How to make your own FIXER | Step by Step Walkthrough | Developing Film | Analog Photography
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2021
- In this week's video I will show you how to make your own photographic Fixer from scratch including all the steps. It is actually made out of only a few ingredients and it's not hard to make. Fixer is an essential film processing chemical needed in order to remove all the unexposed silver halides and make the image permanent. This recipe can be used with pretty much any light sensitive material out there from Paper to Film and even Dry Plates as you will see by the end of the video where I try to contact print dry plates to achieve a positive image on glass! Enjoy watching :)
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This is classical unbuffered fixer, and it works fine if slower than current "rapid" fixers. Very inexpensive. One thing not discussed here: Sodium thiosulfite is extremely hydroscopuic, meaning that it absorbs water out of the air very easily. Accordingly, the original recipes for this type of fixer usually specify the chemical by volume rather than weight. Weight can vary significantly depending on how the chemical is stored. Back when I started DIY fixer in the later 195os, photo shops sold sodium thiosulfate in 5 or 10 pound weights in a paper shopping bag, for a couple of dollars a bag. Now, it's relative disuse makes it harder to find and significantly more expensive.
Great information Randall thanks for taking the time and writing it down 🤗
Get sodium thiosulfate from pool and spa suppliers. They sell it as as chlorine reducer.
Yes, my local swimming pool chemical house sold me some.
Any idea where to find Sodium Sulfite locally?
@@AtlantaTerry No, not in supermarkets at least. However, it is the most used chemical in photo-chemistry, as it protects the active ingredients from being oxidized in water. Any supplier of photo chemicals in bulk (on line) will have it, as will any chemical supply house. You used to be able to buy it in even the less well stocked photo stores, but that era is gone outside of major cities in the US. Compared to other chemicals, it is also one of the cheapest.
I'm so old that when I started doing my own B&W printing in the late 1950s, almost no one used rapid fixer, In fact, I'm not sure if it was even available back then. My photo store sold raw sodium thiosulfate, which they repackaged in heavy-duty brown paper shopping bags, 5 or 10 pounds each. Sodium thiosulfate is very hygroscopic, meaning that it absorbs a lot of water out of the air, so we'd measure it by volume rather than weight. The old Kodak Fixer was this formula. It fixes film and paper as well as a modern rapid fixer, but it does so more slowly, thus the "rapid" in the name of the later fixers.
Thank you for making this video
Thank you so much for doing these videos, I always get inspired!
My pleasure 😊
Worked like a charm! Thank you sincerely!
You're welcome
Very productive content keep it up 🤌🏼👍🏻
Thanks 🤗
Fixer isn't too hard to get here but I always enjoy the DIY alternatives. Cheers.
just found your channel, it's so cool mixing your own chemicals and you seem to know a lot of all the chemical processes, great video!!! l really don't know too much about all the chemistry behind it but i'm intrigued by the whole process and i feel watching your videos helps me understand all the analog processes better, keep up the good work :)
Thank you 😊
Thanks for teaching these kind of methods. Please don't stop making these kind of video's
I wont thanks 🤗
Absolutely! Do more
Thanks. I will 😊
So yeah, please do a video on contact printing _onto_ a dryplate :-)
Great idea Heiko. I second that :)
I will, I will 😁🙌
Just thought I should point out that sodium sulfite isn't toxic to humans, but it can be dangerous when inhaled. It's not highly likely but in cases it can cause allergic reactions like asthma attacks and hives.
Other than that thank you for the awesome video just made some for my film because diy is more fun in my opinion.
many thanks for sharing, and of course please make a video on contact printing, that's the best in this video :-)
Thanks I will!
Very good informative video. One question is this fixer also good for black and white film? Or only for paper.
Good video. Love the idea of making the positive plate. Can you share your exposure information to make the exposure with your enlarger? I think I will try this too.
This was a 1s exposure with my Meopta enlarger 😊
Love doing DIY chemistry, so far all I've mixed up is developers. Will have to try the fixer, without a hardener probably will work great for Pyrocat developed negatives!
I do not use pyro based photo chemistry, but my reading indicates that the stain which distinguishes pyro negatives does not respond well to the traditional acid fixers (like those discussed in this thread). Take a look a the few formulas for non-acidic fixers, and I think you will fair better. If you can mix a developer, you can mix a fixer as well.
I get my sodium thiosulfate from pool and spa suppliers. They sell it as as chlorine reducer. I've heard sodium sulfite is used for the same purpose, but I've never found it in pool and spa stores around North Carolina.
