Negative retouching?

[Hugo Zhang]

I have some 8x20 negatives processed with Jobo 2850 got scratched on the non-emulsion side before I put an insert inside. Not only lines, but pieces of the clear coating were sratched off the film. When printing, these scratched areas appeared as dark spots. Somebody suggested red ink, but all I can get from Freestyle is Marshall's Spotsall and Edwal's No-Scratch. The former does not cover the clear parts which are to be covered and the latter actually does things I want to fix, i.e, hides the scratches that appear as white lines in print.

Any experiences and recommendations? Thanks.

[Alan Rabe]

Retouching negatives is a bit tricky. I've tried it a couple times and ended up ruining the negative. Once you botch a neg retouch there is no un-retouch. Your probably better off either bleaching out the black spot or just picking it off the paper with an x-acto knife or even a small darning needle. Then you just spot it like any other dust spot.

[cyrus]

The red ink is Kodak's crocein scarlet. I think you can still order from B&H in the US.
Using that for fine lines on a negative will take a very very steady hand - not practical. If you want to do this on the negative, should probably try a soft lead pencil on the non-emulsion side. It can be wiped off, or so I'm told

[David A. Goldfarb]

It's very tricky to retouch a fine scratch from a neg.

Edwal No-Scratch is not really what you want for this. It's like an oil that you can use on negs that are to be enlarged with a non-glass neg carrier (or with glass, but it's messy to clean up, and watch for bubbles). It's very effective at hiding scratches in this way, but not for big negs that are to be contact printed or for very large scratches.

For a big neg, you could try pencil, but probably better to use crocein scarlet or an opaquing material (I have some V. Cass opaque, but they're out of business) to opaque the area around the scratch and then retouch the resulting white area on the print with spotone or other retouching dyes.

[Steve Feldman]

I don't believe I'm actually posting this, but . . . Scan the damaged neg. Photoshop fix the scratches. Then either re-print the neg on a clear base to conventional wet darkroom printing or (horror of horrors) print digitally.

Ouch! That hurt.

Could work for you.

[Hugo Zhang]

I think I will try to find some soft pencil first if I can't find red ink.

Scan the negative? I have a epson 3490 and have to scan the print twice and paste them together. Never scanned any negatives before. Don't have and never used photoshop. It's tons of stuff for me to learn. The negative is 8x20.

[Louie Powell]

Hugo -

Chip Forelli uses a technique called "dye dodging" to repair and/or enhance negatives. He sacrifices a sheet of film by fixing it out and washing. After it has dried, the attaches this to the non-emulsion side of the negative using aluminized tape - the kind that used to be used to bind glass slide mounts. (Sorry - that statement assumes that you are over the age of 50 and know what glass slide mounts are/were!)

Then, he lays this sandwich on a light box, and using either a fine brush, q-tips, or an air brush (depending on the nature of the change to be made), he applies dyes to the clear film in the areas where the negative requires dodging. The dyes he uses are Dr. Martin's transparent watercolors. He also takes advantage of the fact that the color of the dye can affect how variable contrast paper reacts to the corrected negative - magenta dye tends to increase local contrast, while yellow or blue dye tends to reduce local contrast.

The advantages of this approach over trying to spot the non-emulsion side of the negative are that mistakes can be corrected by merely detaching the dye sheet and washing it to remove the dyes, and that the fact that the dye is two thicknesses of the negative stock away from the actual emulsion layer means that the dye will not be in focus when the negative is projection printed. Obviously, this latter point won't work if you are making contact prints from your 8x20 negatives.

[Hugo Zhang]

Thanks everyone for your kind help!

Cyrus, I have checked B&H and they don't have it or won't ship it.

Louie, I simply admire Chip Forelli's work. Your reply gives me an idea: can I simply develop another blank sheet of film the same way I did for the damaged one and put the two sheets together when contacting printing? What did you mean when you say "fixing it out and washing"? Do you mean to skip the development in Rollo Pyro and just put the blank sheet in fixer and then wash it? I need the blank sheet to have that layer of opaque coating to cover the sratches of the damaged one. If necessary, I will try to use dyes on the blank sheet as you suggested.

