Does leaving black-and-white film longer in stop bath or fixer affect image quality?

Asked 12/18/2011

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I’m developing Ilford FP4 black-and-white film at 20°C and use a stop bath followed by fixer. I understand that too little time can cause problems, but what happens if the film stays in the stop bath or fixer longer than recommended? For example, if the fixer time is 7 minutes instead of 5 minutes, will that affect image quality, film durability, or behavior in any meaningful way?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

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Wow, I haven't thought about that stuff in years. Keep in mind what the stopbath and fixer are for.

The stop bath has two purposes, to immeditely cease the developing process, and to protect the fixer. The developer is alkaline and the fixer acid. Even just a few drops of developer in the fixer will degrade it much more rapidly than it would get depleted just by use. In that sense, the stopbath is a sacrificial bath that is cheaply replaced. Basic stopbath is just dilute acetic acid. Indicator stopbaths include a die similar to litmus paper that changes color when the acidity goes down due to having absorbed too much developer. A longer stopbath doesn't do much useful. The development process is stopped pretty much immediately as the pH is changed due to the acid. The remaining bits of developer are also neutralized quickly. The main issue is for partially porous substrates where the stopbath needs a little time to diffuse thru and neutralize the developer. A good example of this is old fashioned paper prints. It would take maybe 10 seconds or so for little bubbles to stop coming off the edges as the stopbath diffused into the paper and reacted with the developer. In fact this was a good way to know when the stopbath had completed and when to replace the batch. If it took more than maybe 30 seconds, then the stopbath was worn out.

The job of fixer is to remove the unexposed silver halide. The developer has already reduced the exposed silver halide. However, over time even without developer the remaining unexposed silver halide will become exposed and change color. The fixer removes this unexposed silver halide from the emulsion. This process runs to completion. Once gone it's gone. There is considerably leeway in the length of the fixer bath because not much happens once the unexposed silver has been removed. However, eventually other things happen like the emulsion or backing starts getting dissolved or excessively water-logged, which can soften it and make it more susceptible to scratching until finally dried again. I've also heard (not totally sure this is true) that more of the salts in the fixer slowly diffuse into the substrate, which makes properly rinsing the film or paper more difficult and longer. This would imply that excessively long fixing times can be offset be longer washing times, but again, I'm not sure about this.

Of course the chemists that designed the paper and chemicals thought about all this and distilled it down to a set of easy to follow instructions. The best thing for you to do is to simply follow them. Unless you're a chemist specializing in this area, I wouldn't try to get creative. There may be unintended side effects, some possibly long term.

Originally by user7603. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user7603

14y ago

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Usually, no. Longer stop-bath or fixing times than recommended do not meaningfully improve image quality once the film has already been properly stopped and fixed.

Stop bath works almost immediately by neutralizing the developer, so extra time there is generally unnecessary. Its main role is to halt development and protect the fixer from being contaminated by developer.

Fixer removes the undeveloped silver halides, and once that job is done, a bit of extra time is usually harmless. Going from 5 minutes to 7 minutes is not a problem, and even somewhat longer times are often tolerated without visible damage.

So in practice:

  • Too short is risky.
  • Slightly longer is usually fine.
  • Much longer typically brings no benefit.

The main reason to avoid unnecessary delay is workflow, and in darkroom situations involving safelight exposure, you generally want to get material into the fixer promptly. For normal tank development of B&W film, modest over-fixing is unlikely to hurt the film, but it also won’t improve quality or permanence if the recommended fixing time was already sufficient.

UniqueBot

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14y ago

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