[Leica] wiping wet negs

[don.dory at gmail.com (Don Dory)]

Arche,
Atlanta has some pretty grim water although it is cleaner than what Chris
gets in New Orleans.:)  Pretty much finish you film as you always have with
a good wash per archival protocals.  I mix my photoflo with distilled water
cooled or heated to 68F and dunk the whole reel in a tank of the stuff for
more than thirty seconds and less than a minute.  I then do the Ted Grant
routine and shake as much water out as possible.  Then the film goes into a
forced heated air dryer that has a filtered input.  For four reels about
five minutes does it in the dryer.  Out of the dryer, off the reel, and into
a negative sleeve they go.

My scanner has a very directional collimated light source and my negs are
very clean; cleaner than what I get off my E-6 from a very highly rated lab
that does do very good work.

If you dont have a heated dryer and don't care to construct one from
schedule 40 PVC, a hair dryer, and some foam filter material then you can
try denatured alcohol.  In this scenario, wash, rinse in distilled water,
then rinse in denatured alcohol. Shake dry and allow to dry in the air
before you cut and sleeve.

I will repeat what Ted said, don't wipe your film with anything.

Don
don.dory@gmail.com


On 4/16/06, Arche, Harvey <Harvey.Arche@jp2hs.org> wrote:
>
> I've never found a technique I was really happy with for stripping water
> from film after photo-floing. My current method is a slow pass down each
> side with a piece of wrung-out chamois that has been dampened in
> distilled water. Photo-flo and a pre- photo-flo rinse also of distilled
> water (we have hard water here). I'm still getting a lot of crud, and
> since I'm starting use softer films I have to be very careful of
> scratches.
>
> All suggestions gratefully considered.
>
> Arche
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>