Strategies to combat dust while scanning

[tbirke]

Hi,

I finally managed to organize a separate room, with the only purpose to house my drum scanner and the mounting station.

I am so sick of retouching dust on a 500 Megapixel file, one of my last files, where I removed dust on a 200% level, took me almost 40 hours. So I intend to make my new scanning room as dust free as possible, like in a clean room for silicon chip production.

So what are strategies for that?
What kind of flooring? Does a carpet help to suck up dust, or will it produce more?
Right now I have coated concrete floor.
Does it help to wear a hair net, a mask or gloves? I wonder with what kind of gloves you could tape the mylar to the drum though...

Are there any devices that suck up dust, like a filtered and outward bound air condition? Any anti static devices to keep dust off the surfaces?

Should I vacuum myself everytime before I enter the room? (I am serious)

I am really fed up by dust. And think that any minute of preparation that allows me to reduce 2 minutes of retouching will help!

I noticed that there are some professional drum scanners here on the forum. What do you do to avoid dust? Certainly a price at 200$ a scan can not justify more than 2 to 3 hours of removing dust...

[bob carnie]

Thomas

One of the best weapons to reduce the dust is to prewash the film, this will take away quite a bit of the problem.

I would advice checking all zippers before vacumning as any loose appendages may be damaged.

[Tom Monego]

I would also humidify the room, get the humidity up to 50 or 60%.
Be careful with blowing off dust, canned air can create static if used too much.
If you are having so much dust I would look to the instrument, it may need a thorough cleaning.
A little thing but helps, keep your film in plastic sleeves, their static charge holds onto the dust better than film. Hard to prove but images from plastic sleeves seem to have less dust than those in paper.

Tom

[Bob McCarthy]

Dust touchup at 200% is kinda overkill in my mind. You'll see things that will never show up in print. Do touch up all lint, threads, water stains, etc, but little spots of microdust will be stripped off by the printing process. I started like you at 200% but the many hours of work were unnecessary.

Change your screen resolution to 50% for the first pass, Gotta look good there. Go to 100% and get the worse. They'll look pretty darn close, maybe a touch different in the skies. Do focus your efforts on solid areas of tone without detail.

To prove it to yourself, do a cleaning at 50% and print a copy, do your method at 200%, do you see a difference. Maybe only in the skies can you find any of the larger noogies.

Now I keep my Cezanne covered with a dust proof cover, carpets are a no-no, I'm on hardwoods which I keep properly clean/oiled. Glenn uses a dust filter/collector (an Oreck I think). Good housekeeping is essential.

Sweeping just stirs up the dust.

I have very few dust issues and can spot a 4x5 in 15 minutes worse case.

I should add that my negatives are very clean to start with, usually major dust problems come from drying the film in a dusty area. Keep your drying area spotless, film out of any drafts, especially from the heating system.

bob

[bob carnie]

I totally agree with Bob here on the % .

Dust touchup at 200% is kinda overkill in my mind. You'll see things that will never show up in print. Do touch up all lint, threads, water stains, etc, but little spots of microdust will be stripped off by the printing process. I started like you at 200% but the many hours of work were unnecessary.

Change your screen resolution to 50% for the first pass, Gotta look good there. Go to 100% and get the worse. They'll look pretty darn close, maybe a touch different in the skies. Do focus your efforts on solid areas of tone without detail.

To prove it to yourself, do a cleaning at 50% and print a copy, do your method at 200%, do you see a difference. Maybe only in the skies can you find any of the larger noogies.

Now I keep my Cezanne covered with a dust proof cover, carpets are a no-no, I'm on hardwoods which I keep properly clean/oiled. Glenn uses a dust filter/collector (an Oreck I think). Good housekeeping is essential.

Sweeping just stirs up the dust.

I have very few dust issues and can spot a 4x5 in 15 minutes worse case.

I should add that my negatives are very clean to start with, usually major dust problems come from drying the film in a dusty area. Keep your drying area spotless, film out of any drafts, especially from the heating system.

bob

[Peter De Smidt]

In addition to the good advice above, I found a Honeywell room HEPA filter helps keep down dust.

