Topic: "Eggy" fixer?

[Indofunk]

I've used Ilford RapidFix ever since I started home developing a few years ago. I usually get the 500mL concentrate, and it takes me close to a year to get through the whole bottle at 1:5 dilution. The last bottle of concentrate I had developed a very eggy smell and was extremely cloudy when I was down to the last 100mL. Hypocheck gave it a thumbs up, but I decided to dump it because it looked and smelled gross. Now the present bottle I have has turned eggy with 200mL left. It's not very cloudy, so I went ahead and diluted out 100mL, but I'm predicting that the last 100mL of concentrate will stink to high hell and be cloudy by the time I'm ready for it.

Has anyone had a similar experience? I'll warn you though, even if you tell me that the eggy cloudy fixer is safe for use, I'll probably dump it anyways because this stuff stinks guys Maybe because I'm vegan and haven't had eggs in decades...

[Francois]

No, it's not the vegan thing. The stuff can smell much worse than caffenol and sweaty hockey gear combined.
I too have been having this problem. I know the date on my bottle of concentrate is expired quite a bit. I also know that Ilford says to dump it after something like 6 months. But I still use it and it still works fine. I did a leader test on mine and it clears in 13 seconds... but I'm going to get a new bottle next week as this smell just sucks the air out of your lungs.

I had a similar problem before but this time it just plated the bottle with silver particles that were coming out of solution. I thought about killing the fixer with peroxide and recuperating the silver but decided to just drop it at the dangerous waste depot.

Mine smells of rotten eggs times 100. Nasty.

I think they might have changed the recipe as I had never gotten anything like that before this bottle.

[jharr]

I just thought that was what fixer smelled like. I always get a nose full of hydrogen sulfide. I just turn on the bathroom fan and try to keep things covered. I have been using the same dilution of fixer for over 6 months and it is showing no sign of even weakening, let alone giving out. The bottle is completely silver plated on the inside. I filter it if the sediment gets too much or there is silver floating on top. I figure I will just keep going with this dilution until the strip test fails.

[Indofunk]

The only reason I ask is because "fresh" fixer doesn't smell noxious at all. But yeah I'm going to continue to dump fixer when my lungs start to protest

[Domingo A. Siliceo]

I think the best way to know if the fixer still is able to be used is if you can soup in it a tiny piece of unexposed film and look if the emulsion clears in your normal times and if that tiny piece of film is clean from lumps or other strange things.

[02Pilot]

I just thought that was what fixer smelled like. I always get a nose full of hydrogen sulfide. I just turn on the bathroom fan and try to keep things covered. I have been using the same dilution of fixer for over 6 months and it is showing no sign of even weakening, let alone giving out. The bottle is completely silver plated on the inside. I filter it if the sediment gets too much or there is silver floating on top. I figure I will just keep going with this dilution until the strip test fails.

What fixer are you using, in what dilution, and how many rolls have you run through it? I ask because mine (Ilford Rapid Fix, 1+4 mixed in 750mL batches) always starts to give up after 15 rolls or so.

[Francois]

I usually just fix for double clearing time.
I find this strange because fixer normally doesn't smell that bad.
There usually is a bit of a sweetness to it... at least in a very chemical sense.
It's not supposed to smell stronger than C41.

I know Kodak fixer doesn't get that sulfide smell, but it fixes so slow that I don't feel like putting up with all this agitation.
I used to fix film for 7 minutes in the Kodak stuff, 3 for RC paper. So any longer processing gets really tedious.

I think that's why I can use rapid fix for what seems like forever.

[jharr]

I just thought that was what fixer smelled like. I always get a nose full of hydrogen sulfide. I just turn on the bathroom fan and try to keep things covered. I have been using the same dilution of fixer for over 6 months and it is showing no sign of even weakening, let alone giving out. The bottle is completely silver plated on the inside. I filter it if the sediment gets too much or there is silver floating on top. I figure I will just keep going with this dilution until the strip test fails.

What fixer are you using, in what dilution, and how many rolls have you run through it? I ask because mine (Ilford Rapid Fix, 1+4 mixed in 750mL batches) always starts to give up after 15 rolls or so.

I'm using the same as you are. I probably have over 20 rolls through. Are you seeing a sudden collapse in activity or a gradual decline? I rinse after developing and generally use developers in the Rodinal family. I'm not sure if the metol developers will affect the fixer or not. Maybe the plating and filtering lowers the silver load in the fixer so it can keep going. If it is saturated with silver, I imagine it isn't going to be very effective at clearing/dissolving new silver.

[02Pilot]

I should have been clearer in what I meant by "give up". I also fix double clearing time - when new, this is about 3 minutes; after 15 rolls (that's conservative, maybe closer to 18) it's edging up to 6 minutes, and it falls off more quickly after that. My patience for fixing runs out at about 7 minutes. Is this in line with what others are seeing?

