Practice question · Multiple choice
A printer fixes every print for twice the recommended time, reasoning that more fixing must be safer. How does that shorten the print's life rather than extending it?
Hints
- Ask what the fixer starts working on once its intended target is gone.
- The damage is done to the image silver and to the base.
Show the answer
A. Once halides clear, thiosulphate attacks image silver and embeds deeply into fibres, making it harder to wash out
Why
Because the fixer runs out of halide and begins on the image. Prolonged fixing slightly attacks the image silver and drives thiosulfate deep into the paper fibres, where washing struggles to reach it, so the print carries the residue that causes staining. The remedy for uncertainty is fresh fixer, not more time.
Practise Archival Processing and Permanence
The app has 6 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Photography I is free to start.
More questions on Archival Processing and Permanence
- Sort each material by how it behaves in contact with a silver print.
- Hypo-clearing agents accelerate chemical diffusion, whereas selenium toning alters the image silver. How does…
- Washing fibre-base paper takes about 60 minutes in running water, or about 10 minutes after a hypo-clearing…
- Arrange the archival processing sequence for a fibre-base print in order.
- Silver-gelatin materials are stored cool and dry. What relative humidity, as a percentage, sits in the middle…
- Arrange these events in the history of photographic permanence in chronological order.