Dust, scratches, and other pitas

I used to have a home darkroom, in which I created lots and lots of prints up to 16x20. It was built from particle board as a free-standing unit inside my garage. Needless to say, it was not the cleanest of environments.

Just before COVID, I enrolled in a photo class at a local community college, primarily as a way to get access to a darkroom and do some film shooting again. To make a long story short, I have yet to get a decent wet print because my negatives are dusty, scratched, or both. Ultimately, I end up scanning them, spotting out the dust and scratches in photoshop, and then printing them on an inkjet. I've made a few 8x10ish digital negatives and tried contact printing them in the darkroom, but the results have not been acceptable to me.

My negs hang to dry in a pretty dust-free environment. I use a rocket blaster and, sometimes, some PEC12 using a PEC Pad. Are my 40 year old memories of decent wet prints blurred by time? Are my standards higher now? I'd love to hear from others who have recently tried or are using a darkroom for wet prints. Thanks!

-- Joe

Dust! My first darkroom was in a closet at my parent’s house. Always had dust! No matter how diligently I blew off the negatives. My glass carrier Durst didn’t help- more surfaces to collect dust. My next darkroom was built by me and I had control over how it was built. I was fanatic about dust control. All surfaces were at least semigloss, epoxy paint on the cement floor, glassless negative carriers, dust free ventilation- no more dust!
I found it took quite a bit of effort to keep the dust at bay, realistically maybe not possible in a shared space like a school darkroom. I feel your pain- I hate having to spot prints.

My darkroom is a carpeted spare room. With forced-air heating in winter. From reports of others, dust should be a problem, but it isn't. My prints have no dust on them. None. I do the following:

1. I made a negative-dryer that pumps incoming air through a HEPA filter. Also, I made sure beakers and tanks used for film development are dust-free. Thus, negatives have no dust embedded in their emulsions.
2. Carriers in the enlarger are glassless. Light is LEDs, so negatives don't warp, so glassless works well.
3. After putting a negative in a carrier, I give both sides of it a puff of canned air before inserting it into the enlarger.

The result is no dust, despite being in what should be a dusty environment.

I got dust for months that was stuck to the negatives and could not be removed. But step 1 (clean containers and HEPA dryer) fixed that problem.

Mark Overton

Maybe you are using a condenser enlarger now and used to use a diffusion enlarger?

ic-racer said:

Maybe you are using a condenser enlarger now and used to use a diffusion enlarger?

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Actually the opposite: Condenser first, and the newer LED-head is diffusion. But your idea is right: Diffusion tends to hide dust, which can only be helping me. But no dust at all? I'll give the HEPA-dryer credit for that.

Yes, a diffusion enlarger may fix your issues.

I don't have dust issues, I have scratches from not taking care of the negs over the years. If it's a good image it gets printed anyway, warts and all, as most of the defects I see go unnoticed by others. It doesn't bother me like it used to, it's just part of analog photography.

Are you talking about dust settling on the negs, or embedded in the emulsion? One of those Rocket blowers should take care of any dust just sitting on there.

momus said:

Yes, a diffusion enlarger may fix your issues.

I don't have dust issues, I have scratches from not taking care of the negs over the years. If it's a good image it gets printed anyway, warts and all, as most of the defects I see go unnoticed by others. It doesn't bother me like it used to, it's just part of analog photography.

Are you talking about dust settling on the negs, or embedded in the emulsion? One of those Rocket blowers should take care of any dust just sitting on there.

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I'm pretty sure the enlargers at school are diffusion. As for where the dust is, some of it is on the surface and some of it is embedded in the emulsion. The scratches are a real poser. While they are always on the shiny side of the film, they don't always go in the same direction, making it unlikely that the scratches are happening in the camera. I treat my film pretty carefully, hanging it to dry after a bath in Photoflo and never using my fingers or a squeegee. I have negs that I shot as far back as the 1970s that are in better shape. Maybe I should take it as a sign that I should stick to digital...

If you are seeing scratches on the shiny side of the film, I would look to how you are storing the processed negatives.
And scratches on the shiny side of the film should not be visible in the print, unless they are really extreme!

I hear you. I’ve dealt with dust and scratches over the decades in my 6 different home darkroom situations. Scratches were due to my sloppy negative handling in the earlier days. I still have a small bottle of Edwal No-Scratch that I have used when printing negs from that era. Dust is another issue and my environments have not always been the best to avoid that that. One thing I was told years ago is to makes sure you enlarger’s metal parts are grounded. I guess it’s supposed to negate the possibility of it attracting dust from static buildup. A can of compressed air usually solves the problem once the neg is in the carrier.

An advantage that I have now is that my basement darkroom has no air blowing into it. It was unfinished room with just plain drywall. I covered the drywall with sheets of shower liner, sort of like white board, that makes it easy to clean and to tape stuff too. After developing film it hangs in the middle of the room and I just close the door and leave it. If dust isn’t stirred up, it isn’t a problem.

When I worked in a photofinishing lab back in the 1970s, I’d get ahead of my job as a film cutter and would shift over to the retouching area and leared how to do that. I got pretty good at it and can spot out dust in a print with ease.

Perhaps you can get the school to place a filter over the air ducts. Also some of the dust might be from dried fixer from spills. How often and how well is the darkroom cleaned? Scratches on film most likely from handling.

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jmoche said:

I enrolled in a photo class at a local community college, primarily as a way to get access to a darkroom and do some film shooting again. To make a long story short, I have yet to get a decent wet print because my negatives are dusty, scratched, or both.

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jmoche said:

As for where the dust is, some of it is on the surface and some of it is embedded in the emulsion.

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Sounds like your local school is failing you big time. Incompetence on their part? I'd guess yes. Probably not intentional, but...

