Having just spent the best part of an hour getting rid of thousands of annoying dust specs on some Fomapan 100 negatives, I’m about done for the evening. Therefore this will be a succinct post where I just add this photo of a gravestone with crucifixion design. It was one of several in the churchyard, making it look like some sort of miniature recreation of Golgotha or something.
Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford Pan-F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8 mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 May 2020


I like your DOF here. Question: why so much dust?
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That’s what I was going to ask also. Did a strip of negatives jump out of your hand and fall on the carpet? That’s the worst… When something like that happens to me, I’ve found it’s just easier to rewash that strip of film and hang it to dry all over again.
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Hi P. No, no disasters like that. As I said in my reply to -N-, it’s possible that it’s not dust and some other issue. I think I might replace my stop bath and fixer (which have had 11 films through them now) with fresh batches in case they’re adding some contamination to the process. I’ve got a roll of 135 to scan, which was developed after this roll of Fomapan, so it’ll be interesting to see if it suffers in a similar fashion.
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Hopefully the roll of 135 doesn’t suffer from the same issues. Although, that would also increase the mystery as to the origin of the spots. I think mixing some fresh stop and fix is a good plan. How much are you mixing at once? I don’t use proper stop (I just use tap water), but when I mix my fixer I tend to mix 500 mL at a time and put about eight rolls through it within two to three months before mixing another fresh batch. I regularly perform leader tests to make sure it hasn’t exhausted. That’s worked well for me. Depending on the fluid requirements of your plastic tank, I’m guessing you might need to mix up more than I do.
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I managed to find time to scan a few frames of the 135 this lunchtime and, so far as I can tell, they’re free of the issue. They used the same batch of stop-bath and fixer, so I guess they’re ok. I’ve just looked back at the last roll of Fomapan 100 I developed and it looks like there were similarly large numbers of white spots there too, so it could be the film that’s the culprit. No idea if it’s isolated to the film, or if it’s a combination of film and developer? I have several rolls of it left, so it’ll be worth trying to find out I guess…
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Thanks. No idea why this strip should have so many dust marks. I’m assuming it’s dust – it could be some weirdness arising from the film or my development though I suppose.
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Sometimes dust makes for interesting patterns. I usually give mine a wipe with a Pec pad and a cleaner.
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Unfortunately, this dust has just been a bit of a PITA. 🙂
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Try Pec pads and Pec-12 to wipe the negs before scanning.
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The tones on this are just lovely!!!
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Thanks Christopher. I think the bright, unobscured sunlight helped with this one.
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