Unbending bent negatives..?

Jersey Vic · Oct 21, 2005

A friend gave me some old (15 year old?) TriX negatives she wanted me to print.
2 are bent and 1 is creased. Any suggestions on how to print or repair them would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Victor

Konical · Oct 21, 2005

Good Morning, Victor,

I don't think there's any sure procedure. You might try doing contact prints with heavy glass over the negatives to get them as flat as possible. If you get a decent result, you could always make copy negatives of the contact prints.

Maybe just putting the damaged negatives into the carrier and printing normally will also give acceptable results, especially if the carrier is something like a Negaflat which puts a lot of tension on negatives to keep them flat.

Konical

Jon Shiu · Oct 21, 2005

If you have a negative carrier with glass, that would work. It's also possible to make your own out of two pieces of glass, or to put a glass slide in the top or bottom of the carrier. You can use anti-newton ring glass from a glass slide mount for the above the slide glass.

Jon

Woolliscroft · Oct 21, 2005

Jon Shiu said:
If you have a negative carrier with glass, that would work. It's also possible to make your own out of two pieces of glass, or to put a glass slide in the top or bottom of the carrier. You can use anti-newton ring glass from a glass slide mount for the above the slide glass.

Jon

I agree, a glass carrier should do the trick. I recently had fun uncurling a load of negs my wife's grandfather took during WWII, on Agfa nitrated cellulose base film (yes the one that explodes if you mistreat it). They had been rolled up and put in film tubs for the last 60 years and really didn't want to lie flat. I ended up putting them in a book, with a load more books on top. It took a year. but it worked. That might mend the bent ones more permanently, but the glass carrier should do just to get prints.

David.

Gerald Koch · Oct 25, 2005

Jersey Vic said:
A friend gave me some old (15 year old?) TriX negatives she wanted me to print.
2 are bent and 1 is creased.

Prints from the creased negative will probably show the crease since the emulsion has been deformed and the silver grains have been pulled to either side of the crease.

KenM · Oct 25, 2005

Not to mention that the substrate will probably have a light line across due to the stress of being bent. Pretty much impossible to get rid of that via traditional means.

Mike Kennedy · Oct 25, 2005

x

I don,t know if this would work,and I certainly stand to be corrected, but what about resoaking them in hypo-clear ? I did this for a set of negs. I thought were trashed when they fell off my film clip and landed on the floor to dry. Full of golden retriever hair and dust bunnies. I mixed the Hypo at about 75 f.
Just a thought.

Mike

SkipA · Oct 25, 2005

On the neg with the crease, you might be able to apply Crocein Scarlet in a narrow band along the length of the crease. It'll print white on the paper, and then you can mix Spotone in varying densities to reconstruct the image.

The degree of difficulty will depend on how much detail you have to reconstruct. Opaque the crease line as narrowly as possible with a dense mixture of Crocein Scarlet. Use a 00 or 000 size artist's paint brush.

I do this with minute emulsion tears and scrapes so they don't print black. It's easier to fix a white spot than a black spot on a print. I've never tried it on a large portion of a neg, so I can't really say how feasible it is for your situation.

Unbending bent negatives..?

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