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  #11  
Old 19th January 2010, 09:55 AM
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B&W Neil B&W Neil is offline
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I have used Nova slotty things for years with complete satisfaction and success. As Richard has mentioned you have to be careful about chemicals and their life but with a sensible approach there will be no problems. And if you want to watch the image develop, as indeed I do, just lift the paper out of the slot, have a look, and put it back again

I have a lovely set of trays that I used to use before I discovered the slotty things and all they get uised for these days is lith work and toning. Slotty things are great space savers and also very convenient to use.

Neil.
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  #12  
Old 19th January 2010, 10:14 AM
Roger Hicks Roger Hicks is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Hogan View Post
I think everybody by now knows my views on 'upright slotty thingies'; how can you possibly excpect to make fine, repeatable monochrome prints using old chemicals? They may well 'work' after being topped up, but the build-up of by-products changes the characteristics of the chemicals. They may be fine for students and people with absolutely no space at all, but if you have an option and care about your work, you must use fresh chemicals...
Would you care to tell us exactly what these by-products are, and how they change the characteristics of the chemicals? Or, rather more importantly, how these changes affect the prints? And how you avoid 'by-products' in trays?

Also, of course, you have neglected the possibility of draining the developer and replacing it with fresh at beginning of a printing session.

Frances has been using Nova slot processors for some 20 years and was, to be generous, surprised by your antipathy.

Cheers,

R.

Last edited by Roger Hicks; 19th January 2010 at 10:19 AM.
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  #13  
Old 19th January 2010, 10:32 AM
Richard Gould Richard Gould is offline
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Personally I like processing my prints in trays, I like to see the emerging print under the safelight, but I alaso have a lot of space, if I had a need to save space I would certainly use a nova slotty thing, but be carefull of what you buy size wise, as if you decide to print at, say, 12x16 it is cheaper to buy trays that size than a nova, so buy to the size3 you may want to go to,Richard
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  #14  
Old 19th January 2010, 10:58 AM
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I much prefer trays - and if my darkroom were ready that's what I'd use. But on the rare occasions that I've managed to take over the bathroom the slotty thing has been very useful - but I've always used fresh chemicals for each session.
What I do find the slotty thing useful for is developing large format negs.
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  #15  
Old 19th January 2010, 11:06 AM
Roger Hicks Roger Hicks is offline
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Further thoughts: Unless you're silly about your dev, and overwork it or leave it forever, a Nova slot processor is probably more consistent than trays, because you're working at a constant temperature, with a lot less surface area to oxidize.

As prints are developed to completion, speed is not really an issue, and we have seen no evidence of colour shifts due to halide build-up. We have lots of room in our custom-built darkroom (the first thing we installed when we bought the house) but still prefer Nova tanks. We use 4-slot with twin-bath fixing. There's a picture of the darkroom about a third of the way down, and a picture of the permanently-installed Nova about 3/4 of the way down, here: http://www.rogerandfrances.com/subsc.../darkroom.html.

Cheers,

R.
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  #16  
Old 19th January 2010, 11:51 AM
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Jon

Save up approx £240 for a second hand Nova Quad (12 X16) - four heated slots, you'll never look back

See advertiser on this forum - Second Hand Darkroom Supplies

Andrew
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  #17  
Old 19th January 2010, 01:49 PM
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Regarding chemical usage I'd be more concerned about reusing the fixer over and over, as opposed to the developer. Developer mix is usually exhausted anyway, by the end of the session so just dump it and mix up fresh next time (guarantees consistent repeatable results)
I think if you have fixer left in the unit, the temptation is to just leave it there and keep using it over and over. Obviously you can test it for residual silver but how many people actually bother with this ? I ALWAYS use fresh fixer every printing session unless it has only had very few prints through it in which case I'll rebottle and use it as the first bath in my usual 2 bath fixing routine.

