Removing water spots from film?

reub2000 · Nov 11, 2006

Some Delta 100 that I recently processed has some water spots. How do I get them off of the film?

Ryuji · Nov 11, 2006

If it's really just water mark, and if it's on the shiney (non-emulsion) side, you can wipe it off with lint-free wipe with 91% or drier 2-propanol. Or, you can rinse the entire strip in distilled or deionized water and dry.

If the spot is persistent, and if your water supply is hard, that's probably mineral deposit from first processing. Soak the film in acid stop bath for several minutes, wash in distilled water and dry.

jp80874 · Nov 11, 2006

In the university B&W darkroom classes I have been taking they instruct us to avoid this problem by doing a final rinse in a gallon of water with a drop or two of Kodak Photo Flow 200, no more than that. I use distilled water because my darkroom is on a country well. The negatives are then hung to dry inside a canvas box that lets the moisture out and stops the dust from coming in. Hope this helps in the future.

John Powers

pauldc · Nov 12, 2006

Ryuji said:
Soak the film in acid stop bath for several minutes, wash in distilled water and dry.

After a weak acid bath soak to remove the embedded minerals, would I have to do a full Ilford style wash (i.e. multiple changes of water) as I would normally do after using fixer, or is it quicker to wash out the weak acid?

The reason I ask is that I want to do the wash with distilled water which is quite expensive and if I didn't need the multiple washes then that would be quite a saving per film.

Many thanks

Dave Miller · Nov 12, 2006

It's only the last rinse that you need to use distilled water for.

Dan Henderson · Nov 12, 2006

I would probably give a 5:00 plain water wash (or do the multiple change method) to make sure all of the stop bath is out, then give the final rinse in distilled water & Photo Flo.

jp80874 · Nov 12, 2006

The only reason I suggested the distilled water on the final rinse is the country well as our normal source. We have a water softener and in the darkroom an added 3 micron filter, but little black specs show up every now and then. A final wash with a gallon of distilled and 1-2 drops of Photo Flow seems to rid us of the black specs. They are probably in the pipes some where.

We drink bottled water that is delivered in 5 gallon jugs. Every thing else is on well water. Ah country living. I would complain but head of household for our nearest neighbor is a twelve point buck and he drinks out of our pond. Who would listen to my complaint?

John Powers

Removing water spots from film?

reub2000

Ryuji

jp80874

pauldc

Dave Miller

Dan Henderson

jp80874

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