FIXER

[AERO]

Noted that there are a number of "recipes " for DIY fixer.
I have just bee looking at the family photo album which has photos in from around around 1900 albeit sepia coloured.. still really good quality
photographs. I also found photos of my two daughter taken when they were 10 and 11 yrs old...the photos are still as good today as they were when I printed them.
The fixer used was plain hypo crystals/water...nothing else added.
..My daughters are now 65 and 66 yrs old.....Just wondering if these expensive fixers are REALLY an improvement?

 

[Ian Grant]

Ammonium Thiosuphate based rapid fixers don't need as long wash times with FB papers, compared to plain hypo, or packaged Sodium Thiosulphate based acid fixers. They have greater capacity and of course work very much faster.

The downside of Rapid fixers is over fixing can cause image bleaching particularly with the highlights of warm tone papers.

The actual chemistry of fixing is a lot of intermediary Silver Thiosulphate complexes being formed during the processes and the equilibriums equations of each stage, too high a Silver level in the fixer and unstable compound can weakly bind to the cellulose of the paper base and not wash out.

Plain Hypo works, but adding Sulphite or Metabisulphite aids the process and increases the capacity slight.

55 years ago you were probably using FP4 or HP4, I was often using ex-Government surplus FP3 & HP3 and you needed to use a hardening fixer, as the emulsions were much softer. 40/- for 20 rolls of home loaded film



AW Young also sold ex-Govt. Hypo, I remember buying some to mix my own fixer.There's a 5kg tub of Hypo, along with some Ammonium Chloride sat in my kitchen, to mix some Agfa 304 Scnellfixierbad (rapid fixer).

Ian

 

[AERO]

Ah yes remember them..
Those prices look cheap to people today..but then.... I bought my 1st camera from a surplus store..A 1/4 plate.. 30 shilling...spent many a happy hour developing Kodak P1200 plates in a small dish and getting the darkroom workmates on the Western Mail to print 'em on a wooden horizontal enlarger - late 1940 early 50s...

 

[Ian Grant]

I visited Marston & Heard sometime in the early 1970s and there were literally piles of surplus cameras, lenses, etc everywhere. There were 4 London ex-Govt surplus stores, AW Young, Harringay Photographic Supplies. Marston & Heard, and another smaller one, all with a common émigré partner. Talking to the Ilford MD some years ago, he mentioned all the links to a number of companies, Silverprint, RK Photographic, Firstcall, etc.

Ian

 

[AERO]

........those were the days...........

 

[Ian Grant]

OK, the reality. As of today's prices and buying in reasonable bulk 5kg Hypo, 1 kg of anything else, this is per litre working solution.

Plain Hypo fixer 25% £1.34
Kodak Acid fixer F-52 £1.63
Agfa R-304 Rapid Fixer £2.20

Then compare that to Ilford Rapid fixer 5 litres which is around £50, when mixed at 1+4 makes 25 litres, so £2 per litre of working solution, and you can use it 1+9 so even cheaper.

I have just mixed 1 litre of R-304 at double strength. The issue here in the UK is Ammonium Thiosulphate is not available in crystal form any longer, but companies like Ilford (or rather their subcontractors) buy it as a 60% solution in bulk. I looked into it about 10 years ago, minimum quantity was 25 litres, but it was very economic, of selling commercially.

..My daughters are now 65 and 66 yrs old.....Just wondering if these expensive fixers are REALLY an improvement?

It's horses for courses, Ilford Rapid Fixer at 1+9 is cheaper than plain Hypo and has greater capacity.

Ian

 

[AERO]

Geez..I would be dead before I used that lot up at my photographic rate...(and age)........
But thanks for the breakdown....

 

[thronobulax]

OK, the reality. As of today's prices and buying in reasonable bulk 5kg Hypo, 1 kg of anything else, this is per litre working solution.

Plain Hypo fixer 25% £1.34
Kodak Acid fixer F-52 £1.63
Agfa R-304 Rapid Fixer £2.20

Then compare that to Ilford Rapid fixer 5 litres which is around £50, when mixed at 1+4 makes 25 litres, so £2 per litre of working solution, and you can use it 1+9 so even cheaper.

I have just mixed 1 litre of R-304 at double strength. The issue here in the UK is Ammonium Thiosulphate is not available in crystal form any longer, but companies like Ilford (or rather their subcontractors) buy it as a 60% solution in bulk. I looked into it about 10 years ago, minimum quantity was 25 litres, but it was very economic, of selling commercially.



It's horses for courses, Ilford Rapid Fixer at 1+9 is cheaper than plain Hypo and has greater capacity.

Ian

Agreed, but I did discover that buying more than you need at any one time can cause the unused stock to eventually go bad.

These days, I buy TF-5 in gallon quantities to be used as a rapid print fixer. Ditto TF-4 as a normal film fixer.

 

[David Lindquist]

Ammonium Thiosuphate based rapid fixers don't need as long wash times with FB papers, compared to plain hypo, or packaged Sodium Thiosulphate based acid fixers. They have greater capacity and of course work very much faster.

The downside of Rapid fixers is over fixing can cause image bleaching particularly with the highlights of warm tone papers.

The actual chemistry of fixing is a lot of intermediary Silver Thiosulphate complexes being formed during the processes and the equilibriums equations of each stage, too high a Silver level in the fixer and unstable compound can weakly bind to the cellulose of the paper base and not wash out.

Plain Hypo works, but adding Sulphite or Metabisulphite aids the process and increases the capacity slight.

55 years ago you were probably using FP4 or HP4, I was often using ex-Government surplus FP3 & HP3 and you needed to use a hardening fixer, as the emulsions were much softer. 40/- for 20 rolls of home loaded film

View attachment 5173

AW Young also sold ex-Govt. Hypo, I remember buying some to mix my own fixer.There's a 5kg tub of Hypo, along with some Ammonium Chloride sat in my kitchen, to mix some Agfa 304 Scnellfixierbad (rapid fixer).

Ian

I like the 8 inch f/2.8 Pentac "In need of overhaul by handyman." Handyman? Guess the work needed wasn't so fiddly as to require the ministrations of a senior artificer in an Air Ministry optical shop.

David

 

[Ian Grant]

I like the 8 inch f/2.8 Pentac "In need of overhaul by handyman." Handyman? Guess the work needed wasn't so fiddly as to require the ministrations of a senior artificer in an Air Ministry optical shop.

David

Not the kind of "fixer" David Although I've been very lucky with two disgustingly dirty Petzvals, inc an 8¼" f3 Dallmeyer 2B.

Ian

 

[David Lindquist]

In keeping with the original subject of this thread, years ago I would buy Kodak sodium thiosulfate by the 100 pounds. It was packaged in a bag the first time I bought it, second time it came in a cardboard drum. Not sure what formula of fixer I used, may have been Kodak F-6. This was described as odorless and if made with a reduced amount of potassium alum hardener it was said to wash out of fiber base papers more readily. The reduced hardener was also favorable for spotting and toning (per Ansel Adams, The Print, 1983)

And I used it to make plain hypo (sodium thiosulfate and sodium sulfite) which I used as part of my selenium toning procedure, also per Adams. Additionally I used it to make rapid fix for film; the recipe for that included ammonium chloride.

Don't remember the prices but 100 pounds was a lot less per pound than a one pound box of Kodak's sodium thiosulfate.

Now I use Ilford's Rapid Fix with Multigrade Classic, still make up plain hypo for toning. For film I use TF-5, a rapid fixer made in the US by Photographer's Formulary.

David