[jp]

I spend no more than 10 minutes touching up a scan. (Epson v700), and I usually use 50% or so view. If the scene were all people's faces, I'd probably spend more, but I haven't had to deal with that yet. I use the bandaid tool in PS and vary the brush size for the dust size.

I keep my darkroom closed off all the time too, to keep dust out. I also use alcohol+photoflow so my negatives dry quickly; less time drying == less time getting dusty. I give them a little blast of canned air before enlarging or scanning them.

Sometimes dust is in the image, not on the negative. For this, make sure the film holders are kept clean. I had a felt dark cloth with my film initially, but the fibers were getting from the dark cloth to the film in the course of transporting everything. I keep the dark cloth in a plastic ziplock bag now. Cotton wouldn't be much better.

My house is moderately low dust because I am allergic to dust.

I also have a datacenter where computers are run. It's very low dust in there. Not cleanroom grade, but better than most darkrooms. Computers are usually dust vacuum accumulators, but I can run a computer for 5 years, open it up, and it looks unused. The reason it's clean is because it's mostly not occupied, and the air handlers runs 100% of the time filtering the air as well as cooling it/changing it.

Carpet is bad. Wood or tile is good. Concrete is good if it is painted. Keeping people and pets out is the first step. People make lots of dust.

Portable vacs make lots of dust. Central vac is the only way to go to eliminate this and still be able to vacuum.

If you or someone dusts, make sure the cloth is damp (unless it's a cloth designed for dust removal). Otherwise, you are just redistributing the dust.

Hot air heat is also source of dust. If you have forced air heat, put a good filter over the register.

Some sort of air cleaner is useful too. I have a silent sharper image cleaner that removes dust and puts it on blades that I wipe clean. There are other air cleaners that use HEPA filters and work much faster.

[Paul Kierstead]

I'm assuming it is airborne dust in the scanning process that is deposited on the film/bed/etc that is your problem, not dust on the film during shooting or residue stuck on in developing.

My methods:

1) Wipe the film with an anti-static cloth; I use the ones from Ilford. Especially important during the dry season.
2) Keep the scanner bed scrupulously clean. And the scanner. I wipe the bed lightly with a scanner wipe just about every time.
3) Keep mounting materials just as clean. Be careful where you set them down.
4) Make sure your gloves aren't linty. I've been bitten by so-called 'lint-free' gloves that weren't
5) Wipe the film with a pec pad or the like, but be careful you don't 'charge' it and undo step (1)
6) Wet-mount. This seems to make a *huge* difference. Not absolutely necessary, of course, but seems to really reduce dust issues.
7) Use ICE if your scanner has it and it is applicable (i.e. it is E-6 or C-41). I like a lot of traditional B&W, so this doesn't apply, but it is nice when it does.

[bob carnie]

Paul

I agree with everything you say except #7, and I may be wrong, but if Ice interface is working like dust and scratches or noise reduction in PS , a slight blur will get rid of surface dust and crap but if it is going into the image . IMO blurring globally at the beginning is bad news for final print quality, at lower magnifications no problem but at higher mags the dust and scratches filter certainly causes problem.

Like I said I may be wrong about how Ice works but I assume it is a slight blur to the image.
Am I off base here???

bob

I'm assuming it is airborne dust in the scanning process that is deposited on the film/bed/etc that is your problem, not dust on the film during shooting or residue stuck on in developing.

My methods:

1) Wipe the film with an anti-static cloth; I use the ones from Ilford. Especially important during the dry season.
2) Keep the scanner bed scrupulously clean. And the scanner. I wipe the bed lightly with a scanner wipe just about every time.
3) Keep mounting materials just as clean. Be careful where you set them down.
4) Make sure your gloves aren't linty. I've been bitten by so-called 'lint-free' gloves that weren't
5) Wipe the film with a pec pad or the like, but be careful you don't 'charge' it and undo step (1)
6) Wet-mount. This seems to make a *huge* difference. Not absolutely necessary, of course, but seems to really reduce dust issues.
7) Use ICE if your scanner has it and it is applicable (i.e. it is E-6 or C-41). I like a lot of traditional B&W, so this doesn't apply, but it is nice when it does.

[jp]

Read up on ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_ICE