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Had a change of heart about using distilled water for developer mixes
I always thought distilled water was overkill for mixing developer. Figured tap water was fine since I've been developing at home for like 4 years now. Then I ran into this guy at a camera swap meet in Portland last month who showed me his negatives from two batches. One had these little white spots all over from hard water minerals. He let me look through a loupe and it was obvious. Tried a gallon of distilled on my next roll of Tri-X and the difference was noticeable even to me. Now I'm curious if anyone else has seen better sharpness or just cleaner negs from switching.
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finley9397d ago
Honestly I used to think the same thing, like distilled water was just some hipster film nerd flex. But after I moved to a place with pretty hard water I started noticing these tiny spots on my negatives too and couldn't figure out why. Your story about that guy at the camera swap meet really hits home because I finally tried distilled on a batch of HP5 and the difference in clarity was night and day. It's not just about spots either, the whole image looks sharper to me, like the minerals were actually scattering light or something. I'm not saying it's a total game changer for everyone but for anyone with hard tap water it's definitely worth the dollar or two per gallon. Kinda wish I'd listened to the old heads on this years ago.
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