DF96 Monobath Shelf Life
Can anyone share their real world experience with the shelf life of the Cinestill Df96 Monobath chemistry? I'll start with mine so far:
- I opened the bottle on May 6th, and have processed about one roll per month in it with my 7th roll being processed last night on Nov 8th.
- I've always stored the bottle in the fridge beside my film and C41 chemistry and haven't bothered using any special techniques to remove air.
- I haven't been doing "snip tests" but I did do one last night and it turned sort of a very dark brown/black.
- I've been processing Kentmere 100 and 400 at box speed at 75F using constant agitation by "spinning" a patterson tank with the little spinner stick back and forth and taking into account the extra time to add as I've used rolls. I've often erred on the side of giving it an extra 30 seconds to a minute as it says right in the instructions extra processing will just help clear the film
- I haven't bothered "filtering" the chemistry through a coffee filter or anything like that at all so far.
So I guess my question is, am I playing with fire here by continuing to use this chemistry? Does anyone have any real world shelf life experiences to share? I did some searching online and mostly just found posts of people complaining about monobaths and or their results.
At some point I'll probably switch to 3 stage development, but it's hard to justify doing that when this stuff is still working.