[Indofunk]

I just thought that was what fixer smelled like. I always get a nose full of hydrogen sulfide. I just turn on the bathroom fan and try to keep things covered. I have been using the same dilution of fixer for over 6 months and it is showing no sign of even weakening, let alone giving out. The bottle is completely silver plated on the inside. I filter it if the sediment gets too much or there is silver floating on top. I figure I will just keep going with this dilution until the strip test fails.

What fixer are you using, in what dilution, and how many rolls have you run through it? I ask because mine (Ilford Rapid Fix, 1+4 mixed in 750mL batches) always starts to give up after 15 rolls or so.

I'm using the same as you are. I probably have over 20 rolls through. Are you seeing a sudden collapse in activity or a gradual decline? I rinse after developing and generally use developers in the Rodinal family. I'm not sure if the metol developers will affect the fixer or not. Maybe the plating and filtering lowers the silver load in the fixer so it can keep going. If it is saturated with silver, I imagine it isn't going to be very effective at clearing/dissolving new silver.

That's the weird thing ... it's going bad in the bottle of concentrate. So ostensibly, this stuff has never seen a silver grain in its life. I don't keep track of how many rolls I put through it, just the date I mixed it, and after about a month or so I start Hypochecking it before each dev cycle and if it fails then I mix up a new batch from concentrate.

Unless it smells like rotten eggs 

[jharr]

I should have been clearer in what I meant by "give up". I also fix double clearing time - when new, this is about 3 minutes; after 15 rolls (that's conservative, maybe closer to 18) it's edging up to 6 minutes, and it falls off more quickly after that. My patience for fixing runs out at about 7 minutes. Is this in line with what others are seeing?

I may not be a good one to compare with since I use thin base films that clear literally in seconds. So if my fixer is fading and I have to fix for a minute, I'm still okay with that.

[Francois]

I find that's probably one of the problems with rapid fixers: it takes so long to reach the patience threshold that we can overwork it quite a bit.
They say that we should do a clearing test when new and take note of that time. When it takes twice as long to clear, we should dump it.
But when you have a 13 second clearing time, double that is still under 30 seconds. I can live with that.

[KevinAllan]

At the moment I'm using Fotospeed FX30 Odourless Fixer, which doesn't smell either in concentrate or diluted. But when it runs out I will just buy whatever is cheapest, as I've never really found the smell too bad from any fixer I've used.

Now sepia toner ... that is another matter. I want to use some but I'm waiting till my wife goes away for a few days.

[jharr]

At the moment I'm using Fotospeed FX30 Odourless Fixer, which doesn't smell either in concentrate or diluted. But when it runs out I will just buy whatever is cheapest, as I've never really found the smell too bad from any fixer I've used.

Now sepia toner ... that is another matter. I want to use some but I'm waiting till my wife goes away for a few days.

Is sepia toner still made with actual cuttlefish ink, or is it a dye now? I would imagine it is a dye since the 'real' sepia tends to fade.

[Francois]

Actually real sepia is considered an archival process since the silver is replaced by a more stable compound.
But there are dye based sepia toners out there (like the ones from Berg) that just alter the color.

I'm wondering if we all got bad rapid fix from the same batch?
On the bottom of the back label, mine says it's

BATCH NUMBER
03A028

[Indofunk]

Nope, mine is 27A009

[Francois]

That means they probably changed the recipe.
I'll need to get some fresher fix this week so I'll check the new bottle. If it stinks as much, I'm contacting ilford.

[limr]

I always thought that Ilford Rapid Fix smelled like canned tuna. So whenever I develop, I almost always end up craving a tuna salad sandwich with a cup of coffee

I've had the Ilford Rapid fixer go cloudy on me sometimes and I usually toss it when it does.

[Adam Doe]

I always thought that Ilford Rapid Fix smelled like canned tuna. So whenever I develop, I almost always end up craving a tuna salad sandwich with a cup of coffee

I've had the Ilford Rapid fixer go cloudy on me sometimes and I usually toss it when it does.

The last batch that I mixed was cloudy and a bit stinky, but I tested it and it cleared quite well so I used it and it works just fine.

[Francois]

I've had some turn really cloudy and it still works.
My last batch got a nice white deposit of something after the first day.
I tried filtering it out and it just reappeared, so it's finer stuff than my coffee filters.

[limr]

I always thought that Ilford Rapid Fix smelled like canned tuna. So whenever I develop, I almost always end up craving a tuna salad sandwich with a cup of coffee

I've had the Ilford Rapid fixer go cloudy on me sometimes and I usually toss it when it does.

The last batch that I mixed was cloudy and a bit stinky, but I tested it and it cleared quite well so I used it and it works just fine.

It only really happened with one of the bottles that I bought, and I did use it for a little while before trying to make a new batch, but then there were also these little specks of shmutz in it that I didn't really want to settle on my film, so I just dumped it and got a new bottle. Haven't had that problem again. Well, not yet!

