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Old 6th September 2014, 05:51 PM
Will Blewbury Will Blewbury is offline
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Default Small white lumps on HP5 film

All,

I have been using Ilford HP5 film with Ilfosol 3 developer for a number of weeks now, however unfortunately once the film has naturally dried I find occassional small lumps of white matter on the emulsion surface.

I initially thought this may be to do with rinsing however even after usign filtered water as a final rise as well as Ilfotol wetting agent these are still appearing.

Has anyone else come across this problem? And if so any resolutions?

Will
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Old 10th September 2014, 05:20 PM
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Jakecb Jakecb is offline
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Will I note from your intro thread that you are from Oxfordshire like me. We have *very* hard water here, I think you may be seeing the residue of that. It can be wiped off carefully once dry with a lint free cloth and/or distilled water can be used for the last rinse. Hope that helps.
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Old 10th September 2014, 05:23 PM
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Argentum Argentum is offline
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most household water filters will not remove all the minerals in tap water.

Distilled or deionised water is recommended for mixing chemicals and final rinse in hard water areas.

Wiping the residue (which are crystals of minerals) can scratch film as it's the crystals doing the scratching and not necessarily the cloth used to wipe them off with. But there's not much option since soaking the engatives again isn't gauranteed to disolve the crystals which may be well and truly stuck to the film.

Last edited by Argentum; 10th September 2014 at 05:27 PM.
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Old 10th September 2014, 09:35 PM
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Are you sure these are on the emulsion surface? As drying marks tend to form on the back (shiny side) of the film.
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Old 10th September 2014, 11:26 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is online now
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I take it that these lumps have been present since you started to process film i.e. it is not the case that for several weeks/months or since you started that there have been no problems and all of a sudden these lumps started to show.

If you have only just started to process film and the lumps showed up then it sounds like a water problem. If there was once no problem and suddenly there is then the issue might lie elsewhere unless the mineral deposits in your water has changed( not impossible)

How are you drying the film? Do you shake the film and hang it in a drying cabinet?

You need to ensure that the film dries in a dust free atmosphere (at ambient temperature I'd suggest) and it may be worthwhile running the film between your middle fingers to get the excess water off it before ensuring that it is hung vertically. Make sure that there is no area where the water can gather in a pool or as drips

Mike
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Old 11th September 2014, 05:58 PM
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Martin Aislabie Martin Aislabie is offline
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Halfords sell 5L bottles of de-ionised water at most of their shops for about £3.75

I use it to soak films for about 5 min post washing and then hang them up to dry - and use no wetting agent.

I get no drying marks - which is what these white marks might well be.

Calcium marks will show on either side of the film - both base and emulsion - anywhere water droplets can accumulate.

It isn't necessary to use the de-ionised water for anything except the final rinse - and possibly counter-intuitively, hard water washes the chemicals out of the emulsion faster than soft water

Martin
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Old 11th September 2014, 06:19 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is online now
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Will, unfortunately for you( see below) my answer to your question at the end is: No, I haven't experienced this problem in nearly 10 years of home darkroom processing. It is unfortunate in the sense that at my last look at water hardness tables, my area of Northamptonshire comes very close to the top of the league table.

That isn't to say that your area isn't even harder but it might bring into question whether hard water is the problem.

It might help if you say whether these lumps have always been there. Certainly very fast drying might not give the water even with photoflo in it enough time to run off before it dries on the film with any deposits in it remaining.

Mike
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