When your printing work for an important exhibition it pushes you, you try your best, you work and work at getting the prints just right. Today I have been working lots but producing little. After working for several hours on a print of dad I decided to cut my losses and stop, move on, the photo was not saying what I thought it should say. I then started work on to 3 different dump negs.
1) Man in hammock.
2) Baby in shack.
3) Mother feeding baby.
The second neg, baby in shack, had some minute scratches on it that after careful consideration made me decide to scrap trying to print it. I then remembered some stuff I had thrown in when I purchased something years ago. Quite often I buy things and miscellaneous freebees are thrown in, the stuff thrown in free that time is called "Edwal-No Scratch". I had never tried this product before but in desperation I gave it a go. You are required to take a brush and then coat each side of your negative with the Edwal No Scratch liquid. I spread it on then reinserted the sticky neg in the glassless carrier (the stuff does not seem to dry). I just did a quick test print, and the scratch believe it or not is gone! No kidding! Go figure! Even in the Durst condenser enlarger that shows every neg imperfection I can see nothing.
The baby in the shack neg is back in play! I am off to shovel Dads snow and then its back into the darkroom tonight to continue working on this negative.
Hmm, I wonder how long you can leave this stuff on the negative before it damages it?
Hmm, I wonder how long you can leave this stuff on the negative before it damages it?
