Water marks on film? You need to be bold!

It is a great sense of achievement to behold a set of wet glistening negatives in all their tonal glory. It is your first chance to see how well they have been exposed and a relief to see all those rectangles or squares in a row. But it is a time of controversy in how you get them dry and clean.

Normal wisdom states at the end of the processes you add half a dozen drops of wetting agent to the last rinse, swish the reel about a few times and leave to stand for a minute. This helps to break the tension of the water so when you hang it to dry the water forms little droplets that run off without leaving any water marks behind when it is dry. The reality is quite different for some.

Wetting agent is not some magic bullet that you cannot do without. Heresy! I hear shouted from the back of the room! It is true the inter web is filled with photographers bemoaning those calcium water marks unseen until the print is hanging up to dry. You film scanners need not sit there smugly because you can take it out using photoshop. I hear a lot of complaints from this sector as well - time lost to spotting. The real smug ones are those that never get this problem when they use wetting agent. Well bully for you! Most of us do not have super soft water that just caresses our film and falls off!

Please do not get me started on those delicate lovelies that believe that if you touch wet film it will be ruined. Lets have some reality here! Wet film is a lot more resilient than it is given credit. For those of a delicate disposition please look away as what I'm going to say next is going to be outrageous to the extreme. I do not use wetting agent and I use a damp shammy leather to wipe both sides of my film dry.

It is a shocking and stunning revelation, but I have had no choice in the matter - honest officer! I have been plagued with wetting agent contamination over recent times that no amount of cleaning and washing has put right. This has led me to hand drying the film. Before you start banging the door down I should point out that there is a very nasty bit of kit called a film squeegee that has in the past ruined countless frames of film by putting a scratch line through them all. It took a long time and many rolls film to discover. So I make no apologies for these outrageous actions.

 Seriously! I now have water mark free negatives that air dry more quickly and no more blotchy looking prints. I wrote an article on how I discovered that wetting agent was the problem. Called wetting agent contamination. 

A mistake comes good

Developed normally

In a recent chat I had with another photographer, there was a lamenting the fact that he had not noticed a problem with his new pinhole camera; well not the camera but a bit of kit he was using with it. He is not the only one not to notice the little tell tail signs that things are not going well. I had the same sort of thing with the lith 200 process I was trying out for the first time. It was not until I started to use different makes of paper that the fault struck me. Up to that point I thought it was part of the process. It turned out that the box of Kentmere paper had been light contaminated (fogged),but when I could not remember.  At this realization two things crossed my mind, what a waste of a box of paper and dam! it is not a peculiarity of the process.

lith 200 Kentmere paper

I changed to a different paper and continued to produce prints. Using the

negatives I had selected for the trial with the lith 200. While I was doing this I had the idea that maybe the fogged paper could be used to creative affect. I chose some of the negs that may lend themselves to this and processed them accordingly. As the first result appeared in the developer, I started to question this creative wisdom as it looked rubbish, but then my perception changed when the photograph of the bottles on the window sill appeared. It did not look out of place, in fact it added to it a sort of early twentieth century feel. Maybe my idea wasn't such a bad one after all!.

lith 200 Forma paper

What I'm getting at is just because it has gone wrong there is no need to throw the baby out with the water so to speak! With a little lateral thinking creatively you can turn things round. Some of you may think I'm talking a load of rubbish ( I'm being polite) but it is surprising how often a mistake can come good.

lith 200 Kentmere paper