Dust/Hairs - Wet Scanning?

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gnomus

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Hello all

I got my Intrepid 5x4 at the start of the week and was able to take it out briefly yesterday. I had been reading other threads about issues with dust. I have some experience of dust on 6x4.5 and 35mm, but I wasn't really prepared for the major task of dust removal with 5x4. I think I spent the best part of 90 minutes cloning repairing. (And why do the worst hairs always seem to fall across tree branches?) I'm not sure how much of the final TIFF is real image vs what is cloned.

Anyhow, I must do something about this. I had thought, from my 645 and 35mm work, that my drying room (a spare bathroom) was good enough - it clearly isn't. But as well as trying to construct some sort of drying cabinet/box can anyone advise me as to the extent to which wet scanning might cut down on the dust issue? I'm using an Epson V800 with the standard holder. Would the wet scanning holder help reduce the amount of post-processing work?

Two other questions. Do you have to clean and dry the wet plate scanning holder between negatives? And presumably you need to re-hang the (now wet) negatives to dry them off again - thereby giving another opportunity for dust accumulation?

Steve
 
This is a problem that everybody suffers from, from time to time.
You might care to check your water supply first. You might want to filter it. A Paterson inline filter does quite a good job and is quite cheap.
Check how clean your holders are. Every time.
Then check the interior of the camera itself. I've visited Intrepid and although their workshop is full of enthusiasm, it's also full of machinery like high-speed routers for shaping the wood. Brush and vacuum it out. Do this again from time to time.
You might try a final vigorous rinse with distilled or deionised water with the proper amount of wetting agent.
Are you being too fastidious with your cloning? It's possible to blow up the image to see the grain and retouching at this level is unnecessary for normal print sizes.
Do you have a dog?
What clothes are you wearing when you load and unload the film?
Do you wash your hands first?
Some people suggest that running a very hot shower for a few minutes will help to remove dust from the air of the bathroom. Or boiling a kettle.
Wet scanning won't remove solid bodies like dust and hairs.
Can't think of anything else except sacrificing a ram to the Gods of Dust.
 
Thanks David, for this detailed reply.

Coming from the world of digital, I am almost certainly pixel-peeping - and my scan gave me 14740 x 11615 pixels at which to peep! I am probably being too fastidious about cloning out every last little blemish.

Good tip about vacuuming out the camera. In fact, I also failed to wash out the Stearman tank prior to first use and was surprised at how 'black' the developer was when I poured it out!

I do have a dog.

For the moment, I draw the line at processing film in the nude..... I repeat:... for the moment

I like the hot shower idea.

Ram is on order from Amazon.

Quick question. I loaded the film-holders in my interior (ie no window) bathroom at night. I liked having the space, but was a bit concerned I might knock the box of film onto the bathroom floor in the dark. The Stearman base is narrow and so I was even more concerned about knocking this onto the floor. That is one reason that I loaded the Stearman in my dark bag. I don't know whether bag or bathroom is the 'cleaner' method. I could not work out how best to load the second side of the Stearman holder without the film in the already-loaded side coming into contact with bag sides/bottom. Any suggestions about that?

Steve
 
If your going to load in the nude, you ned to shave your chest first. You might be willing to make the sacrifice, but it's not for me.
A changing bag needs to be turned inside out and vacuumed, quite frequently. There are changing tents available, if you haven't used up all your pocket-money for the moment.
A whole room to move about in sounds much better. You need a flat and clean surface.
Lay out everything in front of you, with the tank, and the holders removed from the tank. Decide where the empty holders will go. Put the tank furthest away from you, with the lid somewhere convenient.
Put your hands on everything you will touch. Look up at the ceiling and do it again. Don't close your eyes.
Now you have a choice. You might want the holders back quickly so you can unload your them into an old film box and from there, into the tank, on another occasion, but it's only a couple you can go from holders to tank quite easily.
Now load each tank-holder and put it into its slot. The slots in the Stearman are quite narrow so take your time. It's no shame to get it wrong a few times.
Now load the other two films, if you are doing four and put them in the tank.
Put the lid on, checking that it's the right way round by feeling the little bumps.
Check everything and put the lights on again.
You almost certainly know all this already. My apologies if it's too much.
 
Thanks David. I hadn’t considered the requirement for depilation, but co-incidentally one of my neighbours happens to hail from Brazil. I’ll ask him what he thinks.

I have a pop-up tent, but not one of the £300 jobbies.
 
Unless your work surface is knee-high, Brazilian advice might be superfluous.
As for the £300, photons don't care about money.
 
Don't forget, there are multiple sources of dust/hairs in your workflow; and it all starts when you open the film box to put a sheet of film in a holder.

Is the DDS totally dust free? Did the static generated by closing the darkslide suck in anything? Are the bellows on the camera completely dust free? Did extending the bellows suck in any dust? Did withdrawing and re-inserting the darkslide attract and trap anything inside?

All this pre-processing activity can produce dark spots on the scanned image.

Then you get to the processing and scanning side of things, where any dust attracted will appear as white spots on the image.

Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that you will spend time spotting scanned images. Just be grateful that you don't have to spot wet prints with a brush and inks
 
Thanks Joanna. I do remember trying to spot prints back in the old days, and not for one minute did I ever believe that I’d end up shooting film again. :D

I’m probably being dense but what is a ’DDS’? Virtually all of the blemishes were white spots, but especially very fine white hairs. There were also some areas that looked like small ‘holes’. I don’t mean actual holes, rather they looked like areas where I might have damaged the emulsion due to my, no doubt, rough handling. In short, I think most of the dust came post-shooting.

I had vacuumed the film holders prior to use. But I hadn’t done anything to the camera, so I might give that a once over with a small vac.

Steve
 
DDS = Double Dark Slide or sheet film holder.

Mike
 
At the moment we still have a stock of Fuji film in Quickload envelopes, together with a couple of holders. It does mean less dust because the film comes pre-loaded in a sealed envelope, but the issue still starts as soon as you withdraw the envelope to expose the film, when static can attract any dust that happens to be in the bellows.
 
Be thankful for small mercies. Wet prints have to be spotted every time but digital prints only once. To be honest, I found it quite a restful process to accompany R4.
Dark spots are from dust that was on the film before the moment of exposure, and white ones are dust that got onto the film after exposure.
Perfectly round spots are usually from tiny bubbles in the developer produced from dissolved gases, released when the pressure of the mains is removed. This is why many instructions tell you to bash your tank on the workbench, to dislodge them. Tray developing sweeps them off automatically. As I don't have piped water in my darkroom, I use a camping jerrycan of water that sits and outgassed itself automatically. Lucky me! Physical damage to the emulsion itself should be identifiable at high magnification.
For small spots, the healing brush a better option than cloning.
 
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