high key print with 1 1/2" borders is going to knacker the fixer alot quicker than say a full bleed 10x8 consisting of predominantly dark tones
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  #26  
Old 19th January 2010, 04:11 PM
Dave miller Dave miller is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Stoo Batchelor View Post
From a man who prints on Resin coated paper, but then that's another thread .

In regards to your comments on using fresh chemicals for every printing session, well arn't you the lucky one to afford such luxuries. There has not been a darkroom that I have been in where there is not three bottles on the shelf marked, Dev, Stop, Fix. Usually they have chemicals in them that have been carried over from the last printing session. The only difference with my Nova Slutty thing is that when I come to the end of a printing session I just put some cling wrap over it and put the lid on.

It's always been my understanding that chemicals have a life where 'X' ammount of prints can go through them before they expire. Why throw good chemicals down the drain! Plus, by using them to their max you are being kinder to the environment when you do eventually discard them.

It's all about being sensible and not pushing your chemicals too far, IMHO of course.

Stoo
A slight unfairness exists here that I feel needs correcting. Peter may, on occasion print on R/C paper, but the last time I was in his darkroom he has ample stock of fibre papers to use should he feel they were more suited to his subject. As for printing with fresh chemicals, that is his choice, I assume his suppliers charge him for them, so whilst he has some advantage of lower cost, they do still cost him.

I agree that there is a balance to be struck with the use of chemicals between age and sensible usage.
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  #27  
Old 19th January 2010, 04:34 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bill spears View Post
A point bearing in mind (and correct me if I'm wrong) regarding the recommended number of sheets of paper that can go through a particular solution.... is whether the prints are high key or low key, or how wide the print margins are ?
A 10x8 high key print with 1 1/2" borders is going to knacker the fixer alot quicker than say a full bleed 10x8 consisting of predominantly dark tones
Absolutely right Bill, and the only way to be sure is to test it. Any doubt chuck it.
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  #28  
Old 19th January 2010, 04:34 PM
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Jon, when you've recovered from all this .... I've got half a dozen 10x8's going for very cheap if you're interested. I can deliver to Truro aswell !!
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  #29  
Old 19th January 2010, 04:35 PM
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I guess I'm really talking from personal experience here; I tend to do long sessions in the darkroom and at the end the chemicals are knackered. On Sunday I did 10 hours printing and renewed the dev twice in that time. I probably didn't take into account that some people, for whatever reasons (family,time) only do short sessions.
Roger, I am fully aware of all the differences in top ups, replenishers, through-puts et al, and as chemistry is my preferred subject I'm aware of the differences in aerial and chemical oxidation! But just how much more could I have written there? I was just speaking in general terms, because I doubt there's anyone on FADU using commercial printing machines and using replenisher. It was just a plea to people not to be mingy with their chemicals. You asked me what the problems were, presumably so that my answer would be in the public domain, and I answered that without getting so deep into chemistry that people got lost.
I know you have a history in photography Roger, and are qualified to comment, however, I'm now in my 40th year of photography, and have built up a fair bit of experience myself!
So to reiterate, I don't apologise for the content of what I said, but if anyone took personal offence at that, then I apologise for that.
Seems like a few people getting very defensive, though...

Last edited by Peter Hogan; 19th January 2010 at 04:39 PM.
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  #30  
Old 19th January 2010, 05:09 PM
Roger Hicks Roger Hicks is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Hogan View Post
I know you have a history in photography Roger, and are qualified to comment, however, I'm now in my 40th year of photography, and have built up a fair bit of experience myself!
So to reiterate, I don't apologise for the content of what I said, but if anyone took personal offence at that, then I apologise for that.
Seems like a few people getting very defensive, though...
Dear Peter,

I must apologize for appearing tetchy, but it was possible to misread your post the way I did, and as I really am a great fan of Novatanks I wanted to put the opposite point of view. Yes, in a 10-hour session I can well imagine renewing the developer twice if you're working on large sheets of FB, but with 2 litres of dev in our big Novatank and normally printing 8x10 RC, that's 200 prints at the Ilford recommended level, or 20 an hour!

We are in absolute agreement about the foolishness of overworking chemicals, and I fully take your point about how much one can fit into a single post. I can top you on length of experience, though: I had my first darkroom in '66.

One last thing I would add, though, is that Ilford's recommended throughputs already have a reasonable safety margin built in, so unless your prints really are tonally well out of the ordinary, there is no need to add a further safety margin. Not your point, I know, but still worth tacking onto the end of this post.

Cheers,

R.
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