[Francois]

Just a followup to the fixer story...and it took a turn for the strange.
Last night I processed some film  (Fuji Acros 100).
When the developer came out, it was pretty blue, so I figured that they had used a blue AH layer. No big deal there.
But when I fixed, the fixer came out a weird salmon color!
I opened the tank, pulled the reel out only to find a strange white smear on the film... I let it soak a bit longer in the fix and it went away.
So, I just dumped it and will start fresh with a new bottle I got yesterday...

[imagesfrugales]

Here's my fixer story.

When I started with home lab processing some of years ago the first bottle of fixer was OK (don't remeber which), it lasted about 2 years with no probs.

Then I was given a half filled 20+ years old Tetenal Superfix in its plastic bottle and it was clear, smelled fresh and nice and did the job perfectly. Wow! Thumbs up for this Methusalem!

When this bottle was used up, next fixer was branded Adofix from Adox. After about 1 year the concentrate became a stinky, cloudy disgusting sludge and I dunped it. I read of others having the same prob with this fixer. All thumbs down!

Then I bought a 3 liter canister of noname rapid fixer and it first worked nicely. But soon the negatives got billions of white spots, only the first film fixed in working solution was OK. It took me some frustrating time to see what the problem was. I dumped more than 1 Liter of the remaining concentrate. Thumbs down again!

Now I'm using Agfa Fix-Ag, and it seems to be of very good quality that solved the spots-problem immediately. The working solution keeps for at least 1 year and the concentrate is still like new after maybe 2 years. Thumbs up again :-) My negs are finally clear and spot-free again. Phew, I took a deep breath....... Besides the decades old Tetenal the best fixer so far.


Conclusion: fixer obviously is not as trivial as it seems to or could be. As we have seen here, also premium branded fixer can be a pita. Recipes, raw chemicals, quality control or what ever can be inferiour. We should name the bad working, bad keeping products like we do it here and write to the producers.

[Francois]

Great idea to have a list of bad products.

I know I had been using Ilford for what seems like forever but my latest experiment gave me a bit of a sour taste (and more than my nose could handle).
I did get a new (but smaller) bottle of the same hoping they fixed the problem... if not, it's going to be time to try and find a new source for my rapid fix.

[Bryan]

I recently bought a bottle of Ilford Rapid Fixer and it seemed fine.  The only reason I got it was for my New-55 film, that's what they recommend.  I was thinking of continuing with it in the future but maybe not now.  I have been using Photographers Formulary TF-4 Archival Fix for several years now with no complaints.  It always seems to go farther and last longer than they claim and the odor isn't bad.  A one liter bottle lasts me about a year.  This is what they say about it on their web site:

Formulary's TF-4 Archival Rapid Fixer is excellent for use with PMK and other Pyro Film Developers.. TF-4 is an extraordinary fixer for both paper and some films. TF-4 works well in batch processing, fixing resin coated paper in 30 seconds and fiber based paper in 60 seconds. You can also use TF-4 on T-Max films, fixing for 6 minutes to remove the magenta stain. We recommend 20 rolls of film to 1 liter working solution. TF-4 does not require a stop bath nor a hypo clearing agent, and has little odor when mixed with distilled water. TF-4 is a non-hardening fixer which makes it excellent for prints that are to be toned or retouched. Most modern film emulsions have built-in hardener, eliminating the need for hardener in the fix. The stock solution which has a shelf life of 1 year is diluted 1:3 to make the working solution. The working solution has a shelf life of 6 months.

[Adam Doe]

I always thought that Ilford Rapid Fix smelled like canned tuna. So whenever I develop, I almost always end up craving a tuna salad sandwich with a cup of coffee

I've had the Ilford Rapid fixer go cloudy on me sometimes and I usually toss it when it does.

The last batch that I mixed was cloudy and a bit stinky, but I tested it and it cleared quite well so I used it and it works just fine.

It only really happened with one of the bottles that I bought, and I did use it for a little while before trying to make a new batch, but then there were also these little specks of shmutz in it that I didn't really want to settle on my film, so I just dumped it and got a new bottle. Haven't had that problem again. Well, not yet!

I figure as long as a clearing test works, and the fixer doesn't have the look and texture of New England clam chowder, then I'll probably use it.

[Indofunk]

I always thought that Ilford Rapid Fix smelled like canned tuna. So whenever I develop, I almost always end up craving a tuna salad sandwich with a cup of coffee

I've had the Ilford Rapid fixer go cloudy on me sometimes and I usually toss it when it does.

The last batch that I mixed was cloudy and a bit stinky, but I tested it and it cleared quite well so I used it and it works just fine.

It only really happened with one of the bottles that I bought, and I did use it for a little while before trying to make a new batch, but then there were also these little specks of shmutz in it that I didn't really want to settle on my film, so I just dumped it and got a new bottle. Haven't had that problem again. Well, not yet!

I figure as long as a clearing test works, and the fixer doesn't have the look and texture of New England clam chowder, then I'll probably use it.

Yup, mine was definitely chowdah. Smelled a great deal worse though 

[Adam Doe]

Yup, mine was definitely chowdah. Smelled a great deal worse though