[false_Aesthetic]

Curiously,

What do you do when you get dust on the neg b4 you take the pict? (prints have black dust spots)

Scratch the black out on the print then fill it in with spot tone whatever it is?

[David A. Goldfarb]

To fix a pinhole or clear dust spot on a neg, you stipple the base side of a neg with a needle or sharp stylus perpendicular to the film base over the area. This diffuses the light before it passes through the pinhole and if done right, makes it disappear.

If you try to fix this kind of spot with pencil or dyes, you usually end up with a kind of donut shaped mark on the print, because it is very difficult to stay within the confines of a pinhole or tiny dust mark using a brush or pencil.

[Bill_1856]

If you never bothered to learn to retouch your negatives, then either pay a professional retoucher to do the job or, (unless it's your equivilant to Pepper #30), throw it in the trash and have a beer. Better yet, a Jack Daniels on the rocks.

[Paul Fitzgerald]

Hugo,

"Not only lines, but pieces of the clear coating were sratched off the film. When printing, these scratched areas appeared as dark spots."

You could contract print the neg onto film, correct the positive and make a duplicate neg. You could bleach out the dark spots more easily than trying to fill-in the scratches. OR just make the dupe positive light enough to use as an un-sharp mask.

Just a thought.

[Hugo Zhang]

Paul,

"You could contract print the neg onto film, correct the positive and make a duplicate neg. You could bleach out the dark spots more easily than trying to fill-in the scratches. OR just make the dupe positive light enough to use as an un-sharp mask."

How? It seems rather difficult for a green hand in the darkroom.

I have just tried a 5B pencil. Some lines and spot are just too small for the pencil. When I generously used the pencil on and around the scratches, there are darker areas in the negative and they will appeare white on the print. I really don't know what to do.

Here is part of the picture. See the area above that rock...

[domenico Foschi]

Hugo,
Forelli's techniquesounds excellent.
You don't really need to develop the negative, just fix it and wash it.
Retouching after some frustration can be really rewarding, it is one of my favourite stages of finishing a print.
The bad thing for you is that you are starting with an enormous task. I have seen the negative and it doesn't look easy beacause the areas have definite edges and that can be a B...h!:)

"I have just tried a 5B pencil. Some lines and spot are just too small for the pencil. When I generously used the pencil on and around the scratches, there are darker areas in the negative and they will appeare white on the print. I really don't know what to do. "

The areas will probably look lighter in the print, and that is a problem very fixable.
Just do 5/6 prints and start experimenting in retouching the print.
It seems an enormous task but you'll see that when you start to get the hang of it, things will get easier ....and pleasant.

[cyrus]

And if you want an Adams retouching machine, let me know!

[Charles Webb]

Try a HB lead. Take a piece of fine sandpaper and fold it back on itself so that the grit is inside. Tape the sides to keep the graphite inside of the envelope.
Pull about three inches of lead out of your lead holder and insert it into the sandpaper envelope, use a pumping motion while rotating the lead until it becomes thin and sharp as a needle. With the lead still extended from the holder begin retouching the negative, if the lead breaks and needs to be resharpened you have used too much pressure, resharpen and begin again. Do this on the base side if possible. I won't go into detail why, but a little thought and you can figure out why. The method I have described has been in use since the very first negative that needed retouching
was done. Weston learned it early in his career. The thin sharpened lead is used with the Adams machines, as well as by hand. It the case of scratches, the Adams is really not much help.

Crocein Scarlet is not an ink, it a dry powdered dye that is mixed with water. The dilution of the dye is how the dinsities are matched. ANSCO had exactly the same dye available. their name for it was Nue Cocine ( not sure of the spelling) and it worked exatly the same as Kodak's product.


C Webb

[Capocheny]

I really don't know what to do.

Here is part of the picture. See the area above that rock...

Hi Hugo,

I feel your pain!

