Flattening curly negs: fail-proof secret technique?

dufffader

dufffader

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I'm using a KM Scan Elite 5400 II, and scanning film strips consists of putting the strip of 6 frames on a plastic magazine. The thing that bugs me is that if the film is relatively curly along the horizontal axis, the ends will not be flat. What then happens is that the first frame & last frame will have blurry corners. Tri-X is relatively flat, so are most Ilford films. Fuji films I love for what it renders, but its curly as hell. When you snip out a strip it rolls up into a cylinder!

Now the magic question. Anyone here has any time tested method to flatten negatives short of buying a room sized contraption? Heavy books I've tried, but it seems to require the negatives to be compressed for an eternity to be effective.

Thanks,
 
When a neg has finished drying I take it and roll it up tightly enough against it's natural curl to actually get it into a 35mm plastic film canister where I leave it for several hours! This goes a long way to countering the problem! 🙂
 
Keith said:
When a neg has finished drying I take it and roll it up tightly enough against it's natural curl to actually get it into a 35mm plastic film canister where I leave it for several hours! This goes a long way to countering the problem! 🙂
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This has been the best tip I've learnt from RFF (one could say I have not learnt much) - it used to frustrate the &^%$ out of me... no longer an issue for me.
 
dfoo said:
I sleeve the negs and put them in between some heavy books. Then stick that on top of a radiator. The weight and the heat seems to flatten the negatives fairly quickly.
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I use the book trick as well but have never tried the radiator, I may try that! It is annoying as hell for scanning and the only time I really think to myself, should I go all digital? But then I see my results and think, no 😀
 
It's all in the drying technique. You really need a commercial drying cabinet that heats and blow drys. Once the film has been heated and left to dry with weighted clips it will dry straight. Bulk loaded film tends to have less curl than commercially loaded as it is kept in larger coils instead of being tighly wound into the cassettes. There are so many dark rooms closing down the drying cabinets are easy to find and are cheap.
Andrew.
 
... so I guess consensus is that its the heat that will help to straighten it... the weight merely keeps it straight while its being heat treated...
 
I've got a home-made version of the Senrac which dries the film on the S.S. reels. When I take the film out of the wash and dip it in the Photoflo solution I take the film off the reel, then wind it back on emulsion side out. This will put a bit of a reverse curl, but not too bad. Hanging overnight with a weighted clip will get the rest of the curl out, but they're still flat enough for ease in making contact sheets withiout hanging first. That should do for scanning as well. The biggest problem I've had is with some recording and scientific films on an Estar base. Nothing seems to get the curl out, even after years stored in sleeves.
 
Never Satisfied said:
It's all in the drying technique. You really need a commercial drying cabinet that heats and blow drys. Once the film has been heated and left to dry with weighted clips it will dry straight. Bulk loaded film tends to have less curl than commercially loaded as it is kept in larger coils instead of being tighly wound into the cassettes. There are so many dark rooms closing down the drying cabinets are easy to find and are cheap.
Andrew.
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That's how I do it, with a small Jobo cabinet. The only problem is that it actually can dry so straight that its hard to handle during cutting/sleeving.
 
hunghang said:
This has been the best tip I've learnt from RFF (one could say I have not learnt much) - it used to frustrate the &^%$ out of me... no longer an issue for me.
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It amazes me Hung that you are one of the few people who have tried this and commented on how well it works!

Every time we have one of these curly negative threads I mention this technique and as we say in this country it appears to go ... 'straight through to the keeper!' 🙄 :angel:
 
I honestly didn't know that film curl problems were so prevalent. I just hang my rolls from a clothesline with a second clothespin clamped to the bottom of the strip and let it drip dry overnight. I can't ever remember having one curl badly afterwards.
 
Keith said:
When a neg has finished drying I take it and roll it up tightly enough against it's natural curl to actually get it into a 35mm plastic film canister where I leave it for several hours! This goes a long way to countering the problem! 🙂
Click to expand...

I use similar tecnique but do not roll tighly to put into plastic film canister - it's too easy to scratch or somehow damage the film. I just use letter (A4) sheet of paper to wrap my roll. Sometimes I may use spare plastic developer tank with single spiral reels (not paterson dual spirals). I load dry processed film onto the reels emulsion side out and keep film in a dry tank for a few days before I decide it's time to cut the film into strips.

Regards,
Ed
 
I just found a box stuffed with some 20 year old negatives. Each and every one was perfectly flat. So, put them in a box for 20 years, and that ought to do it!
 
I don't have a drying cabinet (at the moment, I'm thinking I need to get one soon as dust is driving me up the wall) but I just weight my negatives down when drying with a weighted clip at the bottom. Bob's your uncle, nice flat negatives.

(They're suspended on my shower curtain rail, nothing like a right proper professional setup eh, 😀)
 
Wind it, emulsion side out, onto a film developing spool - if it's already cut into strips, work the strip as far into the centre as it will go, to get the most backwards-curvature.

I find that, even with films that have already dried out very curved indeed (like some Sensia I processed recently), leaving them wound on a spool for a couple of days will leave them flat for long enough to scan.
 
Lilserenity said:
I don't have a drying cabinet (at the moment, I'm thinking I need to get one soon as dust is driving me up the wall) but I just weight my negatives down when drying with a weighted clip at the bottom. Bob's your uncle, nice flat negatives.

(They're suspended on my shower curtain rail, nothing like a right proper professional setup eh, 😀)
Click to expand...

I hang mine to dry on shower curtain rails too. On a heavy developing night it could substitute for a real curtain! Of course I've got to be careful to put them into sleeves in the morning before someone really takes a shower in there.
 
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