[Leica] Ups and downs of stop baths?

[jblack at ambio.net (John Black)]

> So I've gotten this general impression that a substantial number of
> folks aren't fans of stop baths for black and white negative film and
> just slosh around water in its place which.
>
> So what's the thinking here? The stop bath gets in the way of fixing
> later? Has some bad effect on film grain? I would assume that it would
> be a good thing to quickly stop the development process.

The short answer is that modern films and low pH developers (mostly
phenidone/ascorbic acid) just don't need a stop bath any more.  I have a
completely odorless darkroom with no acetic acid smells and no MQ odors. Any
dev with a time of over 7.5 min will work fine with just a water stop.


>
> Now when using very dilute devopers, like XTOL 1:3 where it's
> essentially completely expired at the end of development, I can see
> that just washing the film for 30 seconds with water might not be a
> bad thing. But what about 1:1? Or some other developers?

Water stop works fine with Xtol at all concentrations.

JB