Help me diagnose my photos?

[Bill Burk]

THANK YOU!.... I mean... I'm not against the idea of holding a brush and it sure sounds a lot more appealing than hunching over a computer screen to look at pixels. But it doesn't strike me as something I'd want to do often. I guess time will tell.

It’s not “much” work. You look at the results from a distance. Where you see white spots that disrupt sky or background, you touch a few dappled points of gray dye and make the spot disappear.

If your negative is mostly clean, there would be just a few spot that you need to touch.

 

[dcy]

It’s not “much” work. You look at the results from a distance. Where you see white spots that disrupt sky or background, you touch a few dappled points of gray dye and make the spot disappear.

If your negative is mostly clean, there would be just a few spot that you need to touch.

When you put it that way it doesn't sound so bad.

I enjoy playing with paint brushes as much as the next guy, but you'll be hard pressed to find someone less talented than me.

 

[pentaxuser]

When you put it that way it doesn't sound so bad.

No it doesn't sound so bad and but then again nor does laying bricks to build a house or ,say, something simpler like a wall. You get some bricks and mix cement and sand with water then put it between the layers of bricks

What takes the time is in both cases is being able to do it properly. Compared to preventative cleaning and in the last resort re-printing, cleaning is genuinely an easy skill to master and in the case of re-printing is simply repeating what by definition you have already done to your satisfaction before

On the other hand, on a wet Sunday afternoon spotting might be something to occupy your time and given a few wet Sunday afternoons depending on your aptitude you may be able to spot invisibly to the same level as you can re-print

The choice is yours of course

pentaxuser

 

[GregY]

No it doesn't sound so bad and but then again nor does laying bricks to build a house or ,say, something simpler like a wall. You get some bricks and mix cement and sand with water then put it between the layers of bricks

What takes the time is in both cases is being able to do it properly. Compared to preventative cleaning and in the last resort re-printing, cleaning is genuinely an easy skill to master and in the case of re-printing is simply repeating what by definition you have already done to your satisfaction before

On the other hand, on a wet Sunday afternoon spotting might be something to occupy your time and given a few wet Sunday afternoons depending on your aptitude you may be able to spot invisibly to the same level as you can re-print

The choice is yours of course

pentaxuser

Often spotting is done to mask imperfections in the negative, rather than simply dust on the negative or in the enlarger. & like any other part of the photographic process, the quality of the results improve with practice & skill.

 

[pentaxuser]

Often spotting is done to mask imperfections in the negative, rather than simply dust on the negative or in the enlarger. & like any other part of the photographic process, the quality of the results improve with practice & skill.

Absolutely true. A fault in the negative that was built in at its production cannot be printed out but the circumstances where a re-shoot with another OK film is not possible nor a cropping of the negative may be very infrequent

As I said in 20 years I have yet to meet circumstances where nothing short of spotting would suffice. In fact I have yet to be unfortunate enough for "a do or die" situation with that one unique negative that has to be made as good as new for whatever reason

If my future well being or that of the person to whom a perfect print was pivotal then might that not be rare enough to warrant the dark arts of scanning and PS to take over if I were someone who was having doubts about his ability to devote the time and skills acquisition to make spotting a "must have"?

pentaxuser

 

[dcy]

Fortunately for me, photography is a hobby and my prints are all intended for an audience of one. That means I don't have to do anything I don't enjoy in order to meet customer demands. I can easily imagine that spotting could be either quite relaxing or incredibly frustrating.

Fortunately again, it looks like a minimalist kit isn't expensive. A set of 3 spotting brushes is $13 at B&H, and while the Marshall retouching dyes are expensive, the Peerless Dry Spot sheets are $13 for a set. When I start to see defects in my prints that I can't easily fix with a dust blower + re-printing, that'll be a good time to order a set and give spotting a try.

 

[dcy]

Ha ha. Now that you guys trained me to think about these things, I've just noticed dust spots in one of the prints I posted at the start of this thread.

 

[GregY]

Ha ha. Now that you guys trained me to think about these things, I've just noticed dust spots in one of the prints I posted at the start of this thread.

View attachment 401612

D, the crescent shaped irregularity would not be dust, but likely damage on the negative.

 

[dcy]

D, the crescent shaped irregularity would not be dust, but likely damage on the negative.

Can it be lint or hair?

 

[dcy]

With my 7x loupe I cannot get close enough to the negative to see either the dust speck or the crescent. I need to get a stronger loupe.

 

[GregY]

Can it be lint or hair?

I'd have to see it to know....if you're not carefully loading/unloading film, you can put little kinks in it & they show up like that. If it's lint or hair ...I always brush my negatives with an anti-static photo brush before printing....

 

[koraks]

D, the crescent shaped irregularity would not be dust, but likely damage on the negative.

It's too small for a kinking crescent; those are bigger and tend to fade & fan out on both ends. This looks like a short hair; maybe part of an eyelash, bit of beard etc.

 

[GregY]

It's too small for a kinking crescent; those are bigger and tend to fade & fan out on both ends. This looks like a short hair; maybe part of an eyelash, bit of beard etc.

K, are you profiling because dcy's image of him w a beard?

 

[MattKing]

With my 7x loupe I cannot get close enough to the negative to see either the dust speck or the crescent. I need to get a stronger loupe.

If both are dust, they may be gone now. Whether scanning/digitizing or printing, any debris on the negative may either be stuck there, or just resting there temporarily.

 

[koraks]

K, are you profiling because dcy's image of him w a beard?

I contend that a hair from his avatar made it onto a negative - definitely!

 

[GregY]

I contend that a hair from his avatar made it onto a negative - definitely!

 

[dcy]

You should be able to make an 8x10 from a half-frame negative, if the shot is in focus and the camera was held steady and you don't mind whatever impact the grain has. You might be more pleased with a 5x7.

Normal prints from 110, 40 years ago, were 3.5 x 5. (110 is close to half frame size.)

Let's see... the 110 format is 13x17 mm which is 1 mm larger than half-of-half-frame. In turn, 8x10 is 1" wider than two 5x7's. Therefore...

Format	Baseline	Stretch Goal
110	3.5 x 5	5 x 7
Half-Frame	5 x 7	8 x 10
Full Frame	8 x 10	...

 

[MattKing]

Let's see... the 110 format is 13x17 mm which is 1 mm larger than half-of-half-frame. In turn, 8x10 is 1" wider than two 5x7's. Therefore...

Format	Baseline	Stretch Goal
110	3.5 x 5	5 x 7
Half-Frame	5 x 7	8 x 10
Full Frame	8 x 10	...

In addition, modern top quality films offer finer grain than 40+ year old films did.