Hi Dieter,
Leaving the developer aside for a moment:
Why is water actually better (or not?) in this case than a coating with Protectan or similar?
Because the bottle is then full again and the remaining air has only a small volume. A small, reasonably defined volume.
With Protectan/argon/lighter gas, the end user has far too much leeway: one person blows ‘pfft’, another ‘pffffffffft’, and thus displaces the air much more effectively. In one case, the expensive stuff goes off, in the other it doesn’t.
You should really do this with every developer. Unfortunately, however, users of standard chemicals aren’t necessarily capable of doing so (or are too lazy, like me) to first calculate the working solution and carefully measure out the volumes from the bottle every time they make a fresh batch. I recall with a certain horror questions such as “how can I divide the D76 powder batch into four portions?”.
Best regards,
Franz
