Wet Mounting on an Epson 4990

[jim kitchen]

Dear Brian,

I pre-scan my 8X10 negatives with the Epson 750, and I currently use the acrylic with baby oil procedure, where the negative is oiled and mounted to the acrylic, the air bubbles are removed with an artist's six-inch rubber roller with a piece of architectural drawing acetate over the negative to protect the negative while using the roller; the negative is hung upside down about one millimeter above the glass, while the correctly sized acrylic rests on the Epson film guide. I scan the black and white negatives with an IT8 calibrated scanner as RGB, and convert to grey scale later.

The negative is centered and taped to the acrylic to trap the baby oil. The negatives are cleaned with a mild dilution of "Dawn" dish soap when I am done. There is another thread about this subject where Sandy et al, discussed this procedure. It just works...

The scans are quite outstanding with this simple, but messy process.

jim k

[Jim Ewins]

I'm ready to wet mount mine in Elliot Bay. Again some kind of curuption and the scan is black on my iMac. It still works well on Windows XP. Must be the software?

[Kirk Gittings]

Jim,
I wish there were some easy way to test the archival properties of that work flow and other scanning fluids. Kami has been around forever. I have trans that were scanned with it 30 years ago which are doing fine and others that have been scanned dozens of times with it with no problems. It may be fine but baby oil and dish soap makes my skin crawl. I know Sandy swears by it, but there have also been some references by West Coast Imaging about the destructive problems of using oils as amounting fluid. I emailed them about this but didn't get an answer.

How long have you been doing this?

[jim kitchen]

Dear Kirk,

To tell you the truth, not very long, since it started as an experiment to see whether I could diffuse the light source with a piece of acrylic, and improve the image quality with the baby oil too. Surprisingly enough it does just that...

The baby oil comes off with a very dilute solution of mild dish soap, such as "Dawn." I chose this dish soap, since they use it to remove crude oil contaminants from wildlife. I know this is not very scientific, but my negatives seem to be very clean at the end of the process, and for the moment I feel comfortable about the mild detergent solution, where I use one, or two drops per litre of H2O. If there is an issue, and you have a valid point, it might surface tomorrow, or twenty years from now. I do not know the answer, and I did not consider whether the baby oil could be an archival issue where the baby oil could react with the film's emulsion, while initiating the experimental process.

I wonder if we have a resource chemist, within the group, that might be able to possibly answer this question?

jim k

[Ed Richards]

I am sure you could wash them in Photoflow, which no one worries about. If it is a black and white silver negative I do not see why the oil would matter, as long as you got it off. Are you oiling the back side, or the emulsion side? If you oil the back side and try to keep the emulsion clean, it would seem that there would be no problems. Perhaps someone could stick a negative in a jar of baby oil and give us monthly updates.:-)

[Bruce Watson]

> It doesn't even recommend ventilation IIRC.

I do not know what MSDS you are looking at, but the one I am familiar with shows naptha as toxic, as well as very explosive:

http://www.sciencelab.com/xMSDS-Prec...a_ASTM-9926174

Just think gasoline and you have a pretty good fix on naptha.

I'm looking at the one for Kami mounting fluid. Naptha-based isn't the same as pure Naptha.

[jim kitchen]

Dear Ed,

I mount the negative, emulsion side to the acrylic, while using the baby oil...

I press and squeeze the oil out using a six-inch brayer, where I place a protective sheet of acetate on top of the negative while rolling the brayer. Baby oil migrates to the non emulsion surface of the negative through an open edge while doing this action, but I clean this excess oil off the negative with a chamois. I am impressed by the quality of the scanned negative, where it is truly difficult to describe the difference between a negative laid on top of the glass compared to using the baby oil between the negative and the acrylic. As I mentioned earlier, the negative is hung about one milimeter above the scanner's glass bed with the negative's non emulsion side facing the scanning glass, while the acrylic rests on top of the Epson film guide.

This method eliminates all my issues with rings in the scanned image. This process however introduces a few minute air bubbles that do not impede the quality of the scan, and they are easily removed in Photoshop. I have not perfected my approach while using the brayer. I tried this approach with the baby oil, the acrylic, and the Epson scanner, to see whether I could improve the quality of my pre-scans before I shipped the selected image off to be drum scanned, and I really wanted to see whether the difference would be significant enough to warrant the cost of the drum scanned negative. For the moment, I am satisfied with the quality of the scan, but the drum scanned image is sharper with greater shadow detail. Improving the sharpness of the image within Photoshop is not a problem, but dealing with the lack of shadow detail is quite challenging, if not impossible. Recalibrating my scanner and my scanning process seem to require a minor review.

As a side note, when an air bubble is reviewed within Photoshop to the surrounding balance of the properly mounted negative, one can easily recognize the difference in the presented image quality. The difference is not subtle, where the image under the air bubble is lighter in tone, not as snappy as the image with the oil, and not as smooth. This process is messy, but the process does produce a very useable scanned image with excellent image characteristics...

I decided a few months ago to continue with this process experiment because I like the difference in the scanned images, and I like the thought of possibly saving a few hundred dollars between drum scans. If I generate another scanned image with an air bubble, I will post a small image here to show you the difference that I just mentioned...

jim k

[Ted Harris]

Jim, part of the problem may be the residue that is left on the negative, especially the emulsion side. It is unlikely to be anything you will see when scanning on a consumer scanner but the amount of crud/number of tiny scratches that show up when you scan on a hig end scanner is amazing. None of this is anything you would ven have seen if you had previously enlarged the negative if you had been using a diffusion enlarger. Believe me it's there and I would worry a lot about the baby oil/dove approach. Dove especially since, while it is mild it is not pure soap but has some other stuff in it. May be fine for cleaning wildlife but wouldn't tecommend it for a negative, at lest not unless I knew to a certainty what it contained and how whether or not it wa leaving residue itself. Again, Prazio and others make cleaning fluids that work fine. Alcohol works fine. Why take chances?

[Ron Marshall]

Why can pure water not be used as a scanning fluid? Emulsion swelling? Low viscosity?

[Bruce Watson]

Jim, part of the problem may be the residue that is left on the negative, especially the emulsion side. It is unlikely to be anything you will see when scanning on a consumer scanner but the amount of crud/number of tiny scratches that show up when you scan on a hig end scanner is amazing. None of this is anything you would even have seen if you had previously enlarged the negative if you had been using a diffusion enlarger. Believe me it's there and I would worry a lot about the baby oil/dove approach. Dove especially since, while it is mild it is not pure soap but has some other stuff in it. May be fine for cleaning wildlife but wouldn't tecommend it for a negative, at lest not unless I knew to a certainty what it contained and how whether or not it wa leaving residue itself. Again, Prazio and others make cleaning fluids that work fine. Alcohol works fine. Why take chances?

Indeed. Why take chances?

For my film, and anyone else's film that I scan, I only use products designed for the duty. The major scanning fluids are all designed to improve optical clarity and to fill in the small scratches and imperfections all film has. These fluids work well with the drum and film cleaners to clean quickly and leave extremely little residue. In particular, the film cleaners do not soften and swell the emulsion and they remove with a single wipe. The importance of this can't be over emphasized. Scrubbing film on either side is a recipe for disaster in the form of scratches.

I don't know about anyone else, but my biggest cost by orders of magnitude is the time and resources required to make the photograph in the first place. Being in the right place, setup on the right part of the scene, when the light is right is often something I can't redo. Thus the result of the shoot -- my negative -- is quite valuable to me. I wouldn't dream of endangering my negatives with sub-standard materials in the scanning process. I can't imagine why anyone would.