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 !
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  #18  
Old 19th January 2010, 02:17 PM
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Peter Hogan Peter Hogan is offline
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Let me be straight; I absolutely stand by my views.
On the other hand, I have nothing against upright slotty things per se. I know I poke fun at them, but they are a great space saver so long as you replace the chemicals every session rather than topping up, in which case they are just vertical trays and work fine. It’s people falling for the sales line that it is safe to siphon off and top up the chemicals that really gets me.
The problem is with the chemical breakdown of developers and fixers in use, and when stored.
Lets look at developers first. Developers oxidise, it’s how they work. The main by-product of oxidation of developers is bromide. You can see it in old developers - it goes brown. You can see it in the tray if you prolong your darkroom session. It is well known that when agitating the tray you should vary the direction of developer flow. The reason is that heavily exposed areas of the image will release larger amounts of bromide, and these can ‘roll’ along the surface of the paper and cause streaking if the tray is just rocked back and forth. They’re called ‘laminar flow marks’ and are a real problem in jobo’s etc if the tank isn’t removed during development and agitated to mix the contents.
Bromide is usually an ingredient (in small quantities) in developers, and is used as a restrainer. Too much bromide will inhibit the development of the image, prolonging development, or resulting in weak images if you just develop to a set time, but also, bromide acts to warm the developer; your prints will become increasingly warmer. (Caveat; depends these days on the paper; some papers have developer incorporated into the emulsion which in some ways will help to negate the warming effect) In the ‘old days’ developers were often personalised by adding chemicals to them, and one trick was adding bromide to warm the dev. Too much bromide, however, can /will cause fog, and this will be noticeable as veiled highlights and even as muddy prints if you have gone too far.
Sulphite gets used up too. Sulphite is a preservative. Once the sulphite goes the dev. dies very quickly.
You can see most of these effects if you ever do any lith printing. Indeed, the effects are a desirable part of lith printing! Lith developer is diluted way beyond any manufacturers recommendations, with the effect that a trayful of dev has very little sulphite, bromide, developing agent etc available for use. As the image develops, the bromide builds considerably, and it’s action is not hidden by developer activity, ‘cos there isn’t much developer. The images get progressively warmer the more paper you put through, and the bromide builds so quickly that you will find it extremely difficult to produce two subsequent prints that are identical. When you add ‘Old Brown’ to your dev to warm the image quicker, you are basically just adding more bromide.
Assume you have gone for a period of time and decided, arbitrarily, to siphon off half the dev and top up with new. The half of dev that is left is high on bromide, low on sulphite and developer. The resulting concoction has far more bromide and less sulphite than a fresh mix would have. Developing times now go out the window. Want to replicate a previous print? You’ll have to test. Subsequent siphons and top-ups make the situation worse. Some darkroom workers call developer ’soup’ (an expression I hate,) but it seems apt in this case. Do you really want to dunk your expensive fibre paper in that?
What about fixer? A fixer’s job is simple; it converts unused silver into complex silver compounds, along with thiosulphate ions, and then into soluble form so they can be washed from the paper. The problem is that fixer will convert the unused silver long after it is unable to convert them to soluble compounds. (Meaning you think it's working - it will still clear a film leader at this stage) Eventually you just can’t wash your paper properly, particularly FB. The results will come back to haunt you down the line as brown marks and stains. (My own Alkali Fixer fully fixes a print in 15 seconds, and converts the compounds in a further 15 seconds; 30 seconds for full fixing! Not only that but FB paper is fully washed in only 20 minutes….)
The problem is even worse if you are of the habit of siphoning off some fixer to fix your films, then pouring it back into the tank. Large grain films (Delta, T-Max) take longer to fix than ordinary films, and are very wearing on the fixer, which will exhaust much quicker. Film emulsion also contains iodide (paper doesn’t) which is dissolved into the fixer. Iodide has a double whammy - it’s a restrainer, so any subsequent fixing with that fixer is going to take much longer, and iodide doesn’t wash out very easily. In fact, it’s a complete pain to try to eliminate it from the paper fibres. Left in, it will eventually stain brown. You have the same problems with siphoning and topping-up fixer that you do with dev…and don’t get me started on two-bath fixing!
How many people who re-use their chemicals test before each session? And I don’t mean just a film-leader test. What about testing for silver content?
You really don’t want to let heavy, silver-laden hypo soak deep into your paper fibres (particularly FB) which is what happens with old fixer, because it works so slowly and takes so long to work. Then you can’t wash it out…
Like to tone your prints? Less than happy with the results? Highlights bleaching out and won’t tone back? Are you sure you’re fixing and washing properly?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; you pay small fortunes for the best gear, agonize over which lens will give you what you want. Debate the merits of various films. Buy I don’t know how many books on method technique, go on courses, spend oodles of cash on travel, but then you baulk at spending out on using fresh chemicals.
(Not you, of course, the other guy…)

People often say that film is the cheapest part of (traditional) photography. It’s not. Chemicals are.

Quality is my particular soapbox, and I know I get up some people’s nose by going on about it, but I make no excuses, and I don’t really care what people think. I just don’t see the point in doing something half-assed when you can do it right. Remember, just because you can’t see it happening, doesn’t mean that it’s not!

Last edited by Peter Hogan; 19th January 2010 at 02:46 PM.
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  #19  
Old 19th January 2010, 02:32 PM
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Yes ..... and when you consider how expensive paper is ..... another reason not to be stingy with chemicals !
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  #20  
Old 19th January 2010, 02:33 PM
Dave miller Dave miller is offline
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See what you started here Jon.
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