Thanks for sharing 🙏
Very much interested in the process for making a positive plate either chemically or contact exposure like you did here. Also interested in how they might be displayed... do they require a light box? Is white paper behind them ok? etc. Thanks for doing what you do! Love your work!
Thanks for the kind words. Lightbox behind would for sure be the best to display the beauty of such image but lately I was thinking that even white paper behind would work if the density of positive image would be just right!
Pozdravljen, odličen kanal, čestitke :) Si trenutno urejam spet temnico, se nisem s klasično fotografijo ukvarjal kar nekaj let. Me zanima iz kakšnega materiala si naredil korito? Nekaj podobnega si moram naredit, verjetno malenkost manjše. Lp Andrej!
Another great info video - how long did you expose the positive plate for? Perhaps this could be included in the new video?
Yes I will make a more detailed video about it. For this plate I exposed for 1s
Would love to see a video on dry plate contact printing please
Thanks for letting me know Trina 😊
I wonder how to improve the Sodium chloride (salt) developer, but staying organic as possible... Or just the salt for 12hs? Any insights would be nice, I´m seeking for natural fixer recipes, Thanks!
Is there any other substitute for Sodium Sulfite?
Some recipes call for sodium bisulfite, is there any difference with this recipe?
Please discuss Chrome Alum as hardener and the correct methods
Hey Randy there is so much written about this topic on forums. Basically chrome alum hardens the gelatine when it gets into the fixer and makes it more resilient to potential lifting, wrinkling...
Alum is the traditional hardener for acid fixers like this one. It is also optionally used in "rapid" fixer formulas. Prior to the mid- to late 1960s, most B&W film was made with an emulsion which was quite soft when wet (during processing). That film was easy to scratch until it dried. Hardening fixers were the standard to avoid emulsion damage during and after processing. After the 1960s, nearly all film used a "pre-hardened" emulsion which does not need that hardening treatment. The down-side of using a hardening fixer is that it makes it much tougher to wash the fixer out of the emulsion at the end of the developing process (washes were 2x-4x longer). By 1970, hardening fixers were out of fashion with the general introduction of rapid fixers, sold with the hardener separately so you could choose not to use it (Kodak) or with no hardener (Ilford). There is no reason to use a hardening fixer with any film stock made ion the last 50 years.
I'm just starting to learn about darkroom techniques after not going anywhere near one for decades so I'm glad I found this channel just now. One question: Is it safe to pour this fixer down the drain afterwards, or do you have to dispose of it some other way?
Sodium thiosulfate is used in water purification plants for town water. Don't worry about it. The silver in it will become silver sulfide (no shortage of available sulfur compounds in the sewer!) which is stable and won't bother any living thing (so stable that sulfided prints last longest). You can recover the silver tho if you use plenty of it.
@@lostlightart6064 As you say, the fixer itself is not a problem. However, the silver compounds in the used fixer can be damaging to water waste systems, or at least deemed so as to caused regulations prohibiting such. In the real world, so few people flush so little used fixer down the drain that there is no real problem. Now if you have a private septic system, I'd reconsider doing that.
Do you use hypo check to determine if your fixer is exhausted or do you mix up a new batch well before it gets to that point? And future videos showing your print making, especially alternative processes, would be appreciated. I'd love to see some of your images done as kallitypes.
Yes hypo check is deffinetly the way to go. I am deffinetly planing on making more printing videos specially now when I can contact print 8x10 plates 😊
I use a commercial hypo check. Oddly, it tells me that stock fixer which should have died of old age several years previous is still good. That old (not over used) fixer also seems to do a good fixing job. So, do I go with the "check", or with the expiration recommended? When I say "expired", I mean a couple of years. Being s "belt and suspenders" type of guy, I toss the old and mix up a new batch.
Is fixer the same for all processes (bw, c41, etc)? Thank you for all that you do!
I bealive c-41 uses a bit different formula since it is a color process but with all the other BW materials it will work from Paper to Dry Plates 😉
Colour has a different fixer but BnW Fixer can be used
The concept and function is the same in all such processes, but the formulations for B&W versus color are quite different. Between E-6 and C-42 or ECN-2, the formulations are not so much different but still not the same. Those difference usually are driven by the need to maintain a different pH in those various solutions.
How many sheets you can fix with One litre fixer?? Congratulations from Argentina
Hello! Would this partner well with Caffenol developing?
