[Leica] Film drying tips

["Anderson, Ferrel E" <AndersonF@ria.army.mil>]

Step 1:  Take your wetting agent, and dump it down the drain so you will never
use it again.

Step 2:  Take your spotted film and reprocess it by treating with stop bath, a
wash in tap water, and three final rinses in distilled water.  I don't think
that also treating it in an alkaline bath, such as developer, will do any good,
but if the spots remain, this could be an alternative.  You will, of course,
have to go through the acid stop bath and rinse again.  I gave up on wetting
agent when I found contamination, i.e. scum, on the glass negative pressure
plate of my Focomat 1C enlarger.  I assumed, correctly, that it was caused by
residual wetting agent on my negatives.  So I revised my negative washing
technique.  I now wash my negatives, as before, in tap water, but the final
three washes are in distilled water.  I take my film reels (NIKOR) loaded with
the negatives out of my washing  device, and put them back into my NIKOR film
developing tank, which I had previously cleaned and rinsed in distilled water.
I then use three successive one and one half  minute washes, with agitation at
the half minute, in distilled water.  I then hang the negatives to dry without
mechanically treating them in any way, except for tapping the negative reels on
the counter and then shaking the negative strip (be careful to not crimp the
film or drop it on the floor!) after is attached to the film drying clamps to
force off the larger water droplets.  I takes a little longer to dry, but the
negative strip is sparkling clean with no residual chemical to spot the film or
contaminate my enlarger glass pressure plate.  In addition, there are no
scratches from mechanically stripping the negative to remove remaining water.
Distilled water droplets contain no dissolve salts to leave a residue once it
has evaporated.  One caution:  Make sure the water is distilled.  Some
"distilled" water you buy is not distilled!

This was one of my photographic epiphanies!

Ferrel Anderson