Chemistry and Film Choices

When I began my return to film photography, and make no mistake I have made thousands of photographs with my digital camera both commercial and private, I very carefully chose my materials up front. This is what I wanted to use and why.

  • Ilford FP4+ 4X5 and 35mm-36
    • Ilford Perceptol
  • IlfoStop
  • Ilford Rapid Fixer
  • Ilford Washaid
  • Ilford Wetting Agent

The film. Ilford FP4+ is in production and most closely matches Kodak Plus-X Panchromatic. When I was a young man, my go to film was Kodak Tri-X. I made use of the grain with 35mm film. Grain wasn’t a problem with roll film — remind me to post scans of the photographs I made of birds in flight while panning with my twin lens reflex Mamiya C3. Yeah I was amazed. Anyway, this time around I decided to go for invisible grain, plus according to Ilford, and this is from memory, FP4+ can be over exposed by 2-stops (ASA 25) and under exposed by 6 stops (ASA 6400!) and deliver usable negatives. For what it’s worth I’m limiting myself to plus or minus 1 stop and pull or push processing. Age has taught me that there are limits.

The developer. Ilford Perceptol is the closest match to Kodak Microdol-X and that developer along with ASA 32 Kodak Panatomic-X was the next best thing to no grain.

The stop bath. IlfoStop is a citric acid stop bath and after much consideration I decided to try something safer for my well being, plus I won’t walk around stinking of salad dressing. A stop bath ends the developing process right now and protects the next processing bath. Helping in this decision is the fact that B&H won’t ship acetic acid based Kodak Indicator Stop and but will ship the Ilford product.

The fixer. Ilford Rapid Fix. This is a non-hardening “fixer.” Fixing is the removal of unexposed silver halides making the film safe to see the blinding light of day. Hardeners are added to toughen up the gelatin layer that holds all of the magic so it will be more damage resistant. But the down side it hardening chemicals also make it more difficult to wash the chemical process byproducts from the gelatin. We don’t want to leave those destructive byproducts in the gelatin. Ilford has a system for washing film and paper with very little water and quickly.

The Hypo Clearing Agent. Ilford Washaid is part of the Ilford system and is yet another chemical process to remove the remaining Ilford Rapid Fix from the gelatin layer.

The wetting agent. Ilford Ilfotol is Ilford’s wetting agent, something to break the surface tension of the water so the film or paper will dry with fewer spots. Reading the Ilford catalog it would be easy to assume that Washaid is the wetting agent but no, Ilfotol is the wetting agent and Washaid is the hypo clearing agent.