I tray develop my 5x7 negatives and have my routine down-pat, rarely damaging a negative, and almost never scratching the emulsion side. Occasionally I will get a minor scratch on the base side. Printing on my diffusion-type Elwood enlarger hardly ever resulted in a print that rendered such a scratch visible. I have recently bought a Durst 138G 5x7 enlarger that is just a wonderful, sturdy machine and a joy to use, relegating my Elwood to storage. A recent negative of great promise has a slight scratch on the base side (naturally in a solid sky, near the subject). With the condensor enlarger this thing is crisply in focus and unacceptably visible in the print. I've purchased a Slosher for developing negatives in hopes of avoiding this problem...but is there anyway I can alter my glass negative holder, or place something (like frosted glass) between the neg tray and the condensors above that will deemphasize such small defects? Currently I have clear optical glass below the negative and anti-newton glass compressing the negative flat from above. Any suggestions?
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