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Spots on film driving me crazy! Can you help?

Bryan Murray

Member
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Joined
Jun 13, 2006
Messages
66
Location
Brooklyn, NY
Format
35mm
I keep getting spots on my negatives. The ones on the emulsion side won't really come off, but the other side i can breathe warm air and wipe them off with a micro-fiber cloth. They appear to be water spots, i think.

The last batch of negatives i tried (after photoflo) squeegeeing one group, using my fingers on one and nothing on another. here are the results:
Squeegee: the best, mostly clean but still some spots on the emulsion side.
Nothing: ok, still some spots on both sides.
Fingers: the worst, spots all over.


Anybody have any ideas?
I'm using a 5reel plastic tank and i'm taking the lid off and inside light protective piece and using the hose thing that goes with the tank to power wash them. 5 min/ permawash 2 min/ 15min wash then photoflo.

Someone told me that my chemicals might be causing the spots since i'm not using multiple tanks but just pouring in/out the chemistry into one. But sometimes they come out clean.

I'm gonna try measuring out the photoflo and making a big gallon jug of it. usually i just put 3-4 drops in a small 2 cup bowl. maybe that's it?

Would love some advice on this. Thanks!
 
just looked at my plastic reels and they do have some dark/dirty marks on them. maybe that's it? how do you clean them. i've tried a toothbrush but it's a pain.
 
Photo flow is 1:200, not a few drops, so follow directions. There is no downside. A solution does not keep as it grows fungus.

Do not wipe fil down with anything. There is nothing you can use 100% safely including clean fingers, sponges, cloths, or anything else you can think of. Commercial people use filtered compressed air.

You can try spraying it after it is hanging with photo flow solution.

Black chunks are precipitated silver from previously used fix. I never reuse film fix for film. Use on test prints.

Beware of anything you read on the internet. There is tons of really bad advice out there.

Try rewashing the film. Water may come of the emulsion side, definately the base. Debris that dries into/on the emulsion is impossible to remove.

Water and air filter are your friends. Not a Brita or similar because you get carbon chunks.

Use distilled water or deionized water for the whole process or final rinses. You may not believe your water is dirty, but cut a pipe sometime and look at the inside. Pure crud I guarantee.
 
Since I boil my water and filter it through a coffee filter it's much better.
The other major problem is DUST. I dry my negatives for 4 hours in the bathroom, which is ofcourse used that day.
In that time I don't go in the bathroom. Then cutting and putting directly into sleeves. When using the negative: blowing dust off and inspecting: still some baked in dust. But this way I get prints which I don't have to spot for hours.
After rinsing, I wash my equipment in the sink using 2 drops of dish washer, as grease is an enemy. Soap does not hurt.
I do not squeegee: it's a rough process I think and you don't remove anything except water. I use clearing agent (without dust in it).
Also some films are more sensitive to spots than other. In my eyes fuji Neopan performs best, followed by Ilford and the Kodak's.
 
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The most crucial time for dust on negatives is the time from when you open the tank to the time they are dry. Dust will settle permanently in the emulsion unless you have a dust-free area for opening the tank and drying. I use distilled water for the photoflo, but when I run out of that and use tap water I have never encountered any particulate material on the negatives.
 
Coffee filters are crude to put it mildly. Chunks go thru it.

The best home method is sterile cotton sheet in a filter funnel. Save up some gallon bottles so you can filter a lot of water at one time. Then toss the cotton.

Boiling will get rid of the chlorine. Let it settle and cool and use what is on top only. Syphon it off. Do not disturb.

My experience is that distilled water and D76 was a disaster, packaged or scratched mixed. Unless you like ISO6400 type grain. I went back to Chicago tap water and all was well. Others have had better luck.
 
My local water has a very high concentration of minerals in it. This is my 6th darkroom location, and the only one that left mineral/water spots on my negatives. PhotoFlo or LFN didn't solve the problem. I have gone to using a long soak in distilled water as the last step in my process. I need a minimum of 30 minutes distilled soak to dilute the mineral content enough that it doesn't show, and that's after blowing off rinse water with compressed air, so I usually soak 1 hour in distilled as a last step.

I recently tested my tap water with Tetra EasyStrips (for aquarium use), with and without Brita filtration. Without filtration, general hardness (calcium and magnesium salts) were over 180 ppm. After Brita filtration with a new filter the count was below 50 ppm. I haven't tested Brita filtered water on film yet.

Lee
 
I get spots if I photoflo with tap water.

I've taken to using photoflo once, with either distilled water or rubbing alcohol (70% variety). (It will dry quicker with the alcohol, meaning less time for dust to accumulate). 150ml of photoflo mix in a dish or small tray is enough to run your rolls of negatives through slowly before you hang them up to dry.

I do sometimes filter my other chemicals through a coffee filter in the funnel. Dektol sometimes gets dark chunks in it but is otherwise fine. Freshly mixed kodak fixer sometimes has particles that don't dissolve well and a trip through the filter cleans it up good.
 
