Is hardener necessary in fixer for sheet film processing? I've been reading that it is not needed anymore with todays films.

Thanks, Bryan

-- Bryan (photoville@yahoo.com), March 30, 2001

Answers

> Is hardener necessary in fixer for sheet film processing?

No, as long as you're careful to not damage the emulsion while it's wet. Hardener wouldn't prevent all mechanical damage but it could help.

-- John Hicks (jbh@magicnet.net), March 31, 2001.

The answer is "it depends..."

Most people seem to be able to get away without hardener, but in some areas, the water supply defeats the film's (or paper's) built in hardeners and makes hardening fix a necessity. I've got the misfortune to have such a water supply and need to harden all gelatin-silver materials. If your unhardened prints stick to the drying screens, or your unhardened negatives frill at the edges or show weird drying marks no matter how carefully you treat them, you need to use hardened fixer. If you don't see any problems, great.

PS: Even in my water, negatives developed with pyro are safe in unhardened fix because of the pyro's tanning

-- Carl Weese (cweese@earthlink.net), March 31, 2001.

The use of a hardener may help to prevent fungal attack of your negatives. Read this paper from Kodak.
My own experience tends to bear this out.
Ilford, on the other hand, have completely changed their stance on hardener in recent years, and now completely eschew its use, apparently. My old 'Ilford manual of photography' strongly recommends the use of hardener, but Ilford have given no explanation for their recent volte face.

My collection of negatives of 30+ years have come to no harm from the use of a hardening fixer, so I, for one, will continue to use it. It certainly doesn't seem to do any harm.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), April 03, 2001.