Considering how quickly we tended to move most prints through the chemicals and wash processes - these were RC prints - I'm stunned at how few of my old prints have any brown spots or stains on them. At school and several different newspapers, the process we used was basically the same: Dektol -> indicator stop bath (that strong-smelling acetic acid you mentioned) -> dunk in pre-fixer tray of water to quickly rinse chemicals off the paper -> fixer -> running clear water bath -> dryer.
I worked at one place that had a Kreonite (I think) roller transport dry-to-dry paper processing machine. It was awful. Anything you wanted to keep for longer than it took to make a halftone needed to be put back in a tray of fixer, then washed and dried.
Thanks for the information about using citric acid. Never considered that, but it sounds like it could be a great substitute for the acetic acid-based stop baths.
I agree that rapid fix is the way to go with film. We never used hypo clearing agent, that was seen as an unneeded extra step. To be honest, we shot so much film, processing it all by hand, that we ended up learning the shortcuts that worked and the ones that didn't. Pushing film too far and then "flashing" while still in the developer for some base fog, using hot Dektol with constant agitation to process Tri-X in one minute, using a hotel toilet to rinse negatives while on the road, printing from wet negs... yikes. We learned the limits of film and chemistry, and then abused the hell out of them both 🤣
Yeah, the more we discuss this the more I get nostalgic too. Though I don't have a place to set up a darkroom, I can see myself using the one my friend is contemplating, if he gets it up and running. There is something richly rewarding about shooting film and making prints that digital processes lack.
I love reading stories like this.
I'm in my mid-30s, and when I took an interest in photography in high school I opted to put my efforts toward film. This was in the mid-2000s, and back then film was a dying but still perfectly viable professional medium. Of course photojournalism was probably the first medium, and as you probably know the AP and some big papers were quick to jump on the big, clunky Kodak DSLRs. In my collection I have a Kodak NC2000, a camera special made for the AP that's I think a 1.2mp APS-C sized sensor in a massive digital back mated to a Nikon N90s and built around the Kodak DCS 400 series architecture. It's on my to-fix-one-day list-numbers I've found indicated that they made about 800 of these(there were a few thousand DCS 400 series cameras in total-my DCS 420 doesn't work either, but I hope it will be an easy fix since I know where the board is fried and have the parts to do it-just not the time).
When I started in photography, every "real" camera store still had film refrigerator behind the counter, and honest to goodness pro labs were closing almost by the day but were definitely around. Even if a lot of pro use was drying up, the infrastructure to support what was still around was still there.
In any case, I love reading all the stories and you're not the first I've heard mention things like hot Dektol for super short times on Tri-X and then printing it wet, or doing whatever else you needed to do just to get to press.
My hometown newspaper, back in the day a 5 day a week afternoon, then a Sunday morning edition, use to talk about how they'd built a big, nice new building in 1998 with wonderful darkroom facilities, and within a year they had bought a couple of Nikon D1s and the darkrooms became fancy storage rooms.
To the hot Dektol point, though-there was a retired Kodak engineer who used to post on Photo.net, APUG, and a few other places. He's since passed away, but was a gold mine of knowledge. You'd find his name on some patents, and among other things I think he'd actively worked on Kodachrome but in general knew everything that seemed to be known about film and processing.
Maybe 2006 or 2007, Efke film out of Croatia? started to become really popular. I bough a bunch of it, and even still have some in the freezer(including some 2x3 sheet film). It's no longer around, but was basically 1950s film made on 1950s coating machines. It was fun to play with, but really I just decided my time was better spent really learning one emulsion, and since Kodak pulled my favorite(Plus-X) that became Tri-X.
In any case, one of the things that people started noticing about Efke was that it would reticulate super easily-like even a 10º temperature difference between two subsequent baths could do it.
For a(mercifully) short period of time I remember intentional reticulation becoming a "thing" on APUG, but people who were trying to do it noticed that they could easily make it happen on Efke, Foma, and some of the other small brand products. Ilford films needed pretty big temperature swings, while Kodak B&W, and Tri-X in particular, was nearly impossible to reticulate. It would usually do it if you took it from near boiling(which would mess with the base pretty badly at least on acetate film) to near ice cold. Going from normal tap water hot and cold temperatures(which would sometimes make Ilford films reticulate, sometimes not) wouldn't even phase Tri-X.
Ron(Photo Engineer on Pnet and APUG) basically said that Tri-X and most other then current Kodak B&W films really were designed to be abused and hold up for photojournalists and other people who valued speed of results over almost anything. Apparently Kodak put a lot of effort into really toughening up the emulsion so that hot Dektol followed by room temperature fixer stood no chance of damaging the emulsion, and probably overdid it in the process.
I thought it was interesting to see all of that, and it really is a testament to the fact that Kodak knew it was a
working medium, not just something for hobbyists.
