Drying Clips

[Andreas]

When I started my photographer's apprenticeship some fourty years ago, I was told to use these:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/18074...-1/s-l1000.jpg
Never lost a negative with them; just make sure that you blow the water drop that gets caught between the teeth of the clip, otherwise it just runs across your film when you think it is dry...
They were initially used for dentist's x-ray films.
Cost an arm and a leg.
Probably why large format photography is a retired dentist's hobby...

Regards from the Alps
Andreas

[Conrad . Marvin]

Toy clothes pins. Small, wood, they work.

[sharktooth]

Wood or plastic clothes pins, or any ol' bag clip works well for roll film since you usually have lots of leader space to clip onto. For sheet films there's not very much spare space at the edges to grip onto reliably.

I'm wondering if you could punch a small hole in one corner of the sheet so you could hang it using a twist wire. The trick would be to punch the hole in the dark before the film is processed. Do any film manufacturers put a hole for something like this? They put in notches for film identification, so it would be easy enough to add a hole, but I'm not aware of any that do.

[Scott Davis]

Jobo film clips - they make ones with a twisted flat bit of metal coming out the top to fit over a wire (or the grid inside a Jobo Mistral drying cabinet) and a single steel tooth. You can position them close enough to the edge of the sheet that it won't show up at all if you enlarge, and will be mostly invisible due to the small size if you contact print. The only time I've ever dropped a sheet with them is if I was trying to get too close to the edge. But they have enough grip I can even use a single one to hang a sheet of 14x17.

[sharktooth]

Do any film manufacturers put a hole for something like this? They put in notches for film identification, so it would be easy enough to add a hole, but I'm not aware of any that do.

I think I may have just answered my own question. I just found a few Fuji 4x5 colour negatives with a small hole in the corner. I also checked some Fuji Velvia shots, but they didn't have the hole in the corner. The 4x5 Kodak negatives and transparencies i checked didn't have a corner hole either.

The interesting thing here is that the films without the corner hole clearly have clip marks on the edges, while the Fuji film with the corner hole did not have clip marks. I'm wondering if the lab that processed the film put the hole in themselves. That would make sense, since the Fuji Velvia didn't have the hole, and was possibly processed at a different lab.

Unfortunately, these are all old shots and I don't remember where they were processed. There were a lot more lab alternatives back in the day.

[ericantonio]

I use mosquito size surgical forceps. They won't let go when the surgeon clamps a tiny artery and they will always hold a slippery bit of wet film by the tiniest corner.

These are the best I've used. Got a set of them.

[sharktooth]

Here's another option. I found some small clips used for sewing, and thought they might be good for clipping to the edges of large format sheet film. I tried it out today, and they work fine.

The ones I bought were from Walmart in the section where they sell sewing supplies. The brand was Unique Creativ, and the model was Clever Clips (small). There's lots of similar ones out there. They're intended to be used to clip material together when sewing seams, so the "pincer" is right at the end. This makes it very handy for gripping on the narrow border of sheet film.

I had no problem with some sheets of 4x5, but haven't tried it on anything larger. They're plastic with a steel clamp spring. There's small plastic teeth on the pincers for better grip. I only used one clip per sheet, but you could certainly use more for security. I think I paid around $9 Canadian for a box of 30. It should be less than that in the US.

Here's some comparison pics with plastic clothes pins, so you can determine the size. I'll be using them again.

[Ulophot]

For 4x5, which is as large as I go, wooden clothes pins are just fine. I have never had a problem with marking the image area -- clipping in that far at a corner is not necessary, especially if you chose the corner most generous rebate -- or with the film slipping from the clip. I have had this slippage happen with both steel and plastic clips, because the surfaces are so smooth, but let me qualify that the steel ones did not have edge teeth or grips as some of those mentioned above do. I drilled holes in each "handle" piece of the wooden clothes pins, through which is threaded a brass rod, which hangs in my drying "cabinet". The automatic spacing of the clips is more than adequate to prevent the parallel film surfaces from touching as they hang to dry == much more compact than the photo immediately above.