Switched from tap water to distilled for film rinsing and my negatives look way cleaner

Used to just run my developed film under the kitchen faucet for the final rinse. Last month I tried distilled water with a drop of Photo-Flo instead. The tap water here in Portland must have had something in it because I was always getting those little water spots. Now the negatives come out spotless and dry evenly. Anybody else had better luck switching to distilled?

2 comments

2 Comments

anthony12713h agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, same exact thing happened to me with my tap water. I was getting these weird calcium spots on black and white negatives no matter how careful I was with squeegeeing. Switched to distilled water and a drop of Kodak Photo-Flo and it's night and day. I still squeegee lightly but the negatives dry totally uniform now, no streaks or residue. I'm in an area with hard water so that was probably my issue, but distilled fixed it completely. I even started using it for my final wash after the stabilizer step and it cut down on dust sticking too.

noahchen13h ago

Wait what, you actually wash B&W film with tap water?