Dust Free Negatives

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Ian-Barber

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What lengths do you go to when trying to produce dust free negatives
 
Nothing special really. A blast of air from a blower bulb and a pass over with a antistatic brush. An occasional deep clean of the droom with the enlarger covered helps as well.
Cheers
Diz
 
Production: use a wetting agent, hang up to dry in the bathroom (floor has lino not carpet) preferably after running a bath to let the steam clear the dust particles, place in negative sleeves as soon as possible.

Use: blow over them, use antistatic duster on glass surface of scanner or negative carrier (if appropriate - it isn't for 5x4 as my holders are glassless).
 
Production: same as Stephen.

Use: darkroom-electrostatic brush and Dust Off, lightroom (scanning)-electrostatic brush and wet mount directly to scanner bed glass.
 
Alan, Do you find the wet scanning produces better scans, I have found its a little hit and miss, some are better others not worth the effort
 
martin henson said:
Alan, Do you find the wet scanning produces better scans, I have found its a little hit and miss, some are better others not worth the effort
Click to expand...

I do find I get better scans through wet mounting, but not for the reason you may think. My scanner has two distinct focus positions--one at the bed level, the other 2.5mm above the bed. I assume the 2.5mm focus position is to provide more critical focus when the film is mounted in the Epson film holders. I have found, through much testing, that my scanner provides the best focus at the bed level. I even bought an adjustable holder from betterscanning.com which does produce better scans than the Epson holders, but still not as good as on the bed.

The only issue I have with wet mounting is when scanning 8x10. Since that size negative takes up most of my scanner bed, I use mounting tape (the stuff used on drums for drum scanning) around the edges of the glass to avoid any possibility of the fluid running under the glass and/or into the scanner itself. So far, that has worked fine (knocking on my wood desk!) :)
 
The quality control of the Espon must be bad, if I scan on the bed they are way of focus, (unless I am doing something wrong) I also bought the better scanning holder which did improve some what especialy wet mounting
 
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Martin, out of curiosity... What scanner hardware and software do you use?
 
I have tried mounting 5x4 direct to the bed on my Epson V800, yes I do get quite good scans but never really compared them to the Epson Film Holder.

When using this method, I use Silverfast AI and set it to Film Transparency (Wide)
 
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