I've worked with this sort of thing for a living, in large photo labs. If you want clean film there are a number of things that have to be done right, more or less. But only one or two, if botched up, you can have dust spots out the wazoo.

I'd suggest, to start out, try to find where the debris is coming from. It's probably either in the water or coming through the ventilation system. But... people bring in a lot of debris themselves. Especially on their shoes. If there are a lot of people using the darkroom area this could be the major culprit. Well, that and the school failing to clean scrupulously.

I would personally check both water and air in the same general way. Set a glass dish somewhere to let particulate in the air settle on it. After a reasonable period of time examine it with a magnifier (if you don't want it to blow away pick it up with some clear tape). For the water, put a small amount in the same sort of dish and let it evaporate. Then inspect the same way. So, if you find crud left behind, does it look like what's on your film? (If your school has a lab using stereo microscopes, the long working distance type, with 20 or 30x magnification, these work really well.)

If the crud is in the water, well it's up to the school to deal with. Otherwise you might have to either bring in your own water or a rigged-up filtration system. If it's mostly in the air it might be worth bringing in one of those plastic hanging wardrobe things to hang your own film in while drying. Either way, good likelihood you'll end up being the butt of jokes, or the instructor may take offense. Hopefully they will find it educational, and may perhaps get some filtration on the incoming water or improve air filtration.

Anyway, these would be good places to start, unless you're willing to live with the dirty film. There's other possibilities too, but these would be the most obvious. Best of luck with it.

I hate dust when enlarging negatives and I have imposed a rule on myself that no dust ever goes into the enlarger.

The first gadget I run in the film inspection area is a negative ion generator. The theory is that if all dust particles and surfaces have the same sign charge they won't want to stick together. Seems to work.

Dust can be hard to see so I have rigged a reflector flood light in a snoot pointing down into the darkroom sink. The snoot is so I cannot see the bright floodlight directly and ruin my dark adapted eyesight. A negative held at a raking angle in the intense light beam will reveal the smallest speck of dust or lint.

Next step is to brush the film both sides, I use an old Staticmaster brush, until the film is absolutely clean. If the brush doesn't shift dust I'll try a PECwipe or something stronger. If the dust won't come off or is embedded I abandon the negative. In theory the dust dislodged settles into the wet sink below where it doesn't bounce.

The negative carrier glasses get the same treatment until there is no dust. I use a single glass above the negative instead of a top and bottom glass; two less surfaces to keep clean. The negative carrier glass is never turned over so the under side should stay pristine. The theory is that dust doesn't settle upwards.

After the negative is in the negative carrier the whole assembly goes under the light beam to verify no dust or it gets a last moment brush. Then quickly into the enlarger.

Other precautions include vacuum clean the darkroom the day before, not on the day. Wear lint free black clothing: no reflections, no specks. Don't hang face over the work, micro-skin flakes could fall.
So far so good.

jmoche said:

My negs hang to dry in a pretty dust-free environment.

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Ok, so try and convert that into a dust-free environment - ditch the 'pretty'.
I had to deal with this setting up my darkroom in our present house earlier this year. In the previous house, I had everything 'dialed in', including the place where I dried my developed film and dust mitigation techniques. Now in the present house, I have yet to find a good place to dry film without it being disturbed by excessive air movement and dust/hair clouds thrown up by significant others, pets and myself. Long story short: think and experiment, find a suitable place, then optimize the place and your methods.

Don't let dried film linger around for longer than necessary; sleeve away as soon as it's dry. But it has to be said that the most critical stage is when the film is still wet; any dust that settles on it then may be there forever - sometimes you're lucky and it can be washed off, but not always.

jmoche said:

Are my standards higher now?

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Standards are a relevant notion...my dust mitigation isn't half as rigorous as @Maris' and so probably are my standards. Fact of the matter is that apparently you now have more dust than your standards allow. There's only one way forward...

Maris said:

Next step is to brush the film both sides, I use an old Staticmaster brush, until the film is absolutely clean. If the brush doesn't shift dust I'll try a PECwipe or something stronger.

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Hi, if you are ever in a position to obtain some Kodak PTR rollers these are by far the closest thing to a magic bullet for "removable" dust. These are a smooth-surfaced fairly-firm material with a slight tackiness. They are pretty much able to pull nearly any free dust away from the film, even particles that are too small to be blown off with compressed air. Periodically the rollers are rinsed in water to remove collected debris; simply air dry and they are ready for use.

I don't recommend these to the OP as the ambient conditions seem to be virtually out of control. And PTRs are not exactly cheap.

koraks said:

Ok, so try and convert that into a dust-free environment - ditch the 'pretty'...

Don't let dried film linger around for longer than necessary; sleeve away as soon as it's dry. But it has to be said that the most critical stage is when the film is still wet; any dust that settles on it then may be there forever - sometimes you're lucky and it can be washed off, but not always.

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I'd love to be able to blame the school, but I process my negs at home and just use the darkroom to enlarge/print. It seems obvious from the replies that there are some serious dust issues on my end. I'll have to work on that. Thanks to everyone who responded.

Dust has always been an issue in film for me. I mostly shoot 5x7 and 8x10. So there is plenty of surfaces to collect dust. Film holders, backpack, loading and unloading, tray development, negative storage, contact prong frames, et c.
I recently built a new dark room in my basement and spent a little extra time getting everything sealed and cleaned up, even painting the concrete floor, so I can wipe it down. And built a small film drying cabinet to keep dust off while the emulsion dries. And I diy’d a cold light head for my enlarger so I could use a glassless carrier. These things have made a real improvement in keeping dust particles out of my final prints. Dust problems definitely comes with the territory and it’s one of the many challenges of film!