Sick and tired of water marks, stains and deposits on my negatives

Lilserenity said:
...it seems that de-ionised/distilled water seems ludicrously expensive (£3.49 for 5l)...
Click to expand...

Any way you could make contact with your local secondary school? The lab techs in the science dept will be producing gallons and gallons of distilled water every week (this is where mine comes from) and I bet, if you had a word with a science teacher, they'd be able to let you have some for a small contribution to the petty cash tin.

Jamie
 
Ok, I can't reply at length again (got to get ready for work, Bill Murray was on to something with that Punxsutawney Phil thing... 😛) but I have scanned the negatives.

Short answer: Much better. THANK YOU!

They're not perfect, I'm not sure I have ever had 100% squeaky clean negatives from anywhere (there's always a little teensy dot here or there) but rather than having Lake Windermere compressed to fit on a 35mm negative like I was getting before (see my last attachment, yep, that's a stain, not a stray ameoba getting into the frame) but just a few flecks here and there which I'm sure a gentle wipe with an anti-static brush would help.

The last frame (the roll of FP4+ I used had a weird kink in it at the end so there was no 1/4" or so at the end of the roll, it was literally the end of the roll after the end of the last frame) so my grubby fingers as hard as I tried did knock that frame, it wasn't an important one, but as a consequence it looks like much of the water run off gathered on the bottom of the last negative rather than the 1/4" you usually have at the end of a roll to put a clip on etc.

Here are some scans, I have no used any clone tools or healing brushes, but this is one picture which is apart from me fiddling in Photoshop with colour balance, as it is, with the method used above:

(Ilford FP4+, D-76 stock, 8mins, 22 deg C)



The full size scan (WARNING: 2MB download or so) is here:

Full size scan

As you can see, it's a lot better. It doesn't look like I have got some superglue out and smeered it merrily over my negatives with crazy wild abandon now!


So again, an emphatic thank you to everyone, I willy reply better later on.

My aim now is to reduce the amount of de-ionised water, see if I can get away with it in the last wash alone, and to reduce the flecks and get a whole roll of 24/36exp processed to at very least this standard, incl. the last frame!

Vicky
 
Dear Vicky,

With 2 rolls in a stainless tank (425 ml for the final wash and 225 ml for the wetting agent step (just do the films one after the other) so that's 650 ml -- 8 runs out of 5 litres. At £3.49 for 5 litres, that's about 44p or 22p a film. Doesn't look so bad when you do it that way!

But the price of deionized water in the UK is crazy. It's under 1.50 € here in France, where very little is cheap.

Cheers,

R.
 
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I'd follow Jamie's advice and check in at your local schools for some distilled water. My college science department makes gallons of it all the time, which is where we get ours for our PhotoFlo mixing.

We had the exact same marks on our films, our process has eliminated 99%+ of them, the ones that remain I suspect are from students not being careful when wiping down.
 
sepiareverb said:
I'd follow Jamie's advice and check in at your local schools for some distilled water. My college science department makes gallons of it all the time, which is where we get ours for our PhotoFlo mixing.

We had the exact same marks on our films, our process has eliminated 99%+ of them, the ones that remain I suspect are from students not being careful when wiping down.
Click to expand...

I shall have to enquire at the local secondary, and see what turns up. If I can reduce my usage to the last rinse then the £3.49 is something I can at least afford for now but I shall make some enquiries.

I was hoping to have developed another roll by now but I have not had a chance to finish two almost run rolls, some Acros 100 and Delta 400 I'm shooting at 1600.

Either way I feel much more confident about my processing having had great success after just one roll thanks to the advice here. To go from having rolls ruined by water marks etc. to having none is a huge relief for me.

I have also purchased a steel reel + container, I've been using it for a few weeks over my plastic Patterson one which I'll continue to use now and then but when I have done these other two rolls, I might even get brave and try some stand development!

Vicky
 
One last problem 🙂

One last problem 🙂

So I bit the bullet and went to process the roll of Acros that formed the second half of what I shot last week and was subsequently a ruined roll of FP4+

The story so far: massive improvement.

Current problem: Perfecting the process.

What I get a lot of is white specks usually on one part of the negative, in this case it appears that it's the sky. I have scanned a couple of the negatives (not sure if the whole roll is affected) and observed that the top half had numerous white specks at the top of the frame. I've usually always ended up getting these too.

Appreciating the many suggestions made, and the fact I don't have a whole load of money to try everything, I was wondeirng if anyone has experienced this and how they solved it?

This roll of Acros was not pre-soaked (an oversight on my part, I usually do for 5 mins), developed in D-76 (that was made up with deionised water from prior to me starting this thread) and some stop and fixer mixed 7 days ago (on its way out then) with my normal hard tap water, and rinsed for 10 mins in normal tap water, a final 20 inversions using deionised water + a 'drag' through deionised water in a tub with photo-flo has cleaned up the big water marks and stains pretty much completely. (I also ran the shower before hanging the negs to dry.)

So these white flecks. I can see them on the scan:

Full size scan (Nb: file is large)

You can see in the sky the white flecks. Ignore the other marks, this wasn't the best shot of the roll so it's not exactly perfect from a scratches stand point. (Damn!)

This is the cleaned up scan for reference: Link

I put the negative under the enlarger but I can't see the flecks on that, but I doubt I'd see them until I enlarged+printed the negative anyway.

If I can solve this issue (or clean up 95% of the flecks) I'll be very happy.

What can I do? More rigorous final rinse? A particular product like PEC12?

Thanks ever so much!
Vicky

ps: I am extremely grateful, I feel like I'm doing a lot of asking but I will always try and help out peeps myself so I am so so grateful!
 
Vicky - do you have a loupe or 10x magnifying glass/doublet? I think it's time to have a really close look at the negatives in the spot where those specks are. Remember that white in the (inverted) scan means something black (or solid enough to cast a shadow) on the negative. I've seen similar things before - I'd almost suspect some sort of emulsion damage. The Across was fresh, not expired with a dubious storage history? I've got some old PAN-F that shows this occasionally.
 
ChrisN said:
Vicky - do you have a loupe or 10x magnifying glass/doublet? I think it's time to have a really close look at the negatives in the spot where those specks are. Remember that white in the (inverted) scan means something black (or solid enough to cast a shadow) on the negative. I've seen similar things before - I'd almost suspect some sort of emulsion damage. The Across was fresh, not expired with a dubious storage history? I've got some old PAN-F that shows this occasionally.
Click to expand...

An interesting point that I hadn't thought of. The film was in date and stored in my fridge. However, so far, I'm not overly impressed with Acros, I have found it OK, it's not in my experience as nice as Delta 100, or FP4+ (I love the older emulsions...)

The other two Acros rolls I shot *may* have had the same issue.

It was bought from my local shop which I have never had bad experience with and I do trust they store their film well (as I say, nothing I've bought from them before was 'dodgy')

That said, the roll of FP4+ I did earlier this week didn't show it as much but there were the odd white fleck which leads me on to Roger's post....

Thanks!
Vicky
 
I was getting specks on my negatives, and I think it was junk floating around in the developer. A visual check confirmed there were alot of floaties in there. So I bought a large plastic funnel, and some laboratory filter paper (you can also use coffee filter material) and now, I filter my developer the day before I use it.

No more specks.
 
Just my 2 cents:

after bathing the film in water with a few drops of wetting agent I put the film on the film spiral into a salad spinner and let the salad spinner drum rotate rather fast - all the water is spinned off, then the film is hung up vertically in a room and the door closed. After 10 - 20 min the film is dry without any dust or spots.
 
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