I’m new to developing film at home. I’ve done about 8 rolls. I’m having a problem with super dirty negatives.
I use the handheld rocket blower and have recently started using the canned air but some of the hair (?) particles are stuck on and no amount of air can get them off.
I’m also wondering if I am not leaving the negatives to dry long enough ? I gave it about 2 hours and they still seemed a bit sticky.
I’ve uploaded some samples.
Dust can be on your negatives and on your backlight (assuming camera scanning). In order to eliminate the latter, you can move the backlight away from the film so that the backlight is definitely out of focus.
As an illustration of backlight dust, I took a shot at it and accentuated the dust spec with Lightroom’s clone tool to see what we get. Tick the checkbox at the lower edge of Lr’s image display area to get the inverted reveal-it-all view.
When I was in film photography and developed my own (b/w) negatives, I found that dust was of minor concern when I let film dry in a room that promises less dust like a kitchen or bathroom and avoided air movement. When film feels sticky, it’s not dry enough and will behave like scotch tape.
At times, I used a blow-dryer to speed up the process, making sure to blow along the film rather than smack at it.