Sure!
Hy i want to make color fixer for textile fabric help me
Hello. Is the fixer that you made in this video (concentrated solution) and must be diluted with water again as needed when working in the darkroom, or is it used only as it is without dilution? How long does it last for a long time? How long does it last? And after using it, do we return to the bottle again? I have in the home store 1 pound of sodium thiosulfate powder. Can I make a small amount of about 350 milliliters for paper repair and how many grams of powder is enough for that? A set of questions, I hope you can answer briefly, and thank you for your efforts.
You can use this fixer until it slows down to where it no longer works.
With film, you can test the fixer by putting a small chip of undeveloped B&W film into a shot glass with some of the fixer. Watch to see how long it takes for the film to completely clear. That is your MINIMUM fixing time. Then when you actually process a batch of film, leave it in the fixer for TWICE as long (at least).
If you perform this chip test every time before you process a batch of film, you will notice that the clearing time will take longer and longer as the chemistry gets used up. At some point, the chip will take too long to clear to be practical and that is the time to dump the fixer (or recover the silver) and start with a fresh batch.
Late in his video he actually said to NOT dilute this fixer! Use it just as it is.
If you can find brown glass bottles those are the best for fixer and developer because unlike plastic, glass will not let air get to the chemistry. Brown glass also blocks most light which also will help the chemistry last longer (especially developers).
1. the formula is a working solution. You do not dilute it for use.
2. Unused, or only lightly used, he says 3 months in the video. My use indicates about 6 month.
3. You return it to the bottle for reuse unless it dies of age or is used to exhaustion, which he defined as 25 8x10 inch prints. In film, you would process for 5-10 minutes. I do not recommend using this type of fixer on T-grain type films like Kodak T-Max. They require a more powerful fixer.
4. If you want more or less than one liter of solution, just scale the the amounts of the two ingredients more or less to match.
How long will the fixer last if developed with 35mm film? Wonderful video btw!!
With film, you can test the fixer by putting a small chip of undeveloped B&W film into a shot glass with some of the fixer. Watch to see how long it takes for the film to completely clear. That is your MINIMUM fixing time. Then when you actually process a batch of film, leave it in the fixer for TWICE as long (at least).
If you perform this chip test every time before you process a batch of film, you will notice that the clearing time will take longer and longer as the chemistry gets used up. At some point, the chip will take too long to clear to be practical and that is the time to dump the fixer (or recover the silver) and start with a fresh batch.
It's much harder to judge fixer exhaustion when you are fixing paper rather than film. The best way to judge the amount of paper you can safely fix in a sodium thiosulfate fixer today might be to look up the specifications for the old Kodak Fixer (not "Rapid Fixer") and use the paper fixing capacity given for that product. Sodium thiosulfate fixers are so simple chemically that they all have about the same shelf life and fixing capacity.
Where in the USA is a good place to find the raw chemicals to make B&W fixer and developer?
I am based in europe so maybe someone else will help. I mostly get them on ebay 😉
In the US, there are several on-line suppliers of chemicals used in photo processing. The best known and stocked is probably the Photographer's Formulary in Montana. In major cities, where you might still find a real camera store, you may find a limited supply of the chemicals required for the most basic formulas, but the pricing and shopping options are far better with an on-line store like the one mentioned above. Apart from always having fresh stock on hand, the best part of DIY mixing of formulas is cost. For around $50-75, you can buy enough chemicals to mix literally hundreds of dollars worth of first class developers, stop bath, fixers, whatever you want. The great leap forward in DIY photo-chemistry came with the introduction of electronics and micro-processors to tiny volume weighing scales. For less than $20 you can now drop into Staples and buy an office gram scale which will blow away my several hundred dollar triple beam balance scale, and it is much faster to use.
Can this be also used in filmrolls?
Sure
Why would you think it would not work on rolls of black and white film??
Yes, except perhaps for T-grain films like Kodak T-Max. T-grain films seem to require a more powerful fixer to do the job. For traditional film emulations like Tri-X or HP-5+, maybe processing for 5-10 minutes.
The fixer last longer, way longer that 6 weeks, 3-4 months in fact
Mmmmm
Why would I want to make fixer?
Why not?
Cost.
The cost of ingredients for this one liter of fixer is less than $1 US, and those ingredients will sit on a shelf for 50 years if need be, always ready to mix up. Check the prices on packaged fixer these days plus shipping.