snowstorm on scanned b/w neg image

<p>Hi, I've noticed on several films that I have developed in recent months a speckled snow storm effect on many of my images. It almost looks like the neg is very dusty ,but they're not.I use HP5 and FP4 either with ilfosol 3 1:9 or Rodial 1:50.<br>

I scan them on a EPSOM 4490 into my mac. IPHOTO.<br>

I'm not sure if its my developing technique or the scan. It is not present on all scans. i scan 120 velvia and that's ok.</p><div></div>

<p>Well for it to be white in the print/scan it would be dark on the negative. How old is your fixer? You may want to try and clean up the fixer and jug or just mix new and use a new container.</p>

<p>+1 for the previous post. Pour the fixer through a coffee filter either after each use or before the next use if reusing fixer.</p>

<p>Turn off the IR dust and scratch remover if you have it on. It sometimes sees the opaque metallic silver in B&W film grain as dust and 'removes' it. This also applies to Kodachrome transparencies.<br>

Velvia is dye-based negative film and IR transparent, so the dust remover only removes dust and scratches, not image information from those types of films.</p>

<p>thanks for info, I'm developing a roll with fresh fix to compare. Here is another image -from a different roll -with an even more marked effect. Does that confirm eveyone's suspicions?</p><div></div>

<p>If it's not on the film ( and you've definitely made sure the negatives are clean), then it must be on/in the scanner. You seem to have ignored Bob Tilden's point about the scratch remover thingy.<br>

So, my suspicions aren't confirmed at all, as I think it's the scanner!<br>

Andy.</p>

<p>I've recently had the same problem with a roll of Ilford FP4+ developed in HC-110 and OLD Ilford Rapid fix.<br>

I have been filtering my fixer after use but this batch was about 4 months old and had fixed 7 films from a litre of working solution.<br>

My snowstorm was just like yours. There is , however, help to correct this after scanning if you have a copy of Polaroid Dust and Scratch removal software for Windows. A few years ago this was freely available as pdsr1_0.exe, 1608KB. I don't use it often as it can be a bit savage and needs very fine tuning when you setup the parameters to create the mask for the cleanup. I don't know of any equivalent software for the Mac.</p>

<p>I've just run your image quickly though PSDR and this is the result</p><div></div>

<p>And now let's try the first image. This one is trickier as there is a lot of fine detail in the texture on the block wall behind the cars which I want to preserve. If you apply the cleanup too agressively then PSDR will ' eat' the fine details in the image and sometimes leave behind ugly looking doughnut shaped artifacts - little white rings.</p>

<p>Try again. Note that there are still some larger defects on the image which will need manual cleanup in PP.</p><div></div>

<p>The only time I get that same "snow" effect is when I use mixed Photoflo more than twice and especially if it's more than a week old</p>

<p>Wow Martin, that's impressive, I've just developed a 120 FP4 with Rodinal 1:50 dil and fresh Ilford and scanned it and this is much better. There's limited editing on iPhoto so blemish removal is a bit basic. I'll try and fins something mac-compatible.<br /> Anyway, thanks for advice, I'm going to use fresh fix for the next few rolls to make sure. I'd never of thought of old fix contaminating the emulsion.</p>

<p>Image from same scanner but fresh fix.</p><div></div>