Best way to clean (grease, fingerprints) from negatives and slides prior to scanning

[PhilBurton]

Looking for recommendations on the best products and their usage to remove grease and fingerprints.

If you do a scan and you see a fingerprint, is there any good way to remove it with post-processing?

 

[PhilBurton]

What tools and methods do you use that work for this purpose? Any tools or methods that DON'T work?

 

[_T_]

From this and the other post it sounds like you might be dealing with a bunch of dirty negatives. If you are in the process of scanning a bunch of film that badly needs to be cleaned you might end up having a lot of work ahead of you.

It can be difficult to clean a negative once it has gotten dirty, depending on the material that needs to be removed. It is also possible to do more harm than good when attempting to clean them.

I think that by far the safest way to deal with the issue is digitally. If you have some skill in Photoshop it shouldn't be too difficult to deal with the majority of the issues one would encounter with dirty negatives, and at no risk to the negative. Sometimes you will run into problems that require and advanced knowledge of retouching to fix. I don't know how extensive your knowledge is. Depending on how dirty your film is and how difficult it ends up being to clean it, this could either be the easiest or the most labor intensive way to do it. No way to know until after you've already tried to clean the film.

You could try the most basic of cleaning with distilled water. You roll the film onto a reel such as you would use to develop the film and place it into a development tank, fill the tank with distilled water and agitate. Dump the water, refill and repeat until the film is as clean as it's going to get. You'll need to do a final rinse with a stabilizer if you're talking about color film, with black and white a little bit of photo flo and you're good to go. Hang them up to dry and hopefully they will be cleaner than before. If you've been developing your own film you would have everything you need to try this on hand.

If you don't already have all of that stuff you might be better off buying products with cleaning film in mind. There are archival negative cleaning solutions on the market, I have never needed one so I can't recommend one to you. Usually the system consists of a very soft cloth that won't scratch the film or leave lint on the emulsion, like a pec pad, and a bottle of cleaning solution that should evaporate without leaving a residue. I can recommend the pec pads, I use those all the time, but I can't speak to the cleaning solution.

If you decide to go that route you will have to be very careful. It is a lot of tedious work cleaning film that way. If you press a little too vigorously on the wrong spec of dust you could end up scratching the negative and making things worse for yourself.

I'm sorry I can't be more help on this, it's difficult to know how to advise you without more information about the state of the film and your knowledge and skill level in these matters.

 

[koraks]

From this and the other post

Moderator note: I've merged two threads because they're so closely related (cleaning fingerprints + dust).

@PhilBurton what I would do, depends on what kind of negatives these are.

If the negatives are important/meaningful and also possibly old and somewhat fragile, I'd also lean towards the same degree of caution that @_T_ recommends. Gently wash the film in distilled water; perhaps add a squirt of isopropyl alcohol or ethanol to a first wash bath and then rinse with distilled water and maybe a little surfactant. The stabilizer is a good idea if it's color film.

On the other hand, if this is film that you're not afraid of experimenting a bit, I'd suggest washing them in somewhat more effective ways. For instance, a weak sodium carbonate solution with vigorous agitation (careful not to scratch the film though!) will remove much of the finger grease, and some film (particularly modern Kodak film) is hardened to such an extent that even very gentle rubbing of the emulsion side of the submerged film with a clean finger or a soft wet cloth is possible without damaging the film. Neutralize the carbonate with a very weak solution of acetic acid afterwards, and then wash thoroughly.

How 'crazy' you can go really depends on what you're working with and to what extent you're willing to experiment on unimportant bits of the film. If you try out things on e.g. reject frames or parts of an unexposed leader, make sure to inspect it very carefully for any damage when the film is dry.

If you do a scan and you see a fingerprint, is there any good way to remove it with post-processing?

That's one of the most labor-intensive things I've done in terms of digital post processing and I don't care to ever do it again. Frankly, I don't bother with it anymore. Maybe with today's or tomorrow's AI-assisted healing tools it becomes more feasible again. But using a cloning/healing stamp etc., it's a massive chore and the result is mediocre at best. I'd either just accept that the fingerprints are there and leave it like that, or clean the film.

 

[guangong]

I run movie film through a patch moistened with film cleaner. Have never used with still negatives, but perhaps could work.

 

[Kino]

If you only have a few dozen or even a hundred images to digitally clean-up, then it is possible with a lot of work.

I spent 9 months @ 12 hours a day digitally cleaning over 300,000 frames using manual tools in Adobe After Effects for a series of film restorations in 2009.

It was brutal...


I suggest you start with solvent cleaning.

If you go the solvent route, you will need to use a solvent in a well ventilated area with a respirator and good gloves.

Colorfast velvet (film velvets as we call them) as a support and one to wipe the surface of the film.

You will need an evacuation vent drawing the fumes away from you.

PEC: https://photosol.com/products/pec-12/

 

[PhilBurton]

From this and the other post it sounds like you might be dealing with a bunch of dirty negatives. If you are in the process of scanning a bunch of film that badly needs to be cleaned you might end up having a lot of work ahead of you.

@_T_

I have probably 4000-5000 negatives to scan. I'm trying to work out in advance the "workflow" for this scanning. That workflow includes the contingency of dirty negatives. I don't know how many negatives are that dirty, but I'm doing "pre-emptive worrying."

If you decide to go that route you will have to be very careful. It is a lot of tedious work cleaning film that way. If you press a little too vigorously on the wrong spec of dust you could end up scratching the negative and making things worse for yourself.

Appreciate the caution.

I'm sorry I can't be more help on this, it's difficult to know how to advise you without more information about the state of the film and your knowledge and skill level in these matters.

My Photoshop skills are "sort of OK," and I add to those skills on a "need to do" basis. I subscribe to Adobe's Photography Plan, which includes Photoshop and Lightroom. Lightroom Classic is my main post software.

 

[George Collier]

I have found that a good cleaner, like PEC-12 is worth the trouble if you know the negs are dirty. It will remove, with little pressure, the stuff that it can dissolve. (use with cotton or a Webril pad).
You can also rewash in water and hang like new film, with Photoflo, or like material, to remove water-soluble stuff.
You can also try isopropanol, or rubbing alcohol. I would recommend the purest strength you can get. Rubbing alcohol can run from 70% into the 90's, and contains other materials. I ordered a gallon of isopropanol, which is 9x% purem from a local drug store some years ago. It removes other kinds of stuff. Research isopropanol if you decide to use it, for info on handling.
I have also used a 50-50 mix of isopropanol and distilled water to soak and gently massage (4x5) negs to remove long term issues such as mold, etc. - not always successful but sometimes, also will dry very quickly and evenly.
After any or all of this, I then would wipe them with an orange Ilford antistatic cloth.
I am good at working in PShop, but I have found the cleaning to be worth the time.