Retouching negatives is NOT the easiest job in the world. When I worked at a lab years and years ago, there was a Czechoslovakian fellow who use to do this kind of work. He was one anal retentive fellow (had over 30 years of experience and was a perfectionist to the nth degree.)

And, even he had his share of challenges with damaged negatives.

Anyway, I'd most likely follow Steve F.'s recommendation... digitize the negative via a drum scan, retouch it in Photoshop and have a negative made from the digital file via a film recorder.

I'd think there would be "some" degradation in the end result when compared to the original negative but I really don't know how much. Perhaps, someone here on the forum has had direct experience with going this route.

Good luck... I hope you find a solution as it looks like a nice image!

Cheers

[Turner Reich]

crocein scarlet is no longer available at B&H Photo. Too bad another one goes down for the count.

[kjsphotography]

Hugo,

What I have done it spot out the neg on the base side. Print it then painless spot the print. I have even used a sharpie on on the neg occasions..

[Bill_1856]

We learn best from our mistakes. Now you know the main reason why St. Ansel (and most other LF "greats") always made a backup negative when possible, (put aside and developed seperately). Also, always remember the immortal guiding words of W. Eugene Smith: "The most important darkroom accessory is the trash basket."

[Louie Powell]

can I simply develop another blank sheet of film the same way I did for the damaged one and put the two sheets together when contacting printing? What did you mean when you say "fixing it out and washing"? Do you mean to skip the development in Rollo Pyro and just put the blank sheet in fixer and then wash it?

Hugo -

Exactly. The dye-dodging technique requires a sheet of high-quality plastic (ie, something with no optical defects) the same size as the negative. The best was to obtain that is to simply fix out a sheet of unexposed film - without development. Fixing without development simply removes the silver from the emulsion leaving a totally clear sheet of the plastic film base.

Incidentally, one of the supposed laws imposed on us by the photo gods is that the best negative is always the one with the most obtrusive scratch. Ultimately, the best solution to this is to avoid scratching. I've never used a Jobo, but my experience in trying to process 4x5 negatives in a Unicolor print drum was an unmitigated disaster. I know this is an emotional issue with some people, but it seems to me that the gyrations involved in loading a large sheet of film into a Jobo drum would be asking for trouble.

[domenico Foschi]

"Incidentally, one of the supposed laws imposed on us by the photo gods is that the best negative is always the one with the most obtrusive scratch. Ultimately, the best solution to this is to avoid scratching. I've never used a Jobo, but my experience in trying to process 4x5 negatives in a Unicolor print drum was an unmitigated disaster. I know this is an emotional issue with some people, but it seems to me that the gyrations involved in loading a large sheet of film into a Jobo drum would be asking for trouble."

I agree with you.
I understand that shuffling such big negatives can be challenging, but it;s only a matter of learning.
Hugo, you will be messing many great negatives in your life, I guarantee it.
Do not throw them away, when you will haveacquired the skills to fix them you will remember them and take care of them.
Just don't try to fix them now, make practice with stuff you will never print.
Call me.

Domenico

[Brian Ellis]

This will sound crazy but when I made enlarged negatives on lith film I used to fill in the many many dust spots with a common black Marks-A-Lot felt pen, just dabbing the ink around all the spots without attempting to keep it only in the spots themselves (i.e. no great touch was needed, I just made big daubs on the spots). The negatives looked awful with all these black blobs on them and you'd think the black ink would have added density in the areas that didn't have spots so that the prints would show the places where I put the ink. But the negatives contact printed beautfully, the ink was invisible in the print. Maybe this was something peculiar to lith film or maybe I had a magic pen so I certainly wouldn't give any guarantees but if you have a negative you don't particularly care about you might give it a try and see what happens.

[alec4444]

When I generously used the pencil on and around the scratches, there are darker areas in the negative and they will appeare white on the print.

...But that's good, right? Because that means that regular spotting pens can be used on the print, and that's a helluva lot easier than retouching a negative.... I think that's the route I would go.

--A