Best process for drying negatives after development?

[Willie]

A home darkroom. Do you have a second bathroom? If so - or if you cand do without yours for 2-4 hours you can use the one with a shower for a simple, clean drying cabinet.

Rinse negatives, then rinse in distilled water for 3-5 minutes, then photo flo in distilled water. Run hot water in the shower for a minute or two to get the bathroom steamed up. Having put a line up to hang negatives from you clip them to clothes pins or your film developing racks, hang, leave the room and close the door slowly. The humid air has removed all the dust and lint that might have been floating around.

Wait a couple hours - experience will show you how much time for your location.

Go in, remove the negatives and put in your preservers.

Clean negatives without drying marks is the result.

[koraks]

OP, clean the glass plate of your scanner, particularly the calibration area which is the end of the glass where the scanning carriage rests. Dust in the calibration area will cause serious banding. Fortunately, a good cleaning of the glass solves the problem entirely in most cases.

[Pere Casals]

Do you guys have any suggestions on how best to dry negatives?

This is the way I dry negatives, with great results.

1) Do it in an small empty room, better is there is nothing that can accumulate dust. Clear dust from air with an HEPA air purifier, I use a Honeywell 16200, start it 5 min before you hung negatives.

2) After regular washing, wash it again with distilled water (agitate some 15 seconds), don't discard that water, you can use it next time. Then make a second wash with distilled water and also keep it. After some 30 rolls you discard the first distilled water bath, you replace it with the second bath, and for the second bath you now use new distilled water. In this way to waste little distilled water and have no drying marks.

3) In the second bath you can use Kodak Photo-Flo, don't use a too high dose, what's recommended or less.

4) Before hunging the negative I remove the drops on it with a hair dryer, with the cold air mode, this prevents any scratch...

[LabRat]

A home darkroom. Do you have a second bathroom? If so - or if you cand do without yours for 2-4 hours you can use the one with a shower for a simple, clean drying cabinet.

Rinse negatives, then rinse in distilled water for 3-5 minutes, then photo flo in distilled water. Run hot water in the shower for a minute or two to get the bathroom steamed up. Having put a line up to hang negatives from you clip them to clothes pins or your film developing racks, hang, leave the room and close the door slowly. The humid air has removed all the dust and lint that might have been floating around.

Wait a couple hours - experience will show you how much time for your location.

Go in, remove the negatives and put in your preservers.

Clean negatives without drying marks is the result.

Willie beat me to it, but I will also add that most mix Photo Flo way too strong, and it can leave drying streaks as described... The trick is to dilute the PF 200 stock before the later final dilution...

I take the 200 stock and dilute it 1:2 and put it into a glass dropper bottle, then mix working solution from 1 drop of (diluted) stock to 1 liter of distilled water... For final dip of prints, 1 drop to 2 liters of distilled...

The shower stall mentioned above works great, putting a bar or heavy wire over the top so that you can hang clips above the shower without opening the door or curtain help control new dust, and I also use the dip clips Randy uses... And stay away from the drying film by not opening/closing doors or other activities that can raise dust...

Steve K

[lab black]

Kodak, dental film clips, cat #1492586 (box of 12) are strong enough to securely hold large format film and they leave a very small imprint on the corner of the film although they can be difficult to find. Alternatively, Kodak, #4 dental, x-ray development clips are more readily found, however, to be used individually, one may want to remove them from the bar that they are attached to (seven to each bar.) In addition, I have had success minimizing any film artifacts by using Edwal LFN, at half the recommended dilution with distilled water.

[jpheneger]

OP, clean the glass plate of your scanner, particularly the calibration area which is the end of the glass where the scanning carriage rests. Dust in the calibration area will cause serious banding. Fortunately, a good cleaning of the glass solves the problem entirely in most cases.

Cleaning the scanner doesn't seem to have helped at all. It does seem to be worse though when I put the negative all the way at the top of the scan bed.

[Bernice Loui]

Do not squeegee the wet negatives, the risk for damaging the emulsion is extremely high if this is done.

If Kodak Photo-Flo, Edwal LFN or similar wetting agent is used in too high a concentration, it can and will stain the negatives causing weird drying marks. Use wetting agent in the proper mixed concentrations using filtered soft water (fine particle and activated carbon) or distilled water. Water quality for film processing is often neglected as water quality has a very significant effect on the quality of processed film.

Once the final dip of the film has been done, do not touch the wet emulsion in any way as the wet emulsion is very fragile. The gelatin is water expanded and soft allowing easy damage to the emulsion.

Clip one corner of the film using Kodak film clips or small copper Mueller Electric Co "Pee Wee" clip# BU-45C ( https://www.digikey.com/product-deta...1022-ND/304586 ) remove the screw from the end, then use the hole to string up a line (Stainless steel aircraft safety wire 0.032" dia wire or similar) of them to the quality as needed.

Make sure drying sheet film cannot come in contact with each other or they will stick together resulting in a catastrophe.

The water will run to one corner of the film after 10 to 30 minutes as a large droplet. Some of the water will drop off, the remaining water droplet can be blotted off carefully using a clean paper towel. Repeat this a few times until no water droplet appears.

Allow the wet film to continue drying in a clean still air room.

Once the film is dry, carefully remove each sheet of film them place each sheet into a protective sleeve or similar.

After the film is in it's protective sleeve, then careful inspection of the film can begin.


Bernice

[Oren Grad]

4) Before hunging the negative I remove the drops on it with a hair dryer, with the cold air mode, this prevents any scratch...

That's risky. If any dirt gets into the hair dryer, or components within the dryer start to disintegrate, you will be blowing grit into your negatives.

This isn't just theoretical. I've had a hair dryer fail by emitting a shower of fragments of internal insulation that disintegrated suddenly. It was a nasty surprise, but fortunately no great catastrophe - I was using it to dry some print test strips, so it was no problem running off another set after I cleaned up. Had it been film, the negative(s) would have been ruined.

[Pere Casals]

I've had a hair dryer fail by emitting a shower of fragments of internal insulation that disintegrated suddenly.

Of course we need a clean and trusted blower... A hair dryer can be internally damaged if inlet was obstructed while in heated air mode.

Anyway most industrial film processors use blowers to dry film and paper to speed up drying and to help preventing marks by blowing out the drops, but what you say is true, a blower should not throw grit, of course...

A major risk I see is using the air blower in heated air mode, once I fried a negative...

[koraks]

Cleaning the scanner doesn't seem to have helped at all. It does seem to be worse though when I put the negative all the way at the top of the scan bed.

Is there by any chance dirt/dust on the underside of the glass?
And can you confirm that the stripes are always parallel to the movement of the scanner carrier, regardless of the orientation of the negatives?