Originally Posted by
ericantonio
I'm with PatKearns on this one. I haven't used distilled water since the 80's for film. I use plain h2o for stop and prewash. In trays, I use the same prewash as my stop. Whatever is on the negative IS ON THE NEGATIVE regardless on how you agitate, bounce, voodoo magic, sloshing around in the fixer. The fixer "fixes permanent on film whatever is on there". You can't re-bake a cake, it's done as soon as it is in the fixer. You can even turn the light on about 5 seconds after you put it in fix, and agitate it around and you'll see it clearing. There is no longer any silver to be processed once it is in there. I pretty much process film like John Malcovich in a bathroom in Cambodia. Whatever works...
I don't see a post on what instrument you are using to process the film. Some sort of tank? Trays? If a tank, make sure you give it a WHACK at the start like what Pat said. The samples I'm seeing does look suspicious like air bubbles. My next guess is that the tank is not fully dry, maybe there was some spots of water in there? If it is a tray, maybe sure there is nothing in there. LIke pieces of PB&J crumbs from lunch.
For loading film, make sure you have a consistent method. The notches are on the top right always. If you are right handed, your entire process should have the notches on the top right, from loading the film, to processing the film, to hanging the film. That way your fingers only touch the corner of that film, and you know, it's just the corner where the notch is.
I've loaded hundreds of sheets a day back when I worked in studios in Mahanttan, I rarely "blew" dust off the holders since we used them constantly. Besides, the dust is on the acetate side, not on the emulsion side of things. If anything, I wipe the holder a little bit each time I remove it but usually the felt on the holder takes care of it. Also, in the upright coffins I used to load film in, it would get really hot and humid in them. I've never had a problem with my fingerprints on the film. You really need to press it right in the middle to get a good imprint of your fingerprint on the emulsion. You can get away with it on the back side, but just take care not to touch the business end of the film.
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