Compressed air alternative for dust control in BW scans

froyd

froyd

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Recently abandoned the luxury of C41 BW for the fun of Tri-X, Hp5, Fp4 and the like. I use a hybrid workflow where I scan and inkjet print my images. I knew that by going to silver emulsions, I would give up the convenience of ICE, so i armed myself with a few bottles of compressed air, but I hate the wastefulness of the process. In the 10 years that I've been away from the silver emulsions has there been any new technology designed to mitigate dust other than anti-static brushes?
 
Keep a blown up balloon taped near the open ends of your film scanner to pull dust away from the scanner opening itself and possibly off the film. This really works to collect dust that could wind up in the scanner or on the film. Once in a while you'll have to replace the balloon as you notice it collecting more dust.
As for cans of air, maybe invest in a good small air compressor with an even better dryer element in the air supply line.

Phil Forrest
 
I use an Ilford Antistaticum cloth to wipe my film before scanning. It's really quite good.
 
I use a microfiber cloth (very cheap in the supermarket) to remove dust from negatives, enlarger and scanner. Works really great.

The antisticum cloth from Ilford that Philippus mentions contains a liquid of some sort that I don't trust.

Erik.
 
Kinetronics makes an unpowered double brush that you can use to loosen dust before blowing off with some kind of pumped air or compressed gas.

Otherwise, the moving air/gas solutions will be fairly poor.

Dante
 
I use a Rocket blower and microfiber cloth. The biggest improvement was adding a dust cover to both V700 & LS50 scanners.
 
Humidity is your friend (as well as the clone tool in PS). If you can increase it in your working area, so much the better. A Walmart $20 vaporizer will do it. I like those little anti static brushes you can buy too.
 
I realize not everyone is willing to do this, but an air compressor with an air hose, blower, and 50-60 psi pressure in your work area beats every other method hands down. Just saying.
Besides, without an air compressor you won’t be able to do that black paint Leica you dream about.
 
Rocket blower and anti-static brush. I use the radioactive Staticmaster, although it's been years since I bought a fresh polonium strip, and it still works.
 
The rocket blower has a one-way valve so it won't suck in dust from the piece being cleaned (although it could pull in dust from behind, id there is any).
 
+1 for the Rocket Blower but make sure to buy the largest one offered because the smaller ones don't have enough capacity to create a really big "puff" when you need it. You can create a small puff with the large size if desired but you cannot create a large puff with the small size!

Doug
 
PhotoFlo takes initial care of dust and static it seems.
And then Rocket Blower.
Still, I'm finding it much better with enlarger. I would have scanner to pickup and make it visible every tiny scratch, but under enlarger it often invisible.
 
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