Dust on Negs

[spenny]

After 5 years of shooting digital I forgot the problem of dust and hairs etc. on my negs. I use a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED and slides are no problem keeping clean but I'm having a heck of a time with dust on neg strips. I suspect that part of the problem may be the design of the Nikon film strip holder which seems to have a lot of empty interior space perfect for floating dust.

My procedure is to blow off the neg strips with canned air and then wipe them through an anti-static cloth. No dice - I spend about half an hour on each neg cloning away dust spots with PhotoShop. Not enough of a problem to send me packing back to digital but it sure tests my patience. BTW my films are processed by a good film lab and come back to me in plastic strips. They only reach open air just long enough for me to wipe them and slide them into the scanner.

Any useful ideas ? Happy Christmas everyone.

 

[Buttons]

I use a very soft brush (artist brush) and wipe it down with a cloth, this works for me 90% of the time.
Canned air only replaces the dust 9mm or so further ... I found this an annoying solution also. For hardcore dust which seems to reside on some of my slides/negs I simply use a vacuum cleaner, this works great, but you must be carefull not to suck in to complete film .....

Dust is everywhere, and must be the most irritating factor for any photographer...

 

[ch1]

It isn't the scanner!

The 5000D is so good that it is "picking" up everything.

Do you have the DigitalICE setting engaged? That will help.

Truth be told, I scan in either NEF or TIFF and at these levels - you're going to find every dust speck and scratch imaginable! If you're using those setting - consider how powerful your scanner actually is and be glad.

Drop down to high quality JPEG if you want to minimize the dust/scratch thing w/o losing too much picture quality.

 

[spenny]

Dust on Negs

Thanks folks. I suspected that there was no magic fix but I'm an optimist.
I have tried Digital Ice in Nikon Scan and the IR cleanup setting in VueScan but the improvement in both cases is only minimal. I'll dump the canned air for the time being. At least I only have to spot once as against the good old wet darkroom days when every print had to be worked on.

Is it possible that B&W neg emulsions are more prone to attract dust than color media because my most serious problems are with B&W ?

 

[alegalle]

Digital ICE dosn't work on proper black and white films, so if you are comparing it
to you colour scans you will see more spots on the B&W even though there may
be the same amount of dust on both films. ICE does work on the C41 films like XP2
though.

Cheers,
Andy

 

[djon]

I use a Nikon V 50Ed , same sharpness/resolution as 5000...I have hardly any dust problems and I'm not working in a "clean room." Your dust isn't the fault of the negative carrier (though the optional FH-3 does require more handling, which can create need for cleaning film in the holder with Tiger Cloth).

Sounds like one or both of two problems..here are some thoughts...

1) if you're using Nikonscan (great for color, not great for B&W) you are for sure exaggerating grain and (depending on the film) may be seeing popcorn grain (white specks). Use Vuescan and this will all vanish...amazing. If you insist on using Nikonscan you can eliminate those problems by scanning your negatives as slides, then inverting in Photoshop...well known and quite effective workaround technique (though I prefer Vuescan). Some folks get additional software to eliminate the spots, but that's a waste of money, since you can scan without the spots in the first place.

2) Labs don't rinse film in perfectly clean water...traditional photolab water filtration is no longer good enough for B&W. You don't see spots in labs' enlarger prints because they intentionally diffuse the light. Scanning is more demanding. Filtration isn't enough for 4000ppi scanners. The ultimate way to eliminate dirt from B&W film is to process it yourself, using a final distilled (not filtered) bath.

3) If you're touching the film at all, except at the edges, you're leaving oil spots, even if you don't see them. When I know I've touched the emulsion or the back I wipe the film gently with Tiger Cloth ( www.kinetronics.com or www.Lightimpressionsdirect.com ...it doesn't scratch if you take care of it (I keep mine in a plastic jar).

4) You could soak your already- lab-processed film in distilled water for a few minutes, room temp, then squeegee it with your fingers (don't use any tool or fabric), then dip it in a separate bath of distilled water with two or three DROPS of Photoflo per 500cc. Just dip it, then hang it to dry. This is to remove the dirt the lab left on the film.

 

[spenny]

Thanks John:

I use VueScan for B&W generally Nikon Scan for slides and color negs. The cloth I use to wipe negs is an Ilford Anti-Static cloth which I assume is the same sort of thing you mention.

I'm giving serious thought to going back to processing my own B&W.

 

[hoot]

For scanning important stuff, I splash some benzene on the glass platten of my flatbed scanner, place the film on that, splash some more benzene on top, and cover everything with an overhead foil. Then I use gloved hands to rub across the foil in all directions in order to brush away the dust and air bubbles. This is a method I learned from a professional graphic artist who has been using it successfully since the 1970s. It works like a charm.

Since it's quite a hassle, though, none of the pics in my RFF gallery were scanned that way.

 

[Nick R.]

Don't get rid of the canned air. It should be the last step before going into the scanner. Even if all the other methods for removing dust mentioned above work, you're always going to get at least one spec on a clean neg in the time between taking it out of the sleeve and putting it into the holder.