The world’s only powder rapid fixer also happens to be the most potent. So potent in fact that you have to further dilute 1 liter of working solution to 2 liters in order to match liquid concentrate rapid fixers. We use the purest ammonium thiosulfate agents to fix your film and make it archival in record time. Just add water!
Reusable solution fixes 24+ rolls of B&W or color film and can be diluted to make 1-2 liters of working solution fixer for the traditional 2-bath B&W process or Bleach-Bypass color process.
The “Bleach-bypass” color process, also known as skip bleach or silver retention, is a process of skipping the step of bleaching during processing of color films. By doing this, silver is retained in the emulsion along with color dyes. The result is a black and white image over a color image. The images usually have reduced saturation along with increased contrast and graininess.
Motion Picture “Bleach-bypass” was first used in cinematography by Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Inagaki in film Rickshaw Man (1957). Kazuo Miyagawa, as Daiei Film’s cameraman, invented bleach-bypass for Inagaki’s film, inspired by the color rendition in the original release of Moby-Dick (1956), printed using dye-transfer Technicolor, and was achieved through the use of an additional black and white overlay. Actually, this is a throwback to pre-1944 Technicolor, which incorporated a silver-containing “blank receiver”. Despite this early foray into the technique, it remained overlooked for the most part until its use by Roger Deakins for 1984 (1984). The effect has subsequently become a regular development tool in labwork, and has remained in widespread use. Practitioners include cinematographers Rodrigo Prieto, Remi Adefarasin, Darius Khondji, Dariusz Wolski, Walter Carvalho, Oliver Stapleton, Newton Thomas Sigel, Park Gok-ji, Shane Hurlbut, Steven Soderbergh (as “Peter Andrews”), Tom Stern, Vittorio Storaro, and Janusz Kamiński (notably on Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Minority Report.
T-grain films and bleach bypassed color film require Rapid Fixer (ammonium thio) to fully clear the color dyes. Standard cubic-grain films finish fixing in as little as 1-2 minutes! Washing of films is also exceedingly fast, due to the rapid absorption rates of ammonium thiosulfate in emulsions.
- 1 liter of working strength F96 Rapid Fixer solution fixes 24+ rolls of 135 or 120, or 100 4x5in sheets of black & white film. 1+1 paper dilution fixes 80 sheets of 8x10in resin coated (RC) prints, or 40 sheets of 8x10in fiber based (FB) prints.
- Wash films in running water for 5–10 minutes at a temperature within 5°C (10°F) of the process temperature.
- Film clearing time: In order to avoid the risk of insufficient fixing, film should remain in the fixer for twice the time it takes the emulsion to visibly clear. Used fixer should be discarded when film isn’t visibly clear in twice the time as with fresh fixer. The clearing time of a film and fixer combination can be found by the following method. Take a piece of scrap unprocessed film and place a drop of the working strength fixer on to part of the emulsion side. Time how long it takes until the emulsion under the drop is a clear spot, this should take between 15-60 seconds with traditional B&W films. The time it takes for the film to clear is the clearing time. The fixing time needed is double the clearing time.
