Re: Negative Cleaning Help

As usual, my thinking continues to develop after I've clicked "send,"
and it occurs to me belatedly that it's not of course just a matter of
coating and film, there's that silver stuff in between, and I don't have
any idea how that will affect the ease of removal.
kt

Katharine Thayer wrote:
>
> Lisa Reddig wrote:
> >
> > I am doing some gums today. Something went wrong and I now have pieces of
> > pigment/gum/dichromate on the emultion side of the negative. An original
> > 4x5 B&W kodak trix negative. Never had anything like this before. How do I
> > get it off??
> >
> >
>
> Hi Lisa,
> It sounds like your coating wasn't quite dry when you put the negative
> on it, and some of the damp coating mix came off on the underside of the
> negative where it touched. I don't know what these other guys are
> talking about, paper sticking to negative; that's not what I'm reading
> here, but it's possibly of course that I'm missing something. If I'm
> right and it's just coating mixture, then it depends... If it's under a
> fairly dense area of the negative, it should simply wash off in water,
> just like the coating that was still on the paper would wash off at that
> place. And even if it's under a less dense area, and therefore
> hardened, the film may well be slick enough that the hardened gum won't
> stick anyway. From my experiences printing on mylar it would be my guess
> that it's harder to make hardened gum stick to film than to make it let
> go; I've found that I usually have to use treated mylar, or treat it
> myself, to get the hardened gum to stick through development. So my
> guess would be that this should wash off in water.
>
> I would experiment first with putting the negative in water and letting
> it sit for a while; hopefully the stuff will dissolve right off. If not,
> I'd dab very gently with a damp lintless cloth, and if that doesn't do
> it, then I don't know. I've never had this happen with an original
> negative, but I've done it a couple of times with digital negatives,
> which is a different story. With a paper negative, it won't wash off,
> and with a Pictorico negative, water ruins the negative. With a digital
> negative it's easy to just print another one. Good luck, and I'll be
> interested to know what happens.
> Katharine Thayer
Received on Sat May 15 21:35:01 2004