Help Needed: C41 Dev Teething Problems (Tetenal Kit). Particles ?

[grahamc]

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On 4/26/2023 at 5:27 AM, Stuart Richardson said:

I have not seen this problem, but it does look like it is an issue with the chemistry, not your technique.  I would take a flashlight and look carefully at the solutions (pour them into a clear container if necessary). My money would be on precipitate in the fixer. Have you looked at the bottom of the original bottles? Fixer tends to go yellow and gather at the bottom of the bottle if it is too old. I would not be surprised if the kit was old. I would also reach out to Tetenal themselves. They will likely be able to give you better advice, as well as a replacement if they think it is their fault, and they probably will be able to tell you by batch number how old the kit is. They have been responsive to me in the past when I wrote to them directly (to see if there was an Icelandic distributor). They have a UK office too, which is the one I wrote to, I believe.

As for filtering, I have taken to filtering my chemicals as I mix them. I have a funnel with a wire mesh filter in the spout. It is not going to stop the smallest particles, but it does a good job of removing undissolved sediment and dust/hairs etc. I also would not be all that trusting of filtered water if you purchased it. I have bought deionized water from a supplier to use in chemistry and found that it was actually not free of particles. Now I use a 5 micron filter on the water for the whole darkroom. That cleaned things up quite a bit. Just remember to run it for five minutes or so when you first put in a new filter, so you can wash out most of the fibers left loose on the filter.

Thanks for this Stuart .  I didn't look at the original bottles but I'll know to next time - yes it wouldn't surprise me at all if the kit was old, being over here.

I'm really keen to crack open a new refrigerated 250ML batch this weekend to see if it was a freak occurrence, contamination (not unlikely through first-session jitters), or perhaps just over-use .

I'll report back here how I get on 

[grahamc]

For what it's worth I just checked all my bottles , they look innocent enough (nothing settling at the bottom and look very clean in filled glass 250ml bottles with no room for air in the top).   I know would probably be impossible to see by eye if anything is wrong, but I'm ever the optimist !

 

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