don't wipe film at all!!  Make the last step in processing a 30 second bath
in distilled water with a couple of drops (literally) of  Photo-Flo (wetting
agent) and then hang the film to dry in a dust free closet or bathroom
overnight.  The use of distilled water & Photo-Flo should prevent hard water
stains.  I never touch wet film - the emulsion is soft and very easily
damaged.

I too would suggest forgetting the squeegee........I have been using my two
fingers as a squeegee after the 30-minute Photo-Flo process described by
Pieter Litchfield. I also would agree that the emulsion is very easily
damaged at this point and I would rather not wipe the film at all. I think I
will follow Pieter's suggestion and try the distilled water with Photo-Flow
and forget wiping the film altogether. That's a great suggestion worth it's
weight in aspirin.

I dry my negatives by giving a final rinse in filtered water with
PhotoFlo (at about half or less the concentration Kodak recommends on
the bottle), then quickly hanging them vertically to dry with a weight
on the bottom of the strip.  The only negatives I've scratched recently
were ones where, for one reason or another, I deviated from that method
(usually because I didn't get quite enough PhotoFlo and I could see
water beading instead of sheeting off, and tried to squeegee, or
scratched the negatives in rewashing them).

I use about 5-6 drops of PhotoFlo in 240 ml of water in a 35 mm tank,
more for larger tanks, and it works very well.  Now if I only had a
dust-free location to dry in...

"Fire Ball" <fire.ball@nospampleasetiscali.co.uk> schrieb:

At the moment I use distilled water with a detergent in half the
recommended strenght (Tetenal Mirasol) as the final step of my washing
procedure ("Ilford scheme") and run the wet film once through my index
finger and thumb. No residue, no scratches.

Using the recommended Mirasol/Agepon/Photoflo strength usually results
in a residue.

Others are using a centrifugue salad drier (I have one bought
specifically for this task ;-).

http://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/HLEX/Legende/L5/L595.htm

Attach the film with the spool on one side (vertically!) and a second
loaded  or empty one on the other side, close the lid and pull the
trigger.

It works, the film comes out "pre dried", without any water left on
the surface and it will dry out completely within the hour.

Forget it. Thus you will throw and bake dust in the emulsion.

Gruss, Roman

dont wipe the film.

dry them after photoflo and wipe them with an anti-static cloth
should you find a dirty neg.

k

On 5/9/2004 1:47 AM Fire Ball spake thus:

I'll second the emotion expressed by consensus here: don't wipe the film with
*anything* (including your fingers). It's completely unnecessary to do so.

Use Photo-Flo (or equivalent) at half the recommended dilution (Kodak says
1:200; I use 1:400 or less.)

If you see a bead or two of water on the negatives as they're drying, don't
panic, and *don't wipe them*! Just take a small piece of toilet paper or
equivalent and dab the bead with the corner of the paper: it'll suck the water
right off the film. And as has been pointed out, you can easily remove the one
or two water marks remaining with film cleaner afterwards if needed. (I
generally get *no* watermarks whatsoever, and I just use regular tap water.)

I use my fingers.  I make sure my hands are clean.  After washing the film,
I fill the tank with distilled water (we have a reverse osmosis water
system...close enough), add Photo Flo (5.5 mL to my 1L tank), and then
agitate for a minute.  I remove all the reels.  Hang up one roll of film.
Dip my fingers in the tank, and gently squeegee the film between my index
and middle finger.  Gently.  I repeat for all film.

I hang my film in my basement bathroom.  If it's not already humid, I'll run
the shower for 5 minutes on hot.  As the humid air settles, so does the
dust.  Usually, the film is dry within 3-4 hours.  I rarely have problems
with dust, and almost never with scratches.

--
Eric
http://canid.com/

I weight the strip of negatives and hang them in a garment bag.  I suspend the
bag from the shower screen pole and zip it closed.  A couple of hours later
they are dry.

My method is identical to Pieter except that I end it by putting the film in
a home-made drying cabinet, the film dries in half an hour:
http://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/en/photo/fdryer.htm