sasaki@harvard.ARPA (Marty Sasaki) (06/03/85)
One small note about leaving a fixed print in a shallow tray: If you
want to cut down on your fixing time, don't do it. The complex silver
salts (the undeveloped silver salts that the fixer dissolves) will be
absorbed by the fiber in the paper. These silver salts are very
difficult to wash away.
By stacking prints in a shallow pool of water the fixer stays in contact
with the print for quite a while and gets a chance to be absorbed.
If you don't care about long fixing times, then this doesn't really
matter.
My method is to take the prints from the fixer, rinse them off in
running water, and to then put the prints into my washer. The flowing
water helps. Using double bath fixing and this washing method, I've
reduced my wash time from about 3 hours to about one hour (using a the
silver nitrate test solution).
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Marty Sasaki net: sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp}
Havard University Science Center phone: 617-495-1270
One Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138eric@rtech.UUCP (06/07/85)
> One small note about leaving a fixed print in a shallow tray: If you > want to cut down on your fixing time, don't do it. The complex silver > salts (the undeveloped silver salts that the fixer dissolves) will be > absorbed by the fiber in the paper. These silver salts are very > difficult to wash away. > I agree the it's not wise to try and fix fiber prints for less than ~6 minutes each. However it is possible to do this and still shorten up your time in the darkroom. The method is to do an initial fix for 3 minutes, then put the print into a water holding tray. When several prints have collected in the holding tray, then you can put all of them into a second fix for 3 minutes. The prints can then be washed normally. This way all prints get a full 6 minutes of fixing time, but you spend less time waiting for them. This method was suggested by Ansel Adams in his book "The Print" and is suitable for archival prints. -- Eric Lundblad