Hang the film at a 45 degree angle. That way the Photoflo only has to flow down across the film rather than the whole length before it dries. Where it dries spots will form. Let that be the edge rather than the picture area. Works perfectly for me.
 
today i developed some rolls using a smaller 2 reel tank, mixed the photoflo as stated and didn't squeegee or anything and they came out clean. maybe it's the big tank, or could have been my photoflo proportions. i'm gonna try the big tank next and see what happens. i did use filtered water for the photoflo too.
 
Several have suggested water filters. My water comes from a well. It used to leave little black spots on the film developed in a Jobo, everthing from 35mm to 7x17. I added a canister type filter purchased at Lowes. I've used either 3 or 1 micron filters in the canister. The spots are gone. I filter all the water in the process, pre wash, developer, fix and ten changes of fix wash. I don’t use Photoflo. It reacts with the Jobo tanks.

Living in Brooklyn I am assuming you don't have a well, but you may have old pipes contributing to the problem.

And then there is dust. So much has been written here about dust. Search and read some of the suggestions.

John Powers
 
You are on the NYC municipal water supply, arguably among the best municipal water supplies in the country. If you are getting the spots that you describe, then the cause could very easily be that you used too much Photoflo. It is possible to do that; and since NYC tap water isn't hard at all, it's very easy to overdo it. The recommended dilution at 1+200 is a starting point. You can use far less, and still have a very effective wetting agent. I use 1+400 and it works very well. There's a trick to using Photoflo effectively, and it's very simple. Use just enough to get the water to sheet off the film and NO MORE. Photoflo is really nothing more than a specialized detergent, and if you use too much it will foam. You don't want that. If the foam dries on the film, it will leave marks that are easily removed from the support side, but not from the emulsion side.
 
You're either drying too fast or using too much photo-flo and/or not using distilled water with photoflo.
 
I recommend you use a faucet mounted filter or at least a filtering pitcher for your water, or use purified water from the store. I use deionised water for almost everything. I use distilled for primary mixes to stock strength, then deionised for working strength solutions. I have a whole house filter system for particulate and another for taste that removes chlorine and other chems. I haven't had any problems with any type of spotting, and since I run an air purifier in the DR I dont have a dust problem either.
 
NEVER squeegee film. The risk of scratching is simply too great to take that chance even though it does enhance drying.

My solution:
1. Use a final rinse of PhotoFlo in distilled or RO-filtered water. Use twice the ratio of water to PhotoFlo concentrate recommended on the bottle. Allow the film to sit quietly in this solution for at least a minute - don't agitate! If you agitate a PhotoFlo solution, you can create bubbles and that can be as bad as not using PhotoFlo at all.
2. Hang to dry in a dust-free place. I have a drying cabinet, but for years I simply hung them in my darkroom, quietly walked out and closed the door, and didn't come back for 24 hours, and that worked just fine.
 

Hi there,

I totally agree with this. I had terrible trouble with stuff drying on my films - tried all sorts of stuff but once I rigged up a 10 micron filter running into a 1 micron filter - problems solved. All water used in chem mixing and washing goes through this, even used for rinsing trays! Never had such clean films.

Not suggesting this for you, but I no longer use photo-flo solutions or alchohol drying agents. Doesn't matter how good the water supply is, the pipes and tanks in the building will be full of rust, dust, crud etc.

I dry the films in a collabsible plastic covered clothes wardrobe used just for this purpose.

Sim2.
 
By using coffee filters it became better. As suggested by several above, I switched to more adequate filters. And drying at 45 degrees is also a very good one.
Today I found the final step in how to get completely clean neg's.
So simple I can't believe I have overlooked it all this time: filtering the fixer before every use......
 
Do you shake the reel to get as much water out of the film as possible or do you leave it alone and just pull the wet film out of it?
 
Some people have mentioned filtering solutions . . . In place of filter paper or washable stainless or ceramic filters a tip from a pharmacist got me using cotton-wool (the stuff for medical purposes).

A good twist of cotton-wool pushed down the spout of the funnel seems to successfully remove a lot of un-dissolved particles out of any solutions that have been made from powder, or previously used. You can run half a funnel full of water through the cotton-wool to get rid of any loose fibres, before using it for filtering the solution. Use once and then discard of course. It has worked for me with the old Agfachrome process and several decades of ID11 anyway.
 
Nothing wrong with using coffee filters - they saved my sanity too but I make the dev. and fixer up, then filter both just before using. Also froth or bubbles on the photoflo are deadly - just make it up well before making up the dev. and fixer and by the time you need to use it, the bubbles etc will have disappeared -if not, just spoon any remaining stuff off the top - also would never use a squeegee, fingers etc to wipe film - take the film still in the photoflo and with the stealth and grace of a ballet dancer gently hang it above the shower and tiptoe out again - making sure the bathrooms closed off until the film's dry - and all your problems will be over - well, until the next one crops up of course!
Patricia
 
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