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Process control

J-86’s quick reference swaps the rinse and Hypo Clearing Agent notes

Shows that Kodak J-86’s Quick Reference final-steps table places the running-water rinse instruction on the Hypo Clearing Agent row and the interval-agitation note on the 30-second Rinse row, while AJ-3, J-109 and ED-BWF align those same note strings with the matching steps.

Published by AnalogFixer ·

Kodak’s T-MAX Developers sheet and Kodak’s other process tables examined here do not attach the same notes to the post-fix rinse and Hypo Clearing Agent steps.

On J-86’s page-12 Quick Reference, the Agitation and Notes cell for the 30-second Rinse is the interval-agitation sentence that AJ-3, J-109 and ED-BWF print on Hypo Clearing Agent / wash aid. The cell for Hypo Clearing Agent is the running-water rinse sentence those other sheets print on Rinse. The Time column on J-86 still reads 30 seconds for Rinse and 1 to 2 minutes for Hypo Clearing Agent.

This article compares that note-column alignment. It is not a wash recipe, and it does not choose which note a worker should follow.

What J-86 prints on page 12

KODAK PROFESSIONAL T-MAX Developers, Kodak Alaris publication J-86, December 2017 (Revised 12-17), ends with QUICK REFERENCE TO PROCESSING FILMS. Steps 4 and 5 of that table read:

Step Time Agitation and Notes
4. Rinse 30 seconds Agitate continuously for the first 30 seconds and then at 30-second intervals.
5. Hypo Clearing Agent 1 to 2 minutes Rinse the film in the tank under running water.

Those strings sit on those rows in the manufacturer PDF examined here: word coordinates put “Agitate…” on the same baseline as 4.Rinse, and “Rinse the film…” on the same baseline as 5.Hypo Clearing Agent. A June 2025 Wayback capture of the same Kodak Moments URL is byte-identical to the live file and carries the same pairing.

The Rinse note is not workable inside the Time cell beside it. A 30-second step cannot contain both a continuous first 30 seconds and later 30-second intervals. That timing mismatch is part of what that page prints; it is not a separate measurement.

J-86 has no other Rinse / Hypo Clearing Agent process table in the PDF examined here. The Quick Reference is the only place those two step labels appear with notes.

Diagram showing J-86 quick reference swapping rinse and Hypo Clearing Agent notes between sections.

AJ-3, J-109 and ED-BWF keep the notes on the matching steps

AJ-3, How to Process and Print Black-and-White Film, February 2016 (Revised 2/16), uses the same step order and the same Time figures, but the notes are reversed relative to J-86:

Step Time Agitation and Notes
4. Rinse 30 seconds Rinse the film in the tank under running water.
5. Hypo Clearing Agent 1 to 2 minutes Agitate continuously for the first 30 seconds and then at 30-second intervals.

J-109 for KODAK PROFESSIONAL XTOL Developer, February 2018, under Final Steps in Small-Tank, Tray, and Rotary-Tube Processing, matches that alignment with only minor wording differences in the Hypo Clearing Agent note (“and at 30-second intervals after that” rather than AJ-3’s “and then at 30-second intervals”):

Step Time Notes
Rinse 30 seconds Rinse the film in the tank under running water.
Hypo Clearing Agent 1 to 2 minutes Agitate continuously for the first 30 seconds and at 30-second intervals after that.

ED-BWF, Processing KODAK PROFESSIONAL Black-and-White Films, March 2023 (Revised 3-23), names the middle step Wash aid rather than Hypo Clearing Agent, and prefixes the agitation sentence with a treat-with-product clause, but still puts the running-water sentence on Rinse and the interval agitation on the wash-aid row:

Step Time Comments
Rinse 0:30 Rinse the film in the tank under running water.
Wash aid 1:00 to 2:00 Treat with KODAK PROFESSIONAL Hypo Clearing Agent. Agitate continuously for the first 30 seconds and then at 30-second intervals.

So the two note strings that sit crossed on J-86 are, on these three sheets, attached to the steps their wording describes. None of those three sheets marks J-86’s Quick Reference as superseded, and J-86 does not point to AJ-3, J-109 or ED-BWF for a corrected final-steps notes column.

What a citation has to carry

Anyone quoting Kodak’s post-fix rinse or Hypo Clearing Agent notes from this set is quoting either:

  • J-86’s Quick Reference pairing — interval agitation on the 30-second Rinse row; running-water rinse wording on the Hypo Clearing Agent row — or
  • the AJ-3 / J-109 / ED-BWF pairing — running-water rinse wording on Rinse; interval agitation on Hypo Clearing Agent / wash aid —

unless the citation names the document and the row.

No sheet in the sources examined here explains why J-86’s notes column is crossed relative to the other three, supplies a corrected Quick Reference, or states that the Time column alone governs when the notes disagree. Treating the four tables as one Kodak final-steps instruction, or rewriting J-86’s notes into AJ-3’s alignment without saying so, goes past the documents. The wash duration on those same tables is a separate fork; see Kodak’s film wash is 20–30 or 5 by sheet. Step 7’s wetting clock on J-86 disagrees with J-109’s band; see Photo-Flo step is 30 seconds or 30 seconds